The Building of England: How the History of England Has Shaped Our Buildings. Simon Thurley

Fig. 19 Winchester Cathedral, the layout of the Old Minster as recovered by excavation lies next to the later cathedral. Right, isometric diagram and cross section of the Old Minster at Winchester c.993–4, as reconstructed by the Winchester research unit based on excavations. The massive western towers – the westwork – probably contained the royal chapel or pew from which a view of the high altar was possible.

      A single example of a Mercian minster church, begun in around 804 and re-ordered in around 970, survives at St Mary’s, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire (fig. 17). This precious survival, before it was converted to a parish church, was a complex, multi-focused monastic church on a series of levels. At the west end was a four-storied porch containing three upper rooms, the room on the first floor housing a chapel with a deep gallery overlooking the nave. The taller and more impressive room above had two elegant windows giving clear views of the church interior; there was another balcony here, but this one was on the exterior of the west porch, allowing, perhaps, the display of relics to people outside the church. The porticuses to the north and south of the choir were two-storied, their first-floor rooms containing doors leading to an eastern gallery over the choir; the chancel was a polygonal apse also with a room above, with a balcony looking into the church.

      St Mary’s not only provides the best place to understand the complexity and ingenuity of Anglo-Saxon liturgical space, it also allows us to come closer to an appreciation of the way church interiors originally appeared. The interior of a church like St Mary’s was richly painted, not only with figurative murals, but with carving and mouldings painted and decorated with organic patterns.

      Whilst the surviving figure-work at Deerhurst is very faded, at St Andrew’s, Nether Wallop, Hampshire, the lower part of an impressive mural of Christ in majesty survives from about 1000 (fig. 18). This decoration is painted in styles familiar to us from Anglo-Saxon manuscript illumination and decorative art. Whilst painting occasionally survives, very few Anglo-Saxon textiles do, but it is clear that prestigious monasteries and cathedrals, as well as richly endowed minsters and smaller foundations, were hung with textiles, often on the walls. These would have been a backdrop for rich metalwork in gold, silver and wrought iron. Aethelwig, Abbot of Evesham, adorned his church with ‘a great many embellishments – chasubles, copes, precious textiles, a large cross and an altar most beautifully worked in gold and silver’. The overall effect of a great Saxon church interior would have been overwhelming. Anglo-Saxon taste was for richness, intricacy, detail and ornament, all of which added to the complexity and disorienting effect of liturgical space: balconies, side chapels, crypts, winding staircases, all painted and hung with textiles, dimly lit by lamps or windows filled with coloured glass, created a sense of mystery that it is impossible to gain from the whitewashed shells that remain.¹¹

      The residential parts of minsters have all vanished, but, from what we know, they were, like royal buildings, centred on great halls. It is likely that the stone hall, 120ft long, excavated in Northampton and dating from around 860, was part of a minster complex. This is where an abbot would have administered his estates, dispensed justice and entertained.¹²

      Bishops and Kings

      Early English dioceses were based on Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and, as power and territory ebbed and flowed between them, they were reorganised many times. The Viking incursions provided an opportunity to redraw the diocesan map, and after the 10th century dioceses more or less coincided with the new administrative shires of England (fig. 12). But there was no particular conformity of diocesan organisation; cathedrals were organised in different ways and many, uniquely for England, were also monasteries where the bishop lived his life in a monastic order.

      Thanks to painstaking excavation, more is known about Winchester than any other Saxon cathedral. It was arguably the finest building standing in England at the Conquest. By 1066, however, Winchester had already had a cathedral for 418 years; this was the Old Minster, with a cruciform (cross-shaped) plan and a square end. Over the ensuing centuries the cathedral was enlarged and adapted so that by 1000, as well as the nave and high altar, it comprised four towers, three crypts, three apses, at least 24 smaller chapels and a baptistery (fig. 19). Despite strong English characteristics, the Old Minster was, by the time of the Normans, a church with a recognisably Carolingian plan. Most prominent was the westwork – the enormous, tower-like structure erected at the west end of the cathedral in the 970s. Westworks developed in Carolingian churches in the 9th century and went on to form a component of many great churches in France and Germany built from the 10th to the 12th centuries. At Winchester the huge west towers performed a dual purpose, providing a focus for liturgy and an occasional grandstand for the kings of Wessex to view events in the main church below. Winchester, built next to the royal palace of Wessex and functioning as a dynastic church, might have been exceptional. More typical, perhaps, was the westwork of which fragments, surprisingly, survive at Sherborne Abbey in Dorset. The see of Sherborne was founded in 705 but came to prominence in the 9th century, when two of Alfred the Great’s brothers were buried there. Bishop Aelfwold rebuilt and extended the cathedral between 1045 and 1058 in a form heavily influenced by developments in the Carolingian empire (fig. 20). The upper chamber in the west tower contained an apse in which the bishop’s throne was positioned, opposite him; at the east end was a three-light window looking down into the main body of the church and before