9. Saxon Church Building
In 601 AD Pope Gregory sent a letter to Abbot Mellitus, one of St Augustine’s missionaries in England, instructing them to change existing temples into Christian places of worship in the hope that the natives would continue to attend and be converted. Temples were to be consecrated for Christian use to purify them.
The letter insists that;
The temples of the idols ought not to be destroyed but let the idols that are in them be destroyed…. let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected and relics placed. For if those temples are well built, they should be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation, seeing that their temples are not destroyed… may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they are accustomed
Pope Gregory’s letter in Oxford Reference
It seems that the Pope recommended the reuse of standing structures but it seems possible that he was unaware of what form the very early English temples took due to the very long pre-historic time scale involved.
The universal temple in Britain, originating in the later Neolithic and early Bronze ages, was the Henge, either built of stone or of timber, the characteristic shape being circular.
Stone henges persist but timber henges are inevitably reduced to a circle of pits or post holes, which over time mostly disappear. The circular ground shapes around them are usually banked and ditched but again, ditches disappear, but often remnant banks remain. So, in Saxon times it is thought that English ‘temples’ were mainly sites devoid of structures, other than banks and ditches, which had over time immemorial retained their spiritual and community significance. When the entire land was covered in dense forest any clearing open to stars at night would have been very special. So perhaps the Harley woodland clearing was typical of this.
The time factor is significant and also problematic. The date of this letter is about 2000 years after the time when Henges existed and were in use. However, it is thought that once an area or site has been regarded as sacred it will tend to retain that reputation and standing over time.
Anglo Saxon churches or Monasteries existed from the 6th C, earlier in some places. 7th C in the case of Much Wenlock
Domesday, 1086, records a total of over 2000 churches. There is however, plenty of evidence to show that there were, in fact, far more. In some counties the record is complete, in others partially complete, and in others, churches are omitted altogether. Churches were not taxable entities.
In Shropshire, Domesday records churches at 21 locations. 17 other locations had a priest, so therefore there was a church. There are some locations where Domesday does not record a church or a priest, but which have been proved to have had a church. A total of 62 locations have been proven to have had a church in Shropshire.
Therefore the fact that Domesday did not record a church in Harley is probably an omission. Domeday was a tax raising exercise and churches were exempt.
Note that the earliest churches in Shropshire were built in the corridor from Much Wenlock to Baschurch. Harley lies in the south of this corridor.
In general, all Anglo Saxon secular buildings were built in timber, Churches in villages were of timber construction, with thatched roofs. More important churches were built in stone. Some of the churches could have been built as mausoleums, which were then later adapted and extended for Christian worship. If Harley had a church it would have been an inconspicuous log hut with a thatched roof.
In Saxon everyday life, most people lived in pit houses and a few in great halls as described in Beowulf.
During late Anglo Saxon times the land was divided up into estates owned by manorial lords.
The Anglo Saxon village was always accompanied by the open field system of farming, the two field system being the simplest. Harley adopted a three field system, which was more productive. The unit of cultivation was the strip. The ‘normal’ size of strip was 220 yards by 22 yards, although this was rarely found. A bundle of strips was a Furlong. Scores of Furlongs was a Campus.
In Harley, the cropped land was two thirds of the total as against half for the two field system. This represented a 16% increase in food production, all other things being equal. The three fields at Harley were; The South Field – Domas to Blakeway, The North Field towards Wigwig and the West Field towards Kenley. Apart from the southern half of the West Field all the soils were sand and gravel.
Fields expanded over the centuries, the maximum total field area being reached at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century.
Strips are often found fossilized under the grass pastures of the 15th and 16th and 17th centuries. The remnant effects of Ridge and Furrow ploughing are still visible in fields to the south west of Rowley Farm.
It is important to realize that although the system was communal the peasants who farmed the land did not own the land, they held a primitive form of tenancy.
Mercia was originally a pagan kingdom but King Peada converted to Christianity in 650 and the new religion was firmly established by the late 7th C. In the late 8th C the dominant kingdom was Mercia and the dominant political figure was Offa, king of the Mercians. At his death he was the unchallenged ruler of all England.
Trevor Rowley in his notes from “Villages in the Landscape” wrote that the basic framework and layout of rural settlements is far older than Saxon, and is possibly pre-historic. Harley with its Neolithic finds could very well fall into this category.
The majority of English villages have Anglo Saxon place names. Including Harley, but this does not prove they were formed during the Anglo Saxon period. Many are far older, including Harley.
Excavations of Deserted Medieval Villages, such as Domas have shown that the vast majority did not originate in the early Saxon period. In Shropshire there are over 100, in England 2500, so the word Medieval in the title is misleading.
In the West, as in Shropshire the 1086 settlement pattern was not Saxon. In South Shropshire, Clun, Clunbury, Clunginford, Clunton all have Celtic or pre-Celtic river names some with a Saxon suffix. In these areas Saxon domination was not achieved until the late 7th or 8th Century. Thus for between 200 and 300 years they remained Romano British or even Celtic.
Overall, the incoming Anglo Saxon settlers were less numerous than has been thought. Migration took a long time. The Saxons settled alongside indigenous farmers, or occupied new areas.