ABSTRACT
This chapter arises from work on the Anglo-Saxon sculpture of Nottinghamshire, and uses one particular catalogued stone as the springboard for an exploration of 10th- and 11th-century Southwell. Understanding this problematic church and settlement necessitates comparison with a small group of contemporary churches associated with York diocese and its northern province; at Norton (Co Durham), Beverley, Ripon (both Yorkshire), Stow-in-Lindsey (Lincolnshire) and York itself. Bringing together both the documentary and archaeological evidence for these churches, especially from Beverley where both documentary and archaeological evidence is richest, a pattern emerges. At all of these churches a similar sequence can be identified of ecclesiastical re-foundations and building works, undertaken at the behest of York’s three final Anglo-Saxon archbishops. The new churches were founded for secular canons at all these places, and similar discipline was established under a rule. These archiepiscopal initiatives – clearly inspired by ecclesiastical trends within the German Empire – have long been familiar to historians of the 11th-century Church, and they are also seen in several southern English dioceses. By combining recent archaeological research with the limited documentary information for these new institutions, we can understand something of their physical layout and appearance and also hint at their liturgical life. Because the archbishops’ activities were both so consistent and uniform across this group of sites, and because the initiative was maintained by a succession of archbishops, we can suggest that the ‘reform movement’, of which the archaeological remains are the residue, was itself inspirational and strong. This movement was relegated to ‘ancien regime’ status by the Anglo-Norman monastic chroniclers, who wrote on behalf of the new order that swept away most physical signs of its presence; but this chapter supports the view that it was an active and vigorous development related to the Northern European mainstream.
