Historic Churches 2023

BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON H ISTOR I C CHURCHE S 30th ANNUAL ED ITION 37 Edgar’s coronation as the first ‘King of the English.’ Since the late 18th century, pieces of ornately carved late Anglo-Saxon stonework, including fragments of freestanding crossheads, have been recovered from various parts of the city, but the location of the monastery remained a mystery. During the 1990s, excavations immediately to the south of the abbey by Bath Archaeological Trust uncovered part of a late Anglo-Saxon cemetery. Burial grounds of this date are normally associated with a church, and although no structures were found, the presence of burials was an indication that the elusive monastery might have been located nearby. Excavations in the same area by Wessex Archaeology in 2018–20 uncovered more graves, including examples of so-called ‘charcoal burials.’ This unusual late Anglo-Saxon rite involved lining the base of a grave with charcoal, sometimes with more charcoal placed above the interred body. The meaning of this practice is unknown, but it does appear to have been a respectful ritual associated with high-status monastic burials. Radiocarbon dating of the burials suggests that the Anglo-Saxon cemetery was in use between the 9th and 11th centuries AD, though most burials date from the late 10th or 11th centuries. In addition to the burials, fragmentary remains of two small stone apsidal (round ended) structures, possibly the east ends of ecclesiastical buildings, were uncovered. Radiocarbon dating suggests that one of these buildings was plastered sometime after AD 780. The other building is likely to be of a similar, late Anglo-Saxon, date. Both buildings were about three metres wide internally, which is far too small to have been Offa’s ‘marvelously wrought’ Royal church, and a more plausible interpretation is that these were ancillary structures, possibly mortuary chapels associated with the surrounding monastic cemetery. THE ROMANESQUE CATHEDRAL PRIORY OF ST PETER AND ST PAUL The Norman Conquest brought about widespread change to English society and the heads of most monastic orders were replaced with French-speaking newcomers. Unlike many of their compatriots, the English abbot and monks of Bath Abbey managed to retain their positions. But in AD 1088 the abbey was sacked and burned during the power struggle that ensued, following the death of William the Conqueror. The abbey was subsequently granted to the late king’s physician, John of Tours, who was also appointed as Bishop of Wells. He immediately moved the episcopal see to Bath and began the construction of a vast new Romanesque style cathedral priory, much to the displeasure of the monks of both Bath and Wells, who by all accounts were treated with disdain by their new Norman overlord. A few upstanding remains of the John of Tours’ church survive at the east end of Bath Abbey and within the wall of an early 17th-century vestry, but most of the Norman cathedral disappeared when the present church was built. Excavations by Gilbert Scott’s clerk of works, John Irvine, showed that the present church is built directly on top of the Norman nave and that some Norman piers survive up to two metres high beneath the floor of the present church. Excavations to the east of the abbey during the 1970s uncovered the east end of the Norman cathedral and confirmed that it had an apsidal ambulatory with radiating apsidal chapels, but much of its appearance, particularly the location and form of its transepts, remained uncertain. Excavations to the south of the abbey in the 1990s uncovered a series of two-metre deep and four-metre wide trenches filled with orange gravel, mortar fragments and a few sherds of 16th- century pottery. These ‘robber trenches’ were clearly dug to retrieve usable stone from the foundations of a very large structure, but the function of the inferred building has only recently been fully understood; these are the remains of the Norman south transept, which was aisled and as wide as the nave. Wessex Archaeology’s excavations also uncovered the remains of the mid 12th-century cloisters, including the fine Bath stone paving of the north cloister walk, and medieval cist burials within the cloisters. The basic form of John of Tours’ church survived throughout the medieval period, though the building South wall of the Norman cathedral and the paved floor of the 12th-century cloister walk, cut by the foundations of 18th-century houses, looking west Late Anglo-Saxon crosshead found during excavations