Recently published book by Carole Lomas
Reconstructing the Development of Somerset’s Early Medieval Church
New Approaches to Understanding the Relationships between Post-Roman Church Sites, Early Medieval Minsters and Royal Villae in the South-West of England
Abstract
Somerset has been used as a case study to contribute to a wider understanding of how the early Church evolved across the British Isles from the post-Roman period to the 11th century. It achieves this by developing a systematic, multi-disciplinary approach using a broad range of data including, archaeological, historical and topographical evidence.
Whereas the starting point for previous research into the early Church was the known or probable minster churches, an inclusive approach was used so that the starting point was a list of every pre-16th century church and chapel in Somerset. Adopting this approach ensured that any early medieval minsters which had lost significance over time were identified. Without this approach it would have been impossible to understand how the early medieval Church developed in Somerset.
A major issue to be faced in understanding Church development in Somerset is the paucity of historical, architectural and archaeological evidence.
A key aspect of the research was to identify Somerset’s early great estates and their constituent early parochiae. It is clear that by building on the work of other researchers it is possible to use topographical evidence to identify early great estate and parochiae boundaries.
The topographical evidence, coupled with historical and morphological data also facilitated the development of criteria to identify when sites were chosen as religious focal points including the sites of Somerset’s post-Roman churches. This then made it possible to establish the principles and criteria by which Somerset’s early medieval parochial minsters can be identified and how the evolving structure of the early Church in the county and across the South-West can be understood.
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Sources and methods
Chapter 3: Process and change: the early medieval Church in Somerset
Chapter 4: Identifying Somerset’s pre-eminent early medieval churches
Chapter 5: Identifying Somerset’s royal villae
Chapter 6: Reconstructing Somerset’s early medieval parochiae
Chapter 7: Understanding the context and physical setting of churches
Chapter 8: Somerset’s early medieval parochiae
Chapter 9: Discussion and conclusion
Somerset’s Early Great Estate Boundaries
It is now widely accepted that the boundaries of the early great estates in many counties were topographically defined so it is important to consider if this was true for Somerset. Initially, a literature review of the early medieval, post-Roman, or possibly earlier, boundaries proposed by others was completed (see Map 6.2).
These boundaries were then systematically compared to the topography of the county using large scale printouts of OS maps at 1:40,000. This enabled Somerset’s early great estate boundaries to be identified (see Map 6.10).
Blog
Cheddar’s Early Medieval Parochia and Compton Bishop Church
Revisiting the churches within the early medieval parochia surrounding Cheddar I went to Compton Bishop church and realised that I should have identified it...
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St David’s, Exeter, Devon
The current building is modern, definitely not early medieval, but its setting in the landscape intrigued me.
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St Michael’s and All Angels Church, Otterton and the church at Ottery St Mary, Devon
A recent walk along the river Otter enabled me to visit Otterton church. The layout of the church is rather unusual as the main...
Read MoreThe reason for establishing this web site is because I am interested to know about research into the Early Medieval Church across England and Wales, espeacially with regard to possible post-Roman church sites and early medieval ministers. I am particularly interested to hear about research that is based on my hypothesis about the development of the Early Medieval Church in the west country or those developed by other researchers.
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