St Wilfrid and his Crypts

Last week, on my way back from a research trip to York, I called in at Ripon, to visit the cathedral there, or rather more specifically, to go underneath it. Stunningly beautiful though the cathedral is, it was the rather more mundane and plain crypt which attracted me.

I read recently that the crypt at Ripon is deemed to be 'creepy' but I didn't find it so. Perhaps it helped that there was a concert of organ music going on above while I was down there, but I think the crypt at Hexham, also associated with St Wilfrid, is perhaps the creepier of the two.

Ripon is proud of the fact that its crypt is the oldest in the country, beating Hexham to the title by just a few years.

Wilfrid had been inspired by what he had seen in Rome - ornate stone churches with catacombs - and he used stonemasons from overseas to build his church at Ripon, at a time when most 'English' churches were built of wood. The crypt contained holy relics, connected with St Peter, and it was lit by candlelight, which illuminated gold, silver, and purple wall decorations. The idea was to inspire, and it surely succeeded.

So, who was Wilfrid, and why was he at Ripon?

I think it's fair to say that he had a colourful career and, though he is remembered as a religious man who achieved great things, he also had an uncanny knack of annoying people, so much so that he found himself banished and briefly imprisoned.

He first comes to our notice when, as a fourteen-year-old boy, and according to one tradition, anxious to escape his wicked stepmother, he presented himself to Eanflæd, queen consort of Oswiu, king of Northumbria, who sponsored him and sent him off to study at Lindisfarne. Thereafter his chequered career is too long, and his fortunes too variable, to condense into a blog post (a quick glance at the length of his Wikipedia page will demonstrate that!), and I recommend you read Alan Thacker's detailed article at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and his contribution in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England. 

Suffice to say for this post about the crypts that, after a time abroad, he was heavily involved with the discussions at the Synod of Whitby in 664, a vocal advocate for the argument which won the day on controversial matters such as the dating of Easter. He was appointed abbot of Ripon, but this was one of many contentious events in his career, because he expelled the abbot and the monks there, including the future St Cuthbert. He dedicated his new stone church to St Peter.

By 672, Oswiu of Northumbria had died, and his son Ecgfrith was married to Æthelthryth. It was she who reputedly remained a virgin throughout this, her second, marriage, and was encouraged to do so by Wilfrid. One tradition has her escaping from Ecgfrith (it's likely that he was happy to let her go, given that she was ten years older than him and he had no heir) before she went on to become abbess of Ely. However, whilst still in the north, she gave Wilfrid a large parcel of land at Hexham, where he built another stone church, this time dedicated to St Andrew.

Hexham Abbey is not so very far away from Ripon, but the existing building looks rather different. Wilfrid's church was completed in 678 but partly destroyed by Viking raids in 875. In the early twelfth century, the church became the Priory of Canons Regular of St Augustine and from the mid-twelfth to mid-thirteenth century more building took place.

In 1296, Scottish raiders set fire to the priory, and in the process destroyed shrines, books and relics. It is said that molten lead ran down the night stair and can still be seen to this day. 

But of course for me, the interest is much deeper down, in the crypt. With a good ethos of ‘waste not, want not’ recycled Roman bricks were used, from the remains of the Roman fort and town at Corbridge just a few miles away; Wilfrid's church was probably built entirely from stones taken from this site.

Is it the darker stone that makes Hexham a little gloomier, perhaps a little spookier? Let's have a reminder of Ripon again:

Well, whatever the case, for me it's a thrill to stand in either place, coming so close to the long-ago past, and feeling very in touch with the troublesome love-him-or-loathe-him Wilfrid. There are so few buildings which survive from the pre-Conquest era that a chance to visit those that still exist should never be passed up.

But in case all the gloomy pictures of ancient crypts aren't quite colourful enough, here's another glory of Ripon Cathedral:

Despite his 'interesting' career, he is rightly revered there, and there is also a beautiful painting of Queen Eanflæd by artist Sara Shamma:

Over at Hexham Wilfrid is also rightly remembered, but so too is his patron, Eanflæd's daughter-in-law, Æthelthryth:

Both are beautiful sites. From the outside you would never guess what 'Anglo-Saxon' architecture they are hiding. Here are some more images:

Clockwise from top left:
Hexham Abbey, Hexham Crypt,
Ripon Crypt, Ripon Cathedral

Wilfrid appears in my novel, The Sins of the Father, as do Eanflæd and Æthelthryth. Eanflæd also features heavily in the previous novel, Cometh the Hour, and both women's stories are in my book Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England.

For details of another 'Anglo-Saxon' crypt, this time in Repton, Derbyshire, read my blog post HERE

[all photos by and copyright of the author, taken with all permissions from the relevant authorities at Ripon Cathedral and Hexham Abbey]

Great Escapes

 It's Women's History Month so it seemed appropriate to put together some stories about courageous women who most certainly did not submit quietly to a fate dictated for them by others:

Let’s turn first to seventh-century Queen Æthelthryth, a member of the East Anglian royal family but married to Ecgfrith of Northumbria. He was perhaps ten years her junior and, famously, she was said to have been encouraged by Bishop, later Saint, Wilfrid to remain celibate. Bede said he heard the details of the story from Wilfrid himself, and explained how Æthelthryth gained her husband’s permission to enter a monastery, staying first with Abbess Æbbe at Coldingham Abbey and then becoming abbess of Ely.

Image of Æthelthryth - with kind permission
 of the rector of Hexham Abbey

The Liber Eliensis (a history of Ely Abbey compiled in the 12th century) tells a dramatic tale in which Ecgfrith, having initially agreed to the divorce, tried to remove her forcibly from the convent. Æbbe advised Æthelthryth that her only option was to escape. The king set off in pursuit, but Æthelthryth and her two lady companions climbed to the top of a steep hill where divine intervention caused the water levels to rise, cutting off the hill and keeping the holy virgins hidden for seven days. The king could not get near, and eventually returned to York. Unfortunately the nuns on the rock began to suffer from extreme thirst. The abbess prayed for them and in answer to her prayers, a spring of water gushed forth and provided the nuns the means with which to slake their thirst. The Liber Eliensis states that this story was not based on the writings of Bede but came from those who knew the area of Coldingham and were witness to the events. Well, whether the story is true or not, she got to Ely safely and became abbess, being succeeded there by her sister.

A contemporary of Æthelthryth, Mildrith was the daughter of Merewalh (a sub-king of Mercia and possible son of King Penda), and Domneva (Domme Eafe) a Kentish princess. Mildrith was sent abroad, to be educated at the abbey at Chelles. Goscelin of St Bertin said that while she was there, the abbess attempted to force her into marriage with one of the abbess’s kinsmen. When Mildrith refused to comply, she was put in a hot oven, but miraculously managed to escape. The abbess then beat her so viciously that her hair was torn out. Mildrith sent some of this hair to her mother as an SOS signal. Domneva sent a rescue party, although Mildrith refused to leave until she had collected some holy relics from her room.

 The delay meant that they were pursued and were only successful in escaping because the tide turned. When she at last returned to Kent and set foot on land, Mildrith left the imprint of her shoe on the rock at Ebbsfleet and transferred to it healing powers. Mildrith entered Domneva’s house at Minster-in-Thanet and eventually succeeded her mother as abbess. This family was quite a force to be reckoned with. Though not involved in any dramatic escapes of her own, Domneva tricked a king, her cousin, who had ordered the murder of her brothers, into giving her the land where she built the abbey at Minster-in-Thanet. Incidentally, Minster Abbey is still home to a community of nuns. 

Tapestry showing the first three abbesses at Minster - with kind
permission from the community there

Osith,(alternatively Osgyth or even Osyth) was a relative of Mildrith’s, if she’s correctly identified as the the daughter of a sub-king of Surrey, Frithuwald, and his wife Wilburh, sister of King Wulfhere of Mercia (possibly Merewalh’s brother). According to later, twelfth-century, stories she was brought up in Aylesbury in the nunnery of her aunt St Eadgyth. On a journey to meet another aunt, St Eadburh, she drowned in the River Cherwell but was revived by the prayers of her aunts. She wanted to remain a virgin but was married off by her parents to King Sigehere of the East Saxons, but she avoided consummating the marriage, putting herself under the protection of a bishop named Beaduwine. (There are echoes here of the story of Æthelthryth, of course, who similarly was under the protection of a bishop). 

Sigehere seems to have accepted the situation and given her land at Chich, where she built her abbey. She thus escaped marriage, but perhaps not with her life, for she was apparently kidnapped by pirates and beheaded after refusing to renounce her faith. In one version of her story, she was buried at Aylesbury, while in another she was buried at Chich, taken to Aylesbury for nearly fifty years, and then returned. If Osith was indeed the daughter of Wilburh, wife of Frithuwald, then a connection with Aylesbury, a probable royal minster, makes sense. Her story might have been confused with that of another lady of the same name, because there were two feast days and one explanation is that the temporary relocation of the relics from Chich to Aylesbury was an attempt to reconcile two separate cults. 

Illuminated capital depicting Saint Osith

Let’s fast-forward now to the tenth century where we find a woman, sometimes a nun, sometimes not, sometimes a royal wife, sometimes not, but who, in one version of her story, also had a dramatic escape.

Wulfthryth was the mother of King Edgar’s daughter St Edith of Wilton, and possibly his son, Edward the Martyr. She became abbess of Wilton and was later venerated as a saint, but before that was the subject of much gossip. It is not known precisely when she took up the religious life. Some sources state that she was a nun when Edgar met and seduced her.

According to Osbern of Canterbury, writing in the latter part of the eleventh century, Edgar seduced a nun of Wilton who gave birth to a son, Edward. But another source, a young contemporary of Osbern’s named Eadmer, said that Edward was the son of Æthelflæd Eneda (Edgar’s supposed first wife). Eadmer decided therefore that Edgar, a married man, sinfully seduced a laywoman who wore a veil in an attempt to avoid the king’s attentions. He said that the king went to Wilton and, “captivated by the beauty of a certain young girl” ordered her to be brought to him while she, out of fear for her chastity, “placed a veil snatched from one of the nuns on her own head.” Edgar though, was not fooled and, saying, “How suddenly you have become a nun,” dragged the veil from her head.  

Goscelin of St Bertin said it was St Wulfhild, abbess of Barking, who was in fact the object of Edgar’s attentions. She evaded him by escaping naked down a sewer, and so the king took her kinswoman, Wulfthryth, a laywoman being educated by the nuns, instead. Goscelin was however adamant that Wulfthryth became Edgar’s lawful wife and that they were bound by ‘indissoluble vows’.    

Veils and sewers notwithstanding, Wulfthryth seems to have been a canny administrator of Wilton. She purchased a collection of relics, and lands which had been granted to her by Edgar were conferred to the nunnery, presumably so that the abbey would retain the lands after her death. She was influential too: Goscelin related how she brought pressure to bear on King Æthelred when his officers tried to remove a thief who had claimed sanctuary in the church and the royal servants were blinded as punishment, and how she interceded on behalf of two priests imprisoned by the reeve of Wilton.

St Mary (Old Church) Wilton - attribution LINK

One of the escape stories has a less happier ending, though it’s not wholly one of despair. A woman named Cyneburh is named in the Gloucester Cartulary. According to legend, she was a Saxon princess who fled to Gloucester in order to avoid an arranged marriage. She took service with a baker, who was so impressed by her work that he adopted her as his daughter. This aroused the jealousy of the baker’s wife, who murdered Cyneburh. She then disposed of the body by throwing it into a well. When the baker returned home and couldn’t find Cyneburh, he began calling her name and she, though dead, answered him, thus revealing where her body was hidden. She was buried near the well, and a church was then built on the site. Thereafter miracles were recorded, with one woman being cured having lost the use of her muscles down one side of her body, another’s withered hand was restored, while someone else was cured of dropsy.

Sadly, it’s impossible to identify this lady. She is not Cyneburh daughter of Penda, for she married Alhfrith, son of Oswiu of Northumbria, nor is she Cyneburh of the West Saxons, wife of Oswald of Northumbria, who is generally assumed to have taken the veil at Gloucester and become abbess there. This lady of the well must either be a figment of the Gloucester chronicler’s imagination, or she is yet another woman whose full story might never come to light. 

I mentioned St Edith of Wilton briefly, and she has an escape story, or rather her leather and purple garments do (!) while Balthild the slave escaped servitude, and Judith of Flanders, having caused a scandal with her first two marriages, was locked up for her own good by her father and made her escape before marrying a third time. For more about those three indomitable women, see HERE

All these women’s stories are included in Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, and almost all of them feature in my novels, too.

Turning up the Past: The One Who Got Away

Once, at a parents’ evening, a teacher told me that history is an easy subject because it ‘never changes’. Well, I argued with him then, and I’d argue again. There are always new discoveries that constantly change how we view the past, and when I was writing my new book I was barely able to keep up. In fact, in one case the announcement came too late for me to include the details in the book.

I was already aware of the dig at Coldingham, where Dig Ventures were trying to find traces of the original Anglo-Saxon abbey. By the time I visited to take photos for the book, they were long gone, their trenches filled in. But the results came in thick and fast while I was writing the book. 

Coldingham, showing the dig site

The abbess about whom I was writing is known as Æbbe of Coldingham, but the location of her monastery was originally said to be at Coludi urbs (St Abbs Head, Berwickshire). Here, high up on a place now known as Kirk Hill, it is thought that the original monastery, a collection of ‘beehive’ huts, was built in the mid-seventh century.

St Abbs - looking across to Kirk Hill

St Abbs is about two miles from Coldingham, where a later, Benedictine, monastery was built for a community of monks in the eleventh century. The proximity to Coldingham would explain the naming of Æbbe’s monastery, of which all traces have been lost.

In March 2019, results were published of radiocarbon dating which shows that material sent for analysis from a dig at Coldingham Priory can be dated to between 660 and 880. There is a high probability, therefore, that there was an original Anglo-Saxon monastery on the same site, directly underneath the remains of the later medieval priory. As I sent the book off to the publisher, investigation was still ongoing, but it could yet prove that Æbbe of Coldingham’s abbey was indeed further inland than St Abbs and situated in Coldingham itself.

Another early abbess to feature in the book was Æthelburh, although she didn’t spend her whole adult life as a holy woman. She was the daughter of a king of Kent and she travelled north to marry King Edwin of Northumbria. Edwin had been sent into exile when a rival king invaded and married (most likely without her permission) Edwin’s sister. Through her, he had sons, two of whom became kings of Northumbria. Edwin was killed in battle and not long afterwards, one of his nephews, Oswald, came to claim the throne. It seems that Æthelburh felt unsafe so she returned to Kent with her children and step-grandson. She appears to have been given land there by her brother, who was now king of Kent, where she founded the abbey at Lyminge. 

Again, while I was still writing the book, the latest news came in from the Lyminge Archaeology Project, detailing their discoveries about the fabric of the original Anglo-Saxon church.

It appeared that the chancel was separated from the nave by a triple arch, which seems to be a Kentish style (See here for more) and the archaeologists were able to deduce that stone from a fragment of a column was imported from the continent. The conclusion was that the architectural style made it likely to  be the church founded by Æthelburh. Imagine my delight when I saw what they had uncovered, just as I was writing about this lady.

The Lyminge Excavation (Image Credit)

One of the most famous abbesses of the seventh century is Æthelthryth, founder of Ely Abbey. There’s a lot of information about her in the writings of Bede, and in the Liber Eliensis (the history of Ely Abbey). In summary, she was married twice, first to a nobleman of the South Gyrwe, and secondly to King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, nephew of the afore-mentioned Oswald. There’s a great tale about how she, anxious to preserve her virginity, escaped Ecgfrith’s clutches (see my recent post on the EHFA blog for the details) and many miracles were associated with her. As the book was going through edits and proofs, news came to light that the site of St Æthelthryth’s abbey at Ely had been found. Archaeologists pinpointed the site of the original building in the precinct of the abbey, having uncovered a boundary ditch. Obviously I will be following this story with keen interest.

Image credit

But it wasn’t just the religious ladies of the seventh century who hit the news. The story of the blue-toothed nun hit the headlines, again while I was writing the book. I’d been researching the history of Whitby Abbey, where there was an extensive library and evidence of female scribes producing copies of books. Suddenly my newsfeed was full of stories about a case in Germany where the remains of a nun were found to have flecks of blue on the teeth. It’s possible that she might have lived as long ago as the tenth century and the conclusion was that she was an illuminator, a skilled one at that, working with a pigment made from lapis lazuli and licking her paintbrush while she worked. Yet more evidence of female literacy and the existence of female scribes and illuminators.

Queen Emma - Encomium Emma Regina

Those who are familiar with the Anglo-Saxon period  won’t be surprised to learn that a large portion of the book focuses on the career of Emma, married to not one but two kings of England, Cnut, and Æthelred the Unready. She lived a long and full life and there is far more information about her than some of the other women featured, so tracking her down was not hard. She had sons by both her husbands, although for a short while she seems to have forgotten about the one who eventually became Edward the Confessor. Once he was king, her career was effectively over, but not for her a quiet retirement to an abbey and she lived out her years on her lands in Winchester. I’ve studied her life on and off over the years and nothing I turned up was a real revelation. Except that, once again, I had to add a footnote to the effect that while I was writing the book, news emerged from Winchester Cathedral that the bones of over twenty individuals found in mortuary chests might include the skeleton of Emma.

Mortuary Chest (Image Credit)

At least I was able, in some form or another, to mention these discoveries. There was one that ‘got away’ though. Before publication, but after everything had been signed off and sent to the printers, I was alerted to the news story that scientific tests on human remains kept for centuries in the church of St Mary and St Eanswyth in Folkestone, Kent, suggested that they are likely to be those of Eanswyth herself. 

Image by Mark Hourahane

Who was Eanswyth? Well, according to the Kentish Royal Legend, she was the daughter of King Eadbald of Kent. Which means that she was the niece of Æthelburh, founder of Lyminge. If these bones really are those of Eanswyth then they are - so far - the earliest identified remains of an English saint and the only verified remains of any member of the illustrious Kentish royal family, whom I’ve written about so much. It would have been so wonderful to be able to include the details of this discovery in the book, but sadly it was not to be.

But to that teacher who insisted that history doesn’t change? I’d say, on the contrary, I could barely keep up!

Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England is available now at
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