Britain's Most Complete Anglo Saxon Church? 675AD - Escomb, County Durham

Hello, welcome to Eskam in County Durham in the north of England. It's the church here that's said to be the most complete Anglo-Saxon church in the whole of the country. In fact it's one of the three oldest. This dates to between 670 AD and 690, thought to be founded around 675. So today we're going to be exploring the unique features inside the church itself, as well as all the way around the exterior. It's also in the south wall that we have the oldest in situ sundial in the whole of Great Britain, which is very, very rare. My name is Chris, this is Church Searcher, and I'll see you after the map. So one of the first things that you notice when you come into the church yard is that the church itself is in the middle of this large circular enclosure. And we've seen similar things to this at the Anglian churches at Kirkhamerton, and also at Barton-upon-Humber. Both of those sit in these circular graveyards. So it's associated very much with early churches here in the north of England, which grew up in the Celtic Christian tradition, which is coming out of Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, which isn't far from here. It's possible they were taking over pre-Christian sacred spaces and re-consecrating them with churches. So this could have been a sacred grove, a burial space, or perhaps there was a sacred spring around this area too. So it's this classic tall, thin structure, and we see that in a lot of the Anglian churches we've been looking at here in the north of England. So we've got the nave and the chancel, but on the end of the church, on this side, you'll see there's the shadow of where a roof line used to be, and there's also an outline on the floor of where they've done excavations and found another cell that was on the end of the church here. There's various interpretations as to what that is, possibly accommodation for a priest, possibly also another burial area. Now all around the church you'll see it's made of huge blocks of masonry. A lot of this is interpreted to be from the Roman cavalry fort of Binchester, not far from here, just off Hadrian's Wall. So it could be that they've reused stone here. You can see these big monolithic blocks, and there's lots of traces of Roman architecture and masonry within the church and the fabric of the church itself. You'll see there's a lot of stones with cross hatching on, which is known as diamond broaching, and that was a technique used for applying plaster to the stonework. And probably this church might have been plastered on the outside as well as the inside itself, and you'll see as we go in it's been lime-washed, white-washed on the inside. It's quite spectacular. On the south-facing side you can see there's two of the original Anglian windows as well, with these huge blocks with the carved-in arch over the top, and the lintel drawn out of one piece of stone over the top. And it's the same on the gable end here, just above where the extension was put on. On the north-facing wall you've got some more Anglian windows, but they've got a square lintel instead. Now it's the north side of the church, perhaps the most complete Anglian part of the church. There's not much being added to it, and you'll see there's some Roman stone in there, in particular one with the inscription of the Sixth Legion on it. It says Legio VI. There's also a stone which has a little rosette on it, which is interpreted to be part of a Mithraic temple. And there's also some stones which have links to the cavalry. There's a stepped piece of stone along the corners, which is thought to be a mounting block. And there's also a large stone along the corners, which has a groove going through it, and there's thought to be erosion from chariot wheels constantly going over the same paving stones within the fort. Now although it's sort of interpreted to be a chariot wheel, it might actually be that that's simply just a gutter. You do see some of the forts along Hadrian's Wall, you get these gutters in the paving slabs, particularly along the porches at the front of buildings, on the grain stores and stables and things like that. Now it's on the corners of this church we've got the classic Anglo-Saxon long and short work, these pieces of alternating stone designed to strengthen the corners so that buildings could be built higher. But here there's a particular style known as the Eskim style after this church, where they're quite thin and the blocks are actually on their sides, alternating left to right, left to right, as you go up the corner. Now it's on this south side facing the sun where there's a sundial, there's actually two, one on the porch, but an older one on the main nave of the church and it's thought to be the oldest in situ sundial in the whole of Great Britain. And it's at least contemporary of the church, possibly earlier it depicts a serpent going over the top of the sundial and a beast's head on top of that. There's many interpretations of what the serpent and the beast represent, but it could be that it's sort of pre-Christian, pagan belief brought over with the Anglians from the Germanic countries and so it could be that it pre-exists the church and it's been reused and put into the fabric of the church when it was built around 675 AD. But it's divided into three hours, so in terms of monastic settings there would probably be Thursday, the third hour of the day, 9 o'clock, Sext, which is the sixth hour of the day at noon and then Nune, the ninth hour of the day at 3pm. And those were all the major prayer times of the day. Now to go inside, there's a key to collect here from one of the houses just next door, so we'll go inside and have a look now. So this is the interior of the church here in Eskil. It's quite stunning, all whitewashed, limewashed walls inside. But they've left a patch up high here where you can still see some of the original painted plasterwork and it's thought that the medieval walls in here were full of frescoes put onto the white plaster and then the white limewash has been put on over the top of that. But you can see a lot of the diamond crosshatching from the Roman stonework. And in fact, there's traces of plaster on the north side of the wall, still on the outside of this church. So it was probably plastered and limewashed all the way around the outside, giving it this brilliant white appearance. And there is a tradition of stone churches, limewashed, based on the church established up in Whitholm, Whiteholm, by Saint Ninian, who was an early Celtic Christian saint. So this could all be part of that same tradition of building monumental stone churches, whitewashed. There's this sort of bright beacon. So given the fact that it's quite a monumental structure and we've got the sundial outside with the masses marked on and perhaps this little cell off the side for habitation for a monk, this could have been a monastic cell here. They are actually a good way from where the local community was at the time. There wasn't a bridge here when the original church was built. It came a few hundred years later. So perhaps this was a monastic centre, a body area, and it diverged into the local church. Now as we go down the church, you can see inside the angling windows, south side with the curved arches, north side with the square lintels. And these would have been the only windows originally, along with the one at the top gable end. These bigger windows are put in later, like a bit more. And it's in another of the windows we have a Roman inscription carved into the wall, which reads, Bono re publicae nato, which means, To the man born for the good of the state. So it's thought that the inscription there is probably an epitaph on the base of the statue, perhaps also bought from Vincenzo. So it's sort of memorialising whoever the statue or the monument was dedicated to. So it's at the far end of the lane that we have the beautiful chancel arch. Again, Roman stone. Thought to be perhaps an arch from the fort itself. So this is the Roman arch. It's got these massive stone jambs on either side. The chamfered imposts, classic Roman, quite simple. And then on top you can see these beautiful radial visoire stones that make up the arch. Precisely cut, so there's no mortar between the joints that it is holding with their own weight. So it's on the underside of the arch, the soffit, where you've got this abstract red paint pattern on the plaster, which we've seen at Kirkhamerton and you see it in churches around the region as well. Now the stones that make up the sides of the arch are also displayed long and short, alternating as they go up. And on this wall, before you come in to the chancel, you can see there's a consecration cross cutting to the wall there, consecrating this building to Christianity. And it's done in a style that is used in Celtic Christian churches, linking this perhaps with the community at Lindisfarne, Holy Island, a bit further up the coast. So it's in the floor of the chancel is this beautiful tombstone, which is made from Frostley marble. Frostley is about 15 miles from here, from where this stone was quarried. And it's not actually marble, it's a type of limestone that's embedded with creatures that were living in the coral reefs around here, way back in the Carboniferous period, about 180 million years ago. And so Frostley marble, you see quite a lot around the area, and it will be cut and polished to give this marble effect. Durham Cathedral, there's lots of it in columns, there's churches all around here, you see on altars, grave slabs, and it'll be polished up for spectacular effect. Now interestingly, the cross outside that's on top of the later edition porch was actually also made of Frostley marble, thought perhaps to predate this church. And so when first originally cut and polished up, it would have looked as spectacular as this. And you can see some of the intricacies of the fossils in the marble here. And I always find it fascinating to think that you've got hundreds of years of people walking up to the altar, walking over creation itself, walking over the fossilised remains of the early beginnings of the earth. Now behind this also, we've got a carved cross in the sandstone, painted white as well, to go with the rest of the church. And it's postulated that this perhaps even predates the church itself. So this could have been the original preaching cross where people came together, listened to the missionaries preaching, and then the church was built subsequent to that. Now there's several other features in the chancel which are of great interest. There's the walled-up door here, which was the original door into the chancel. And in that you can just make out there's a palm front, long and thin, and the palm is traditionally the symbol of a martyr, the early Christian martyrs of the church, in this sense, early Christian Roman martyrs. But it's suggested that this is also a depiction of the Tree of Life, that there's figures at the bottom, possibly Adam and Eve, holding the Tree of Life. And you can just make out, perhaps, the figure right at the bottom there. Now interestingly, on the other side, there's an even older, I think, piece of work, which has been left unpainted as well. And it has echoes of that missing stone at the church at Helor, because it has these very early Celtic Christian designs etched in lightly with a compass, it seems. So you get these circular motifs repeated. And now the description of the missing stone at Helor, attributed to Saint Helor, to me it sounds very similar to what we can see there, which is a pretty interesting link, again, to the Northumbrian church here in the north of England, with missionaries coming out of Lindisfarne early on. So that is the quite serene church here at Eskam. It gives you a really good sense of what these very early churches must have been like, some of the ones we've been visiting, where you can see elements of this sort of church, but then it's been added on with extra aisles, towers, etc. But this is one of the earliest, most complete churches to survive to us, especially when you consider it in the context of the church built by Saint Ninian at Whithall, up in Scotland, this spectacular stone white building, which was unique for its time, as recorded to us by Bede. And so this is perhaps a reflection of that, and the closest that we can perhaps get in history. So, there you go, another fascinating glimpse into our early Christian past. I hope to see you in the next video, but until then, keep church searching.