English Church Dedications


Book Description

People assume that parish church dedications are ancient, but many of those in use today are inventions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the original dedications were entirely different. This startling discovery reveals fresh information about the history of English parish churches and throws light on religion in England in all periods of history. Part One of English Church Dedications is a general history of Church dedications in England from Roman times to the present day. Part Two provides a gazetteer of dedications in Cornwall and Devon, with dates and references, showing how far each one can be traced back and what changes and misunderstandings have occurred. It offers totally new evidence about the Cornish saints and provides a guide and model for similar research in other counties.




The Churches of Devon


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Devon's Churches


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Devonís churches are famous for their craftsmanship, particularly their wood carving; they also feature the finest collection of mediaeval screens. Devonís Churches includes double-page features on 80 major churches with 100 further churches listed in lesser detail. In researching this book author John Lane and photographer Harland Walshaw visited well over 200 Devon churches, with John providing detailed descriptions and Harland the stunning black and white photographs of their detailsóeverything from bench ends to stained glass windows. The history of Devon is told in its churches, including the chapels and aisles built by the wool trade. Church visiting takes you deep into the parts of rural Devon you might never otherwise visit, not only into the wilds of Exmoor and Dartmoor, but into the heart of rural East Devon, and deep into the banked lanes and steep river valleys. This is a pilgrimage through the landscape, as well as a guide to the churches. Devonís Churches gives advice about which churches are worth a special detour. The author, photographer, designer and publisher all live in Devon.




Some Old Devon Churches


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Devon Church Antiquities


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The Church Bells of Devon


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English Grounds


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In this journal of short, lyrical reflections, Andrew Rumsey takes the reader on an exploration of faith, place and identity. Focusing on the author’s home in Wiltshire, as he arrives to take up an ancient role in a testing time, English Grounds is both an affirmation and critique of this country’s Christian heritage. Together the essays challenge us to think more deeply about the place of the Church in the consciousness of the English, and the place of England in the consciousness of the Church.




Devon


Book Description

Exeter Cathedral is but the crowning glory of Devon's wealth of medieval churches, replete with sumptuous fittings and monuments. The county's peak of prosperity from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth-century is reflected too in its castles, its secluded manor houses, and its scores of sturdily built farmhouses. The delights of Devon's well loved seaside and country towns are explored from the distinctive merchants' houses of Totnes and Topsham to the elegant Regency crescents of Teignmouth and Sidmouth. The picture is completed by accounts of the creation of the docks at Plymouth, industrial relics, and the substantial but little known store of Devon's Victorian churches.




Some Old Devon Churches


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Early Christianity in South-West Britain


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This book offers a new assessment of early Christianity in south-west Britain from the fourth to the tenth centuries, a rich period which includes the transition from Roman to native British to Saxon models of church. The book will be based on evidence from archaeological excavations, early texts and recent critical scholarship and cover Wessex, Devon and Cornwall. In the south-west, Wessex provides the greatest evidence of Roman Christianity. The fifth-century Dorset villas of Frampton and Hinton St Mary, with their complex baptistery mosaics, indicate the presence of sophisticated Christian house churches. The fact that these two Roman villas are only 15 miles apart suggests a network of small Christian communities in this region. The author uses evidence from St Patrick’s fifth-century ‘Confessions’ to describe how members of a villa house church lived. Wessex was slowly Christianised: in Gloucestershire, the pagan healing sanctuary at Chedworth provides evidence of later use as a Christian baptistery; at Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, a baptistery was dug into the mosaic floor of an imposing villa, which may by then have been owned by a bishop. In Somerset a number of recently excavated sites demonstrate the transition from a pagan temple to a Christian church. Beside the pagan temple at Lamyatt, later female burials suggest, unusually, a small monastic group of women. Wells cathedral grew beside the site of a Roman villa’s funeral chapel. In Street, a large oval enclosure indicates the probable site of a ‘Celtic’ monastery. Early Christian cemeteries have been excavated at Shepton Mallet and elsewhere. Lundy Island, off the Devon coast, provides evidence of a Celtic monastery, with its inscribed stones that commemorate early monks. At Exeter, a Saxon anthology includes numerous riddles, one of which describes in detail the production of an illuminated manuscript in a south-western monastery. Oliver Padel’s meticulous documentation of Cornish place-names has demonstrated that, of all the Celtic regions, Cornwall has by far the highest number of dedications to a single, otherwise unknown individual, typically consisting of a small church and a farm by the sea. These small monastic ‘cells’ have hitherto received little attention as a model of church in early British Christianity, and the latter part of the text focuses on various aspects of this model, as lived out in coastal and in upland settlements, on islands, and in relation to larger Breton monasteries. Study of 60 Breton sites has demonstrated possible connections between larger Breton monasteries and smaller Cornish cells.




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