John Blair on the formation of parishes, with particular reference to Croydon's minster

John Blair is a distinguished early medieval historian known to many through the programme 'Time Team' but neither of his books, Early Medieval Surrey published in 1991 nor the more recent The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, published by Cambridge University Press in 2005 at £35, is written for the general reader; so his talk on the formation of parishes at the meeting of the Surrey Archaeological Society's Local History Committee's Conference at Lower Ashtead on Saturday March 25, 2006 is here given in summary, supplemented by some remarks from his books.

Blair began his talk by speaking of two kinds of formation, the earlier monastic churches or minsters and the later Anglo-Saxon smaller churches associated with a local lord from the tenth century onwards, reflecting the local economy of the time.

In his book on Anglo-Saxon society he makes only two brief references to Croydon, mentioning a charter of 809 issued by King Coenwulf 'next to' Croydon minster and, in a footnote, identifying the minster as pre-Viking. By minster he means a community of priests or monks, there being then, in the period before the tenth century, little distinction between the two. They lived a collegiate life in a settled, sometimes fortified, place. At that time parishes did not exist nor did towns outside of London and Canterbury and one or two other urban places in eastern Kent. The minster in Croydon therefore existed before there was a town or perhaps even a village of Croydon. Indeed the minster was the cause of the town's existence at a later date as the minster here as elsewhere generated local markets. Not even Anglo-Saxon kings had a settled place as they perambulated from place to place, often from one minster to another, where food, accommodation and other services could be had.

The Archbishops of Canterbury had been granted extensive lands in an area conjectured to be a large portion of the Wallington Hundred in the eighth or even seventh century but the siting of the minster at Croydon may have been due to the proximity of the river Wandle as minsters were often sited near the confluence of rivers and other such places. Moreover the dedication of the church to St John the Baptist implies a connection with water and possibly there was a holy well nearby which may have provided the water for baptisms. Minsters existed under a variety of monastic rules, interpreting the word 'rule' loosely as there was as yet no widely accepted rule such as the Rule of St Benedict, and they supported a wider range of monastic life than is often supposed. The community at Croydon may have included women as well as men living a religious life and they would have had a variety of buildings supporting themselves and their servants or slaves. Such a community was a urban centre in itself.

Two broad cultural zones can be defined. The first covered the areas of Spain, southern France and Burgundy and retained the fabric of the Roman Empire: Latin, towns and an organised bureaucratic ecclesiastical life. The second was found north of the Loire where the fabric of the Roman Empire did not survive. Across the Channel there was no continuing tradition of urban life.

In the absence of cities ministers filled the vacuum, expressing a cultural life of their own from the seventh century onwards. Monasteries were like a family or kindred group, the abbot or abbess being the head of the family. Such kinships were familiar to the so-called barbarians of Ireland, England and Brittany.

There were large numbers of minsters, too many according to Bede, but by the middle of the eighth century monastic culture had had its day. Their existence is known from written evidence whose survival is geographically erratic. The archives for Gloucestershire and Worcestershire are very complete and show a high density of minsters but elsewhere our knowledge of minsters depends on accidental survivals. Many of the minsters of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire have come through as towns.

Less is known of south-east England. East Kent is exceptional as it retained more features of the Roman Empire than elsewhere and resembled northern Gaul. Canterbury was the only early medieval centre where Roman tradition survived. West Kent resembled Surrey and Sussex. Surrey was a betwixt and between area, part Kent, part Thames valley, belonging to the fringe of the Lower Thames. The lands of the archbishop initially included or was even composed of Kentish territory but most of Surrey came eventually under Mercian rule, a Mid-Saxon kingdom extending to Berkshire, parts of Buckinghamshire and into Surrey at least as far as Chertsey.

Surrey should therefore be seen in the context of the Thames. In the fifth century it formed a corridor to the south Midlands, and in the seventh and eighth centuries the Thames was the main commercial corridor between London and the Cotswolds. Here there were exceptionally important minsters: Abingdon, Woking, Bermondsey, Barking and Reading. The earliest established churches in Surrey were linked to this corridor. Bermondsey was a dependency of Peterborough and its likeness was not just ecclesiastical but also economic. The tributaries of the Thames, namely the Mole, the Wey and the Wandle, allowed the exploitation of the forest, the development of pasture for sheep and pigs and the growth of settlement. Cemeteries at Banstead, Beddington, Croydon, Carshalton and Coulsdon testify to this settlement.

Poor documentation accounts for us knowing only of a few minsters in Surrey. The earliest were at Barking, Chertsey and Bermondsey, followed by Farnham, Woking and Croydon. Next was Godalming but the existence of others has to be inferred. There may have been a minster at Godstone, which, however, is orientated more towards the Weald than the Thames.

Of the general historical context, we know nothing about early Surrey ecclesiastically. The earliest charter is that of Reculver in Kent dated 678. As it is written, therefore minsters were occupied by literate people. Charters were placed on the altar at the foundation and were therefore both holy and legal documents. Chertsey was also in permanent possession of a charter. Probably it created a different kind of 'lease' from that familiar to kinship possession of land, perhaps more like entail. Kings saw the advantage in unfamiliar ways of ownership derived from Roman sources. It promoted the granting of large quantities of land and the flowering of religious art such as is found in gospel books.

Every minster would have had books, a high standard of material culture and a range of artefacts. Nothing of such has yet been found in Surrey but Bermondsey is a promising place to look. Pins used by nuns, opulent keys and styluses are likely finds. A number of writing styles have been identified, indicating not only what is written but also what levels of literacy existed between 750 and 800, after which literacy declined. Artefacts were channelled through minsters as can be seen in examples from Oxfordshire and Kent where jewellery made from some piece of ecclesiastical equipment such as book clasps has been found. Little such has been found in Surrey but it may be presumed to have existed.

The period of decline from the eighth to the tenth centuries is obscure. What is clear is that all lost out, all were poorer by the tenth century. Pastoral life based on the minsters still existed and parishes may already have come into existence. In his book on Anglo-Saxon society Blair makes it clear that, even by the early eighth century before the Vikings came in any numbers, minsters were already in decline because of Anglo-Saxon kings exploiting their wealth. It is possible that Croydon escaped Viking depredation, certainly on the scale experienced by minsters in eastern England.

By the twelfth century documentation is copious. Following the Norman Conquest much land, including that belonging to the minsters, was confiscated and granted to the new nobility. Nobles great and small founded smaller, local, churches of their own, close to their residences, each with a single priest. Croydon may have escaped some deprivation because it belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury which may explain why the parish remained unusually large well into the nineteenth century whereas other mother parishes were much reduced in size. Mother churches were probably former minsters deprived of their estates while smaller churches became typical village or manorial parish churches and those smaller still dependent chapels. Increasingly stone was used for the building or rebuilding of churches after the Norman Conquest. Dependent chapels such as Ashtead, a dependent church of Leatherhead in 1150, reflect the survival of vested interests. The East Midlands and East Anglia have fewer such survivals. Here the evidence is that of the Domesday survey. What seems clear is that where parishes are smallest, the less evidence there is of a former minster.

In Surrey there is some survival of minster sites reflected in big estates such as Chertsey and Farnham, the estate of the Bishop of Winchester, and there are possible traces in Leatherhead. They have undergone a process of breakdown so that the last remains of the mother parish are now undistinguished places such as Woking and Windlesham. An exception is Kingston-on-Thames whose dependent chapel was Petersham.

The cruciform shape of churches may indicate former minsters. A surprising number were built to this shape in the twelfth century: Godalming, Richmond, Bramber, Farnham and Croydon. However the single most important feature of after-life of a minster is the setting up of a market, Croydon's market charter being dated 1276.

Turning to local churches we find that they still reflect the distribution found in the Domesday survey. However that too was inconsistent in its recording of churches. Essex is underrecorded. For some reason Surrey is exceptionally well recorded.

Who is building local churches? Some were built close to manor houses and away from villages. They served as chapels to the lords of the manor. Stoke D'Abernon is an example. Others were built close to villages, suggesting the public provision of pastoral care. A village might have several churches or a church, as at Snodland in Kent, might indicate an Anglo-Saxon village. Chertsey abbey was integrated within a village. Analysing the evidence of Domesday, particularly the Chertsey estate, it seems clear that the closer to an abbey in the twelfth century, the fewer the local churches, but churches were built for outlying manors, indicating a seigneurial rationale.

A seigneurial church was placed on the perimeter of the manorial estate for the convenience of the lord but also as a focal point for the religious life of the community, particularly by having a graveyard. Thus there was a potential source of conflict between the interests of the lord and that of the community.

Local churches were rectangular in shape, possible with a second, smaller, rectangular addition. Examples in Surrey are at Stoke D'Abernon, Ashtead, Chaldon and Little Bookham. The churches in the Weald are the same. They have off-the-peg dimensions.

There were fewer churches in the regions of sandy soil, in West Surrey and in the Weald, but between 1087 and 1180 as the market zone for London expanded these areas too were being infilled with churches and the process of infilling continued beyond 1180. Up to 1170 much church building was haphazard, depending on the whim of the local lord, reflecting local rights, but thereafter we have a period of crystallisation. What survives from 1170 is set in stone.

Crystallisation applies to both the building of churches and the crucial rites of baptism and burial. Little is known of baptism in the Anglo-Saxon period. Probably most people were then baptised in a portable font, the word 'font' relating to the water rather than to the object. Vessels may have been used, vessels used also for other purposes. In the Norman period stone fonts proliferated. Baptism was localised as if fonts were well heads for which you came to church to be baptised as an ecclesiastical focus.

The rite of burial is more obscure as the evidence was obliterated before the eleventh century but the whole process is recoverable in certain places as at Cherry Hintin in Cambridgeshire. There is evidence in Lincolnshire and there is Anglo-Saxon evidence in Surrey at Oxted and at Godalming's dependency at Chiddingfold.

In his recent book Blair concludes that the centrality of minsters to Anglo-Saxon Christianity is its main theme. 'Battered and reduced though they were through the ninth and tenth centuries, it was only in the eleventh and early twelfth that they decisively lost ground to the new order of local churches and the new forms of parochial life'.

Brian Lancaster

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