Reconstructing the Development of Somerset’s Early Medieval Church


Book Description

This book uses Somerset as a case study to contribute to a broader understanding of how the Church developed across the British Isles during the transition from the post-Roman Church to the 11th century. It collates and cross-references all earlier research and offers the most up-to-date study of Somerset’s post-Roman churches.




Interpreting the English Village


Book Description

An original and approachable account of how archaeology can tell the story of the English village. Shapwick lies in the middle of Somerset, next to the important monastic centre of Glastonbury: the abbey owned the manor for 800 years from the 8th to the 16th century and its abbots and officials had a great influence on the lives of the peasants who lived there. It is possible that abbot Dunstan, one of the great reformers of tenth century monasticism directed the planning of the village. The Shapwick Project examined the development and history of an English parish and village over a ten thousand-year period. This was a truly multi-disciplinary project. Not only were a battery of archaeological and historical techniques explored - such as field walking, test-pitting, archaeological excavation, aerial reconnaissance, documentary research and cartographic analysis - but numerous other techniques such as building analysis, dendrochronological dating and soil analysis were undertaken on a large scale. The result is a fascinating study about how the community lived and prospered in Shapwick. In addition we learn how a group of enthusiastic and dedicated scholars unravelled this story. As such there is much here to inspire and enthuse others who might want to embark on a landscape study of a parish or village area. Seven of the ten chapters begin with a fictional vignette to bring the story of the village to life. Text-boxes elucidate re-occurring themes and techniques. Extensively illustrated in colour including 100 full page images.




Church And Society In England 1000-1500


Book Description

What impact did the Church have on society? How did social change affect religious practice? Within the context of these wide-ranging questions, this study offers a fresh interpretation of the relationship between Church, society and religion in England across five centuries of change. Andrew Brown examines how the teachings of an increasingly 'universal' Church decisively affected the religious life of the laity in medieval England. However, by exploring a broad range of religious phenomena, both orthodox and heretical (including corporate religion and the devotional practices surrounding cults and saints) Brown shows how far lay people continued to shape the Church at a local level. In the hands of the laity, religious practices proved malleable. Their expression was affected by social context, status and gender, and even influenced by those in authority. Yet, as Brown argues, religion did not function simply as an expression of social power - hierarchy, patriarchy and authority could be both served and undermined by religion. In an age in which social mobility and upheaval, particularly in the wake of the Black Death, had profound effects on religious attitudes and practices, Brown demonstrates that our understanding of late medieval religion should be firmly placed within this context of social change.




Urban Growth and the Medieval Church


Book Description

Although the Church played a major role in the development of towns and cities from the earliest times, many important aspects of the early stages of urbanization in England are still poorly understood.Urban Growth and the Medieval Church employs a wealth of historical and archaeological evidence from two key towns - Gloucester and Worcester - to provide a comprehensive picture of their respective developments throughout the medieval period. Only then can the crucial role played by the Church, in shaping the spiritual, social, economic and cultural development of the urban environment, be discovered.




The Shapwick Project, Somerset


Book Description

This book provides an introduction to the Shapwick Project's objectives, geographical background and previous work in the Somerset. It deals with excavations in the outlying parish and focuses on work in the village at Shapwick House.




English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages


Book Description

This is a comprehensive survey of English medieval church monuments. It examines all types of monument-cross slabs, brasses, incised slabs, and sculpted effigies. It analyzes them in an historical context to show what they reveal of the self image and religious aspirations of those they commemorate.--Summary by the editor.




History and Identity in Early Medieval Wales


Book Description

Crucial texts from ninth- and tenth-century Wales analysed to show their key role in identify formation. WINNER OF THE FRANCIS JONES PRIZE 2022 Early medieval writers viewed the world as divided into gentes ("peoples"). These were groups that could be differentiated from each other according to certain characteristics - by the language they spoke or the territory they inhabited, for example. The same writers played a key role in deciding which characteristics were important and using these to construct ethnic identities. This book explores this process of identity construction in texts from early medieval Wales, focusing primarily on the early ninth-century Latin history of the Britons (Historia Brittonum), the biography of Alfred the Great composed by the Welsh scholar Asser in 893, and the tenth-century vernacular poem Armes Prydein Vawr ("The Great Prophecy of Britain"). It examines how these writers set about distinguishing between the Welsh and the other gentes inhabiting the island of Britain through the use of names, attention to linguistic difference, and the writing of history and origin legends. Crucially important was the identity of the Welsh as Britons, the rightful inhabitants of the entirety of Britain; its significance and durability are investigated, alongside its interaction with the emergence of an identity focused on the geographical unit of Wales.




Landscape, Community and Colonisation


Book Description

Oxbow says: From 1993, the North Somerset Levels Project sought to investigate the origins and development of this area of reclaimed coastal marshland during the first and second millennia AD. The inter-disciplinary approach taken has added archaeological (survey and excavation) data, palaeoenvironmental evidence, studies of documentary sources, architecture, cartography and field- and place-names, to what was already known about the historic landscape. This report, which publishes the findings of the project, examines local and regional changes and variations in the landscape, focusing on two major phases of exploitation, modification and transformation during the Roman and medieval periods. Factors such as agriculture, grazing, salt production, fishing, draining, flood defence, and the establishment of settlements, roads, commons, field systems, as well as cultural factors, are all discussed, as evidence from the local area is placed within a wider regional context. An excellent study which exemplifies all that is new and exciting in landscape study.




Rebuilding Cities from Medieval to Modern Times


Book Description

Unique in the literature of planners, architects, and urban officials, Rebuilding Cities is a compendium and analysis of the achievements of city planning from the ""Ideal City"" of Palmanova in 1593 to the innovative achievements of planners and designers of the twentieth century. As such, it is vital reading for anyone concerned with the problem of rebuilding and revitalizing cities after disasters--either of a human or physical decimation. Rebuilding Cities covers and includes medieval nuclei to urban sprawl; physical, economic, and social factors in planning; and the changing nature of components of cities incorporating elements from different periods in a single visual scheme. Also included are analysis of planning schemes from Indian and Greek visionaries; legislative and administrative changes needed for successful planning; the massive redevelopment that happened in London after World War Two; renewal schemes; and urban design and work throughout the world. The remarkable clarity and thoroughness of the book and its abundant illustrations clearly demonstrate the successes and failures of planning schemes and lays a solid groundwork for intelligent assessment of the goals and practical possibilities of city planning. Teachers and students of planning and architecture, professionals actively engaged in the field, and all who visualize a truly civilized urban environment will find this book immensely helpful and satisfying.




Reconstructing the Development of Somerset's Early Medieval Church


Book Description

Reconstructing the Development of Somerset's Early Medieval Churchuses Somerset as a case study in order to contribute to a broader understanding of how the Church developed across the British Isles during the transition from the post-Roman Church to that in existence in the 11th century. To facilitate this a large retrogressive data set was constructed which enabled new patterns of development to be identified; this has pushed forward understanding of how Somerset and the South-West evolved, including the reconstruction of Somerset's early great estates and early medieval parochiae. Crucially, it demonstrates how the medieval archdeaconries and deaneries correlate with Somerset's early great estates. This book identifies the pastorally pre-eminent early medieval churches across Somerset by using a weighting system which enables comparative assessments of different types of evidence, including both historical and topographical, to enable the changing significance of individual churches to be assessed. The two most important conclusions are that the development of the Church in Somerset varied from parochiato parochia; there is no one trajectory of Church development and that there is only a weak link between early medieval minster settlements and later urbanisation. The book collates and cross-references all the earlier research into Somerset's early medieval Church and in so doing becomes the most up-to-date study of Somerset's post-Roman churches. The retrogressive systematic approach to the collection and collating of data provides a methodology for understanding the development of the early medieval Church in other regions.