Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I was googling after reading Mick's "Purpose of AE" and came across this in the Church Times.
Archaeologists have identified what is believed to be the oldest surviving church in England. It is thought to be the first purpose-built place of Christian worship constructed in Anglo-Saxon England.
The new evidence strongly suggests that the church — the chapel of St Pancras, in Canterbury — was built and consecrated in about 600 by St Augustine, head of the 597 papal mission to Kent, and was subsequently used by him. |
Wow.
| New research, by Professor Ken Dark, of King’s College, London, pinpoints the exact place where Augustine officially re-established public Christian worship in what is now eastern and southern England, after a largely pagan interlude of up to 150 years. It was one of the most important events in the whole of English history. |
Gesonkas.
But we need a little evidence.
There now follows a long ortho historical interlude on the papal mission to Kent....before we start looking at evidence.
| Augustine, arrived in Kent in 597, the only official place of Christian worship appears to have been Queen Bertha’s tiny 20-square-metre private chapel. Its size meant that only about a dozen people could worship there. |
Not good, you could only get in 20 worshippers. Worse, it wasn't really christian.
It had probably been constructed in Roman times (perhaps as a funerary mausoleum, but almost certainly not as a church).
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So Augustine cracked on........"sorry Bertha, love the chapel, but we really need something bespoke"
| Augustine seems to have decided, perhaps almost immediately, to construct a much larger purpose-built church near to it. The archaeological evidence suggests that this new purpose-built structure was built in such a hurry that the architecture itself was relatively unsophisticated, and that speed was so important that they did not even install a proper floor (just beaten earth).That relatively primitive new-build edifice was nevertheless almost six times the size of the Queen’s private place of worship, and was the first Anglo-Saxon building in which normal Christian congregational worship could take place. |
It's the first English Anglo Saxon Church and it has survived, even if in ruinous form!
But, pray tell.... on what is all this based?
Before the new research, most modern scholarship had held that St Pancras had been constructed after the time of St Augustine, but Professor Dark’s reassessment of the archaeological data demonstrates that it was constructed between 597 and 609 (probably about 600).
The Professor’s new date for the church (the first to be based on a full examination of the archaeological evidence) is based on four main pieces of evidence: St Pancras’s substantially different alignment (in relation to the adjacent churches on the site); the unsophisticated nature of the building; the fact that it appears to have been built in a hurry; and the fact that it was abandoned (probably because it was replaced, in 609, by the much larger Church of St Peter and St Paul). |
Oh no. Oh no. It's based on, it's built on, it's not aligned with other buildings, built in a hurry, and abandoned.......err.....despite being built and consecrated by St Augustine. You would need to be an expert to work that one out.
File under, wonderful, whacky, wishful, thinking. Seek and you shall find.
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/23-september/news/uk/archaeologists-identify-first-english-church-built-by-st-augustine
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