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Excavations at Gloucester. Fifth Interim Report: St. Oswald's Priory 1977–8

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Carolyn M. Heighway  and
J. West
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Summary

The third and fourth seasons of excavations at St. Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, have led to the discovery of two further pre-Conquest building phases, including evidence of a separate building to the east of the ‘New Minster’ founded by 909. It has also been established that the church occupies the site of a late Roman cemetery.

Part of a decorated standing stone cross was found built into the early tenth-century church, and a report is provided on a carved slab from an early tenth-century context. A summary of the evidence from the Saxon grave-yard is given. The parish of the ‘New Minster’ and Free Chapel Royal is plotted and its origins discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , September 1980 , pp. 207 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1980

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References

NOTES

1 Heighway, C. M., ‘Excavations at Gloucester, Fourth Interim Report: St. Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, 1975–6’, Antiq. J. lviii (1978), 103–32Google Scholar.

2 The historical evidence is more fully set out in Heighway, , op. cit., 118–25Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 106.

4 Britannia, xiii (forthcoming).

5 Heighway, op. cit., 117.

6 Ibid., 118.

7 Ibid., 106–7.

8 ‘Medieval Britain in 1977’, Med. Arch. xxii (1978), 144–5Google Scholar.

9 Malmesbury, William of, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (Rolls Series, London, 1870), p. 293.Google ScholarHeighway, op. cit., n. 72.

10 Hamilton-Thompson, A., ‘The Jurisdiction of the Archbishops of York in Gloucestershire’, Trans. Bristol and Gloucester. Arch. Soc. xliii (1921), 90, 98Google Scholar.

11 Cal. Close Rolls 1231–4, p. 363; Cal. Pat.Rolls 1249–58, p. 490.

12 Skeat, W. W. (ed.) Ælfric's Lives of the Saints, vol. ii (1900), pp. 142–3 (Early English Text Society, vol. 114)Google Scholar.

13 Taylor, H. M. and Taylor, Joan, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, vol. i (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 71–3, 86–9Google Scholar.

14 The evidence for families of churches (including churches built on the same alignment) is usefully summarized in Taylor, H. M., Anglo-Saxon Architecture, vol. iii (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 1020–1Google Scholar.

15 Taylor, and Taylor, , op. cit., vol. i, pp. 338–49Google Scholar.

16 Taylor, H. M., ‘Repton reconsidered: a study in structural criticism’, in Clemoes, P. and Hughes, K. (eds.), England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 351–89Google Scholar.

17 Heighway, op. cit., 107, where the context of the stones needs clarification. The stones are as follows: A 2656 (late ninth-to early tenth-century), found 1890 in garden wall, Pateshall Alley; A 5075 (late ninth-century), found 1957 St. Mary's Hall site; A 6305 (part of A 5057), found 1966 in east precinct wall.

18 Goscelin recounts in his Life of St. Mildburg a story that Merewalh, king of the Western Hecani in the late seventh century, founded a church at Gloucester in honour of St. Oswald. Gloucester was, however, outside Merewalh's territory and Goscelin himself is careful to treat the story as a report and not as established fact. Finberg, H. P. R., Early Charters of the West Midlands (Leicester, 1961), p. 219Google Scholar; Leland, John, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ii, 169–70Google Scholar.

19 More fully described in Heighway, op. cit., 112 The hood mould occurs on both faces of the arch; it is more common for hood-mouldings to occur on one face only, see Taylor, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 935–6. The hood-moulding on this arch is cut back level with the face of the wall, so that original section is not certain.

20 Taylor and Taylor, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 623–6. Tredington was in Worcestershire until 1931.

21 Heighway, op. cit., 117–8.

22 TF40: see notes by A. G. Vince in Heighway, op. cit., 126.

23 Heighway, op. cit., 123–4; n, 9 above

24 Heighway, op. cit., 113.

25 It is possible that the whole arch has been rebuilt, and that it was originally rounded and of a date contemporary with the Period 6 arcade whose abaci it imitates.

26 I am grateful to Dr. Richard Gem for his comments on the sculpture.

27 Th e name appears at the Dissolution; see Hamilton-Thompson, , op. cit., 106, n. 1Google Scholar.

28 Heighway, op. cit., 113–4.

29 Ibid., 116.

30 Medland, Henry, ‘St. Oswald's Priory, Gloucester’, Trans. Bristol and Gloucester. Arch. Soc. xiii (1888–1889), 127Google Scholar; it is in fact a fourteenth-century double piscina.

31 Ibid., 127.

32 GRO GBR B 3/2, pp. 815, 862, 863. The same extracts from the City accounts are given in Langston, J. N., Old Gloucester Churches (1956–1957), MS. Gloucester Library (unpaginated)Google Scholar.

33 Gloucestershire Extracts 1866–72, p. 119.

34 The skeletal material is being studied by Dr. Juliet Rogers at Bristol University.

35 Davies, S. W., ‘St. Oswald's cemetery, Gloucester, after the Dissolution’, Glevensis, 14 (1980)Google Scholar.

36 Medland, op. cit., 128.

37 Heighway, op. cit., 117.

38 Guy, C. J., ‘Gloucester Blackfriars’, Glevensis, 13 (1979), 23–4Google Scholar.

39 Denton, J. H., English Royal Free Chapels 1100–1300 (Manchester, 1970), p. 1Google Scholar.

40 GR O QR 1/70.

41 Hamilton-Thompson, op. cit., 104.

42 Hart, W. H. (ed.), Historia et Cartularium monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae (Rolls Series, London, 1863), i, 25Google Scholar; ii, 65.

43 Taylor, C. C., An Analysis of the Domesday Survey of Gloucestershire (Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeol. Soc, 1889), p. 175Google Scholar.

44 Letters and Papers Henry VIII, XVII, p. 697; XVIII, i, pp. 536, 541; pp. 53, 59; XIX, i, p. 283, ii, p. 82; Ministers Account of Barton Abbots GRO D 936 E170.

45 Archdeacon Furney's Manuscript History of Gloucester, c. 1720. GRO D327, p. 413.

46 Information from Richard Bryant, Director of Excavations at St. Mary de Lode. Closer dating of the building phases at St. Mary's is expected from radiocarbon determinations. Interim report in Glevensis, 14 (1980).

47 Hurst, H., ‘Excavations at Gloucester: Third Interim Report: Kingsholm 1966–75’, Antiq. J. lv (1975), 267–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 GRO D936 M11.

49 N. 44 above; parishes from GRO QR 1/70.

50 Col. Pat. Rolls 1247–58, p. 112; 1258–66, p. 520.

51 H. P. R. Finberg, op. cit., p. 31, no. 1.

52 Carolyn Heighway has informed me that the stones of fragments no. 38 and no. 72 are of a type found on the Gloucestershire limestone escarpment. Fragment no. 38 is a coarse, shelly limestone known locally as Minchinhampton stone; no. 72 is a fine oolite known as Painswick stone. These labels do not imply specific quarries at these places, but types of limestone found in the area which may be sometimes found in adjacent beds of the escarpment. When worked, these stones have a similar appearance. Fragment no. 38 was less deeply buried when re-used than no. 72, which may account for the greater degree of weathering. The context of the stones in the excavation at St. Oswald's is discussed above (p. 212).

53 This is the only instance of animal ornament on either fragment no. 38 or no. 72.

54 Few grave slabs have survived intact from the pre-Conquest period in southern England, the most notable of these being the coped stones of Ramsbury, Wilts. (Kendrick, T. D., Anglo-Saxon Art to A.D. 900 (1938), pl. xcixGoogle Scholar). Two examples from Hickling, Notts., and Milton Bryan, Beds., dated to th e mid-tent h century, have a similar tapered shap e to the St. Oswald's fragment (no. 38) and have a centrally placed, longitudinal element, even though this is not a tree motif (T. D.Kendrick, Late Saxon and Viking Art (1949), p. 80, pls. LIII, LIV). Closer comparisons to the layout and ornament of St. Oswald's no. 38 occur on tw o unpublished slab fragments from Braunton, Devon, and Oxford (now in the Ash molean Museum). The former has a tree motif similar to that on the shaft fragments at Littleton Drew, Wilts. (T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (1938), pl. LXXXIV); the latter has inhabited scrollwork in panels placed on either side of a central band. (I am grateful to the staff of the Department of Antiquaries at the Ash-molean Museum for their assistance whilst I was studying the Oxford slab.) Dr. Richard Gem has draw n my attentio n to a fragment excavated in 1979 by Dr. Warwick Rodwel l at Wells Cathedral, which he observes bears a close resemblance to th e St. Oswald's slab. Dr. Rodwell's publicatio n is awaited.

55 Perhaps the best-known example s in stone carving ar e th e tenth-century carved slabs on the tower at Barnack, Northants. (Cramp, R., ‘Anglo-Saxon Sculpture of the Reform Period’, in Parsons, D. (ed.), Tenth-Century Studies (London and Chichester, 1975), pp. 192–3, fig. 20Google Scholar). See also the cross fragment from Winchester (T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (1938), pl. LXXXV). There are also many examples in manuscripts of the minor arts, e.g. the back-plate of the Alfred Jewel, published in numerous books and articles, the most recent being Hinton, D., A Catalogue of the Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork 700–1100 in the Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum (1974), cat. no. 23, pp. 41ff.Google Scholar, pl. XIh; the Cuthbert Embroideries: the second maniple, in Battiscombe, C. F. (ed.), The Relics of St. Cuthbert (1956), pls. XXXII, XXXI.3Google Scholar; the New Minster Charter frontispiece border (BL Cott. Vesp. A. viii, f. 2), Temple, E., Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900–1066 (1976), cat. no. 16, illus. 84Google Scholar; and the Winchester strap-end, Antiq. J. xlix (1969), 326–8, pl. LXVIIGoogle Scholar.

56 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 183, f. lv, see Temple, op. cit. (1976), cat. no. 6, illus. 29, dated 937. See also a recent important article by J. Higgitt, attributing this MS. to a Glastonbury scriptorium, in Art History, 2, no. 3 (Sept. 1979), 278ff. and references. Cups also occur on the side shoot motifs of the south face Barnack tower carved slab.

57 C. F.Battiscombe (ed.), Relics of St. Cuthbert (henceforth referred to as Relics), pl. xxxi. 3; Temple, op. cit. (1976), illus. 29, e.g. bottom left-hand panel.

58 Wormald, F., ‘Decorated initials in English manuscripts from A.D. 900 to 1100’, Archaeologia, xci (1945), 107ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 116–19, and Wormald, F. in Clemoes, P. and Hughes, K. (eds.), England before the Conquest (Cambridge, 1971), p. 307Google Scholar; Temple, op. cit. (1976), illus. 29.

59 Hinton, op. cit. (1974), p. 7.

60 e.g. the Abingdon Sword: Hinton, op. cit. (1974), pl. 1 the Alfred Jewel back-plate: Hinton, op. cit. (1974), pl. xic; the East Stour cross-shaft: R. Cramp, in D. Parsons, op. cit. (1975), pl. XVIII. The latest example of the angled tendri l known to me is on the decoration of the arches of folio lv of the Rabanus Maurus MS. (Cambridge, Trinity Coll. MS. B.16.3), Temple, op. cit. (1974), cat. no. 14, illus. 48.

61 Hinton, op. cit. (1974), pl. XIh; Relics, pl. XXXIV, in particular those above and below Deacons Peter and Lawrence.

62 R. Cramp, op. cit. (1975), 189–91, pl. XVIIIb; Temple, op. cit. (1976), illus. 26.

63 Freyhan, R., ‘The place of the stole and maniples in Anglo-Saxon art of the tenth century’, Relics, 413–14, pl. xxxi. 3, third branch, counting from the tab at the bottom end of the maniple.Google Scholar

64 Hamilton, R. W., Khirbat al-Mafjar (1959), pp. 7. 144ff.Google Scholar, figs. 94, 104, 105, 199, pls. XXVI, XXVII. I am grateful to Katherine Galbraith for drawing my attention to this publication.

65 Temple, op. cit. (1976), illus. 29; in particular the top left and the top right-hand side panels; Wormald, op. cit. (1945), pl. IVd(Temple, op. cit., 1976, ill. 20); and the Helmingham Orosius (BL MS. Add. 47967), Temple, op. cit. (1976), cat. no. 8; Wormald, op. cit (1945) pl. Va. A similar blossom occurs on the carved slab on the south face of the Barnack tower, second row from the top, left-hand side.

66 Two examples occur on the Cuthbert Stole above the prophets Joel and Amos: Relics, pl. xxxiv. For Acton Beauchamp see Cramp, R., ‘Schools of Mercian Sculpture’ in Dornier, A. (ed.), Mercian Studies (1977), p. 230Google Scholar, fig. 6rd. For Cropthorne, see T. D. Kendrick, op. cit., pl. LXXX.I. Even though this motif occurs in insular manuscripts, e.g. the Book of Kells (Dublin, Trinity College MS. A.I.6) f. 114r (8–9th century), see Henry, F., The Book of Kells (1974), p. 209, pl. 45Google Scholar, it is also of eastern origin; see for example the eighth-century wooden panels from Masjid al Aqçâ, in Golvin, L., L'architecture religieuse musulmane, II (1971), pl. 25.2Google Scholar, and the reverse of the reliquary cross of Justin II (565–78), Volbach, W. F., Propylden Kunstgeschichte, Band 3 (1968), p. 194Google Scholar, pl. 69, and Dalton, O. M., Byzantine Art and Archaeology, p. 548Google Scholar.

67 Cramp, R., op. cit (1977), p. 225, pl. 61aGoogle Scholar.

68 Temple, , op. cit. (1976), illus. 29Google Scholar.

69 Temple, , op. cit (1976), illus. 10, 20–22Google Scholar; see also BL Royal 7.D. XXIV, Temple, , op. cit. (1976), illus. 11–14Google Scholar.

70 Heighway, Carolyn et al., ‘Excavations at Gloucester. Fourth Interim Report: St. Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, 1975–1976’, Antiq. J. lviii (1978), 118ff.Google Scholar, and Relics, 13. Æthelflæd was the sister-in-law of Ælfflæd, wife of Edward the Elder, see Whitelock, D., English Historical Documents I (1979), Table 2bGoogle Scholar; see also Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England (1971), pp. 324 ffGoogle Scholar. The suggestion made by C. F. Battiscombe in Relics, 13, n. 3, that Æthelflæd may have been the patron of the Cuthbert embroideries, has not been generally accepted.