Exploring the legacy of Ethelburga – a community project focused on the Anglo-Saxon heritage of Lyminge, a village in the Elham Valley in East Kent.
Followers of this blog who have delved into the list of suggested reading may have downloaded my paper 'Antiquarians, Victorian Parsons and Re-writing the Past: How Lyminge Parish Church acquired an invented dedication', which was published in Archaeologia Cantiana, the journal of the Kent Archaeological Society, in 2017. This explores how the Rector of Lyminge … Continue reading Discovering St Eadburh of Lyminge
In 1885, workmen carrying out work in the chancel of St Mary and St Eanswythe, Folkestone, discovered a lead casket containing a collection of bones. At the time, it was thought that these could be the relics of St Eanswythe, patronal saint of Folkestone and niece of our own Queen Ethelburga in Lyminge. But there … Continue reading Eanswythe found!
So after 26 miles over 3 days, we began our final day of this inaugural walk of the Royal Saxon Way beside the Little Stour at Wickhambreaux. The river flows beside flooded gravel pits, so there are great expanses of water and a landscape that is very green and lush. As we approached Preston we … Continue reading Launch of the Royal Saxon Way – the Last Day
The last area of the Anglo-Saxon church to be explored is the area under the porch. We had contractors on site to lift the flagstones. Underneath the porch, as we suspected, the substructure is precarious to say the least and needs to be addressed before the flagstones are replaced. We have found the nave wall … Continue reading Day 40 – The last area of the Anglo-Saxon church uncovered
The wall discovered last week in the trench by the War Memorial has proved to be substantial. There is very little dating evidence coming out of the trench, but we are reasonably confident that this is a late medieval structure and it would explain the dumps of clay roof tile that we have found across … Continue reading Day 37 -Extending the War Memorial trench
Saturday was a busy day on site and very popular with visitors. We had the pleasure of hosting The Sutton Hoo Society, who have made a generous grant to our project. They swelled the large number of locals listening to Gabor Thomas to make an audience of 110 on the viewing platform. At the same … Continue reading In the footsteps of Ethelburga
Because of the bad weather over night, Day 29 was a wash-out so far as digging was concerned. We did however manage to get in our standard half day on Saturday, when we continued with excavating the burials in the chancel of the Anglo-Saxon church. At the moment, we have no reason to think these … Continue reading Day 30 – Round-up on a revelatory 5 weeks of digging
It may not look very much but this is a very important piece of pottery. It comes from a sealed layer in a pit in the trench we have opened to the east of the War Memorial in the New Churchyard, and it appears to be Middle Saxon, dating probably to the mid 7th Century. … Continue reading Day 28 – Filling a gap in our knowledge of Ethelburga’s monastery
After a break of something over 900 years, the Anglo-Saxon church once again saw a church service within its walls this evening. Evensong began with prayers conducted from the chancel. These were selected from the Ionan tradition with which Queen Ethelburga no doubt became familiar when she was in Northumbria. This was a one-off opportunity. … Continue reading Putting the church back into use
The current exhibition at the British Library in London is a chance to see some of the greatest treasures surviving from the Anglo-Saxon period. There are fabulous manuscripts such as the beautifully decorated Lindisfarne Gospels or the massive Codex Amiatinus, a complete bible created in Jarrow in County Durham in the 8th Century that is … Continue reading Getting close to Ethelburga
