As we have seen in the preceding sections, at the beginning of the 5th century, Lincoln was clearly an occupied settlement in which an infrastructure, such as roads and defences, existed and was probably being maintained. Public buildings, such as the forum-basilica probably also survived, although there is less certainty on this point, and institutions, such as the early Christian church, were also still clearly in evidence, if we are to accept Mr Jones’s proposed earlier dating of the timber church at the St Paul’s site (SP 72). By the end of the century, however, all had changed and there is very little doubt amongst archaeologists of the 21st century that early 6th-century Lincoln would have been a very different place from its late Roman predecessor. Exactly what one would have found on entering the city at that time is, however, disputable – as is the importance of the place.
Ideas about the nature of rural settlement in the 5th and 6th centuries vary, and they are hampered by our inability to either recognise a British or sub-Roman culture in eastern England, or to prove that Romano-British society made any contribution to culture of the early Anglo-Saxon period. Even in areas of Britain in which Anglo-Saxon culture (however defined) was not adopted, settlement sites from between the 5th and the 7th centuries are scarce and great efforts have been made to visualise the scale of the social and environmental changes which lay behind the dramatic transformation from Roman Britain to Saxon England. Certainly, early 5th-century Romano-British societies were nominally Christian and retained certain elements of Roman culture, such as the use of Latin, at least in a religious context.
Their material culture, however, is very poorly known and virtually the only recognisably ‘British’ artefacts
Fig. 8.1. Features dated to the period between the 5th and 8th centuries in Lincolnshire (drawn by Dave Watt, copyright English Heritage).
vale, therefore, and other areas of clay vale such as the Trent valley, may have been essentially woodland landscapes whose resources were mainly exploited by agricultural settlements on the surrounding lighter soils, or they may have been waste, or occupied by descendants of the Romano-British farmers. It is worth noting that the hagiography of St Guthlac states that when the saint first came to the island upon which Crowland Abbey was later built, it was haunted by demons who spoke in Ancient British (Stocker 1993).
There was therefore an association in the minds of the hagiographer’s readers between British and marginal areas. Even if there were British enclaves in the surrounding countryside, it is still not certain that they would have owed allegiance to a British authority based in Lincoln rather than being subject to Anglo-Saxon lords. Nevertheless, should a British Christian com-munity have survived in the ruins of the Roman city then it must have been supported in some way by a larger community beyond the city walls.
By the end of the 7th century, or at the latest early in the following century, Lincolnshire had become Chris-tian – to the extent that burial using pagan rites had ceased and there is evidence for the existence of Christian communities both living the monastic life and ministering to the people (Ibid.). Whilst it is conceivable that some of the latest Anglo-Saxon cemeteries may have continued in use into the early 8th century, no artefactual evidence has yet been produced to document this. Consequently, archaeo-logical evidence for this period is almost entirely from settlements, although excavation in Lincoln itself has revealed two cemeteries which were probably in use at this time, one in the centre of the Upper City and the other in the south-eastern quarter of the Lower City (SP 72, LIN 73e–f). With the exception of a very few excavated sites, such as those at Flixborough (ed.
Loveluck forthcoming) and Normanby-le-Wold (Addy-man and Whitwell 1970) this evidence is almost entirely in the form of potsherds, metalwork and coins.
Unfortunately very little of this material is as yet fully published, since much has been discovered through the activities of metal detector users, rather than through archaeological fieldwork.
Consequently, one might expect that we could recognise settlement in Lincoln both in the earlier part of this era, colloquially known as ‘the pagan Saxon period’, and in the later part (the middle Saxon period) through the presence of artefacts whose general character and range is known from a number of sites in the surrounding countryside. Such finds have, indeed, been recovered from in and around the city of Lincoln, but in such small quantities that they really only emphasise that whatever was happening in the city was extremely localised and small-scale. Similar patterns of almost complete abandonment have been found in other Roman cities, such as York and London.
In both these cases, however, it is now known that there was a thriving community in the vicinity, but
that this community was living outside the Roman walled city. In the case of York, this community is known from excavations at Fishergate, downstream of the city (Kemp 1993) whereas in London it was situated upstream, stretching back from the Thames between Charing Cross to Fleet Street (Vince 1990b). Both the York and London settlements had contemporary place-names incorporating the element -wic – Eorforwic and Lundenwic – and much has been made of the existence at Lincoln of the suburb of Wigford, whose first element is clearly shown by medieval written sources to have been Wic- (Cameron 1985, 45). Further comparison between London and York indicates that the latter’s trading settlement must have been on a much smaller scale, and of shorter duration, than that along the Strand, and it is also likely that any equivalent settlement in the Lincoln area would have been smaller and later in origin than that at Lundenwic.
Nevertheless, there is evidence that such a river port did exist in the Lincoln area – in the Trent valley at Torksey. Finds of middle Saxon metalwork and coins have been found by metal detector users to the north of the medieval town (Sawyer 1998, 197, 260), which was itself already a centre for pottery production in the late 9th or early 10th century (Barley 1964; 1981). Whilst many of these are ‘contact period’ finds, which could have formed an element of Viking spoils, there are five
‘Series E’ sceattas from ‘Torksey’ recorded in the Early Medieval Coin Database (EMC 2001). It may be that the existence of a pre-Viking trading settlement on the Trent explains why it was at Tiowulfingcastre (i.e.
perhaps the former Roman settlement at nearby Littleborough) that the people of Lindsey were given their mass baptism by St Paulinus in the 620s, and why it was that the Viking army over-wintered at Torksey in 873/4 rather than at Lincoln. The close connection between this area of the Trent valley and Lincoln is reflected in the evident status of Torksey in the later 11th century in Domesday Book (eds. Morgan and Thorn 1986, T1). There, it is stated that Torksey burgesses paid their geld at Lincoln, amounting to a fifth of the total. This proportion is in accord with the number of burgesses recorded, 213 out of a combined total of 1183, or 18%. Clearly for some purposes the two settlements were treated as one and, since Torksey at that time was in the hands of the Queen rather than the King, this is unlikely to have been a recent, late 11th-century, arrangement.
Much of the interest in Lincoln between the 5th and 9th centuries, therefore, lies in assessing the likelihood of an, as yet undiscovered, extra-mural trading settlement on the Witham and in trying to second-guess where such a settlement might be (Fig.
8.2). Meanwhile, a second strand of interest is the role of Lincoln as an ecclesiastical centre. In the 4th century, Lincoln was one of four bishoprics in the British provinces, which were presumably allocated one per province. Elsewhere in the Empire, it was often the Cathedral and bishop’s palace rather than
the walled Roman city which formed the focus for later settlement and around which medieval towns grew (as at Tours and Xanten – Galinié 1988; Janssen 1988). No such pattern has been detected in England, although it has been considered at Verulamium/St Albans. However, it is at present thought that the medieval town of St Albans is a 12th-century foun-dation and that until this date the focus of settlement remained the old Roman town (Niblett and Thompson forthcoming).
Since the seat of the bishopric was transferred from Dorchester-on-Thames to the minster church of St Mary of Lincoln in the early Norman period, the antiquity of the site of the new Cathedral cannot be presumed. The move itself, however, was merely a reversion to an earlier pattern, since the bishopric had only been administered from Dorchester as a result of the acquisition of Lincoln by pagan Vikings in the mid 9th century. It is quite possible that St Mary was chosen for the site of the Norman Cathedral because of historic associations with the pre-Viking bishopric, but it cannot be assumed that this was the case, and other potential sites for the pre-Viking Cathedral have been put forward. It has also been suggested that Lincoln’s bishop actually had two or more churches
(based on the evidence of a single charter) or even that the nature of 7th- and 8th-century dioceses was so different from those of later times (or contemporary times in continental Europe) that we should not be looking for a Cathedral site, as such, in any case (Gem 1993; Stocker 1993). Another clue to the ecclesiastical provision of Lindsey is given by a lost inscription, recorded by Bede in his Liber Epigrammatum. This inscription is said to have been set up by bishop Cynebehrt (c.720–734) in a church (basilica) dedicated to an apostle within the town (urbs) that is the mother seat of the bishop and his successors (Ibid.; Everson and Stocker 1999, 306–7). Most scholars agree that Lincoln is the likely site for this inscription but the inscription does not specifically state that the dedi-cated church is itself the bishop’s seat, indeed, its wording lends support to the model of the bishopric being served by several churches.
Four main contenders for the site of the bishop’s churches have been put forward: first is that of St Mary’s church, whose remains presumably lie under the nave of the medieval Cathedral. The most con-vincing strand of argument here is that certain medieval churches in the county of Lincolnshire were obliged to pay a tithe, ‘Mary Corn’, to the minster. Such obli-Fig. 8.2. Identified and suspected sites of the period between the 5th and 8th centuries (drawn by Dave Watt, copyright English Heritage).
gations often resulted from the recipient church having been, at one time, the mother church of the donor. Such relationships could either be between minster churches and their Cathedrals or between more junior churches (‘proto-parish churches’) and their local minster church.
In either case, St Mary’s minster in Lincoln would appear to have been of higher status than those around it. But, as ‘Mary Corn’ was collected across Lincolnshire and not just within Lindsey, it seems likely that it dates from after the foundation of the county around the year 1000 (Owen 1971, 37–8; 1984; 1994, 12). The giving of ‘Mary Corn’ was not of comparable antiquity to other English cases and could have even originated in the later 11th century.
The second contender for the site of the early bishop’s church is St Paul-in-the-Bail. Early antiquarian speculation had it that this church was originally dedicated to St Paulinus, who converted the people of Lindsey in the early 7th century and whose church, according to Bede, writing just over a century later, could still be seen in Lincoln, although ruinous.
Excavation has indeed shown (SP 72) that there was a church nearby during the middle Saxon period, and arguably even earlier (see below). Nevertheless, it is not possible to make Bede’s account fit the archaeo-logical evidence without some damage to one or the other and there is plenty of room for speculation and doubt. The third contender is St Peter’s church, or to be precise St Peter’s churches, since it has been shown that the two churches dedicated to St Peter (-at-Arches and -at-Pleas) situated just inside of Stonebow must have originally shared a single churchyard and may have begun life as a single religious precinct (Gem 1993). There is a little evidence for this church in the archaeological record, in the form of C14-dated burials from a site fronting onto the south side of Silver Street (see below). The fourth and final suggested site for the early Episcopal church is St Mary-le-Wigford – most recently proposed by Steven Bassett as part of an elaborate theory, central to which is the suggestion that Wigford is, indeed, the middle Saxon wic of Lincoln (Bassett 1989). Given that we now know, as a result of the post-excavation analysis of a dozen excavations in Wigford, that there is no middle Saxon occupation in the central or northern part of that suburb it seems safe to say that this is the one contender which can definitely be removed from consideration.
Finally, before considering the known sites in more detail, we must mention the role of Lincoln as a royal and administrative centre in the pre-Viking period.
Lindsey certainly existed as a distinct entity in the 7th century, when its people are listed in the Tribal Hidage.
There are, however, no documentary sources in which Kings of Lindsey are recorded. Its status is always that of a province or sub-kingdom. The most recent consideration of the early Kingdom concludes that it probably existed but was always heavily restrained by powerful neighbours to the north and south (Foot 1993). Any Kingdom of Lindsey ceased to exist before
the end of the 8th century and from that period onwards Lindsey was a region or province of Mercia, and was presumably ruled on behalf of the Mercian King by a sub-king, duke or ealdorman. The exact status of these local rulers seems to have varied from province to province and probably also from indi-vidual to indiindi-vidual. They would have derived their power from a range of sources: membership of a local elite lineage, direct authority granted by the Mercian King, or by personal prowess. In any case, the nature of the places where such men lived is in doubt. A survey of ‘palace’ sites identified by archaeologists has led John Blair (1992) to conclude that they are merely the upper end of a continuum of rural settle-ments and that they were dominated by one or more timber halls. It was rare for these settlements to form the nuclei for later towns and a large number seem, like their lesser counterparts, to have been abandoned during, or at the end of, the middle Saxon period.
Many of the functions which early interpretations of the documentary sources took to have been fulfilled by these royal estate centres are now seen by Blair as having been supplied by minster churches, which consistently did end up as the nucleus of a town or village. According to such a view, Blaecca, the local ruler of Lindsey at the time of Paulinus, is more likely to have circulated between a number of settlements scattered around Lindsey, of which Lincoln would be merely one. Nevertheless, at least one such settlement might have existed close to Lincoln, for the use of the reeve when attending the church in Lincoln.
Even if we accept that Lincoln was more likely to have been an ecclesiastical than a royal power centre at this period, it seems that even ecclesiastical power was less centralised at this period than later. The Bishops of Lindsey, for example, often styled them-selves as bishop of the people of Lindsey (as did those of the East Saxons or Deirans) rather than bishop of a place (such as London or York). This should be no surprise since both systems of authority were in-fluenced by each other and were themselves affected by social expectations of the limits of power and its expression.