The story of the bodies on the beach never dies!  Did the sea burn at Shingle Street?  Were there German bodies strewn on East Anglian beaches?  The One Show last night tackled the issue:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04ls28g/the-one-show-24102014

It plays at 11.20 approximately…  See what you think…

Nothing really to do with Suffolk, I fear, but I wanted to share this very cute video I found on the Discarding Images facebook page on the nature of the hedgehog.  There are hedgehogs in Suffolk – my lovely cat, Simon, used to catch them (sigh, along with rabbits, a pheasant, and once a hare, believe it or not), so I’d find the prickly remains…  But ANYWAY this is very, very lovely!

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/109377646]

This comes from Pliny the Elder, originally, with the grapes coming in with Isidore of Selville:

To prepare for winter, hedgehogs roll on fallen apples to stick them to their spines, then taking one or more in their mouths, carry the load to hollow trees. Hedgehogs foretell a change in wind direction from north to south when they retire to their lairs. When hunted, they roll up into a ball so that it is not possible to pick them up without touching their spines. (Pliny, Natural History, Book 8, 56)

The hedgehog is covered with quills, which it stiffens when threatened, and rolling itself into a ball is thus protected on all sides. After it cuts a bunch of grapes off a vine it rolls over them so it can carry the grapes to its young on its quills. (Isidore, Etymologies, Book 12, 3:7)

With thanks to bestiary.ca for the info.

So why St Fursey? Isn’t he a Norfolk Saint?  What place does he have in this Suffolk blog?  Well, Fursey was based at Burgh Castle just over the border in what is now Norfolk, but was in Suffolk during my lifetime (just!).  The change came with the extensive local government reorganisation of 1974 that included a lot of controversial county moves – such as the rather shocking move from Yorkshire to Lancashire of my husband’s home village!  Simon Knott’s Norfolk Churches website says the parish was ‘unfortunate enough to be dragged into the northern county’ – but I’m saying nothing, having lived in both Suffolk and Norfolk… I made a decision in writing the Folk Tales book to stick to the modern county boundaries for my tales, so as not to tread on the toes of my fellow writers in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. So, you won’t find a retelling of Fursey’s experiences in Suffolk Folk Tales, but rather in Hugh Lupton’s Norfolk Folk Tales.  But, in this blog I have a little more freedom, so here he is.

Fursey was an Irish monk, one of the other team to Felix, who was a member of the Roman mission. The Irish sent out many missionaries to the Anglo Saxons until the Synod of Whitby in 664, when Roman Christianity trounced so-called Celtic Christianity in what would become England (at least that’s the story we think we know – as ever the truth is probably a lot more complex).  Fursey was probably a royal prince himself, son of Finlog of Munster, and entered the religious life at an early age under the care of St Brendan.  His first miracle was to raise two sons of a chieftain from the dead.

In the 630s he was called in a vision to East Anglia, and, apparently on meeting the king’s daughter, according to this 9^th century text, he was granted land:

The daughter of the king in the eastern country bestowed land on Fursa.                                She said to Fursa, ‘What manner of man art thou?’ said she.                                                      ‘Like an old smith,’ said he. ‘with his anvil on his shoulder.’                                                   ‘The anvil of devotion?’ said she.                                                                                           ‘Perseverance in holiness,’ said he.                                                                                                      ‘A question! If God should give thee a block where thine anvil might be planted, wouldst thou abide there?’                                                                                                                                  ‘It would be likely, indeed,’ said he.                                                                                                     Then she bestowed on him the spot where he was.[1]

That was at Cnobheresburg, according to Bede, which has been associated with the Roman fort at Burgh Castle since William Camden’s Britannia was published in 1586.  There is, it must be admitted, no sign of any monastic activity at Burgh Castle, so the place’s claim is as shaky as Dunwich’s claim to be Dommoc, Felix’s foundation, but no storyteller lets details like that get in the way of a good story, especially when there is no other contender for the site.  It was probably actually Sigeberht who requested Fursey’s aid, as there is no record of Sigeberht having married or having had children, but who knows?

Fursey brought a perhaps more exciting Christianity to East Anglia than the more pragmatic Felix, as he lived as much in the world of the spirit as the mundane world. He was beset with visions both before he came to East Anglia, and these continued while he was there.  In these visions he was visited by angels and demons who showed him the evils inflicting the world: falsehood, greed, discord and cruelty, as well as great host of saints and angels.  He bore the scars of one of these encounters for his whole life, when, about to return to his sleeping body, he was caught by a demon who thrust a burning soul in torment up to him, scorching his face and shoulder.  Fursey recognised the man, and realised that he had accepted the man’s clothes when he died, so he was at fault.  When he awoke, the scars were still on him.

There were miracles in East Anglia, too. Like many saints, he was able to bring forth a harvest a few days after planting the seed.  In a time of famine, his monks began to fear they would starve.  Fursey rounded on them, saying ‘those who love god by embracing poverty shall never be deserted in their hour of need’, and he and his fellow monk St Lactain went out and planted barley, even though it was not the season for it.  Everyone shook their heads, saying it was too late for that, but in three days the barley was above the earth, ripe and ready for harvesting.  That’s a tangible miracle for people who, unlike us (or so we like to think…), were reliant on their harvests for life or death.

He had another go at raising people from the dead as well. Interestingly, this story links to another tale in the book, the Bells of Minsmere, as it concerns what was probably the first Christian bell in East Anglia.  When the monks had finished the church at Cnobheresburg they were missing one vital ingredient of Irish worship, the hand bell Fursey would use to call the monks to prayer.  Bells were of great significance in the Irish church, with shrines for saints like Patrick being made in the shape of bells.  Patrick had carried bells with him to give to the new religious houses he founded, but bells were not easy to get hold of in England, particularly in such a far flung place as East Anglia.  Soon after, a widow brought her son for burial at the abbey, and as she was bringing him into the new church a bright light filled the space and when the light dimmed to manageable levels they saw a stranger standing in their midst.  Solemnly the man handed Fursey a finely wrought bell of pure silver, and then in another brilliant flash of light, he was gone.  For a long moment the church was silent, save for the muffled weeping of the mother, then Fursey rang the bell, and the purest sound that any had ever heard rang out, and as soon as it did the young man on the funeral bier sat up, alive and full of health, and the funeral procession became a triumph of joy.

Sarah Atkinson in her essay of 1907 about St Fursey[2], says that the bell was believed to protect anyone who lived in the area where you could hear the bell would be protected from injury during storms – a very useful tool for the fishing communities nearby to Burgh Castle – Caister, Yarmouth, Gorleston, Lowestoft and the other smaller settlements.  It is implied that this protection continued on after Fursey left – so perhaps it went to the little church of St Peter and St Paul in the village.  The earliest fabric of the church is 11^th century, but maybe it was much earlier.  I am not aware that the bell is there now!

St Fursey stayed in East Anglia for 12 years, the last period of that as a hermit with just one of his Irish brethren, Ultan, for company. When Penda came rampaging across East Anglia, Fursey (probably correctly) foresaw that his monastery would be destroyed, and he and his monks left for Gaul, where Fursey set up a new monastery under the auspices of King Clovis.  He died not long after.  But I’ll let Bede have the last word.  Despite being a devout follower of the Roman church, Bede admired many of the Irish saints, and Fursey was no exception.  In his short history of Fursey Bede says:

‘An old brother of our monastery, who is still living, testifies that he once knew a truthful and devout man who had met Fursey in the province of the East Angles, and heard these visions from his own mouth. He added that it was a frosty and bitter winter’s day when Fursey told his story; and yet, though he wore only a thin garment, he was sweating profusely as though it had been summer, either because of the consolation or the terror of his recollections.’[3]

[1] ‘The Monastery of Tallaght’, ed. E. J. Gwynn & W. J. Purton, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 29C (1911-12) p. 134

[2] Sarah Atkinson St Fursey’s Life and Visions and Other Essays (Dublin: M H Gill & Sons, 1907), p. 265

[3] Bede Ecclesiastical History of the English People trans. Leo Sherley-Price (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 175

Other sources for the article are:

Steven Plunkett Suffolk in Anglo-Saxon Times (Stroud: Tempus, 2005)

Hugh Lupton Norfolk Folk Tales (Stroud: The History Press, 2013)

Image source: Knight, Charles: “Old England: A Pictorial Museum” (1845), 129.—Wall of Burgh Castle sourced from www.fromoldbooks.org

Back with Rædwald and the Wuffings again! This time: the tickly question of religion…  Woden or Christ – which way was East Anglia going to fall?  It isn’t as cut and dried as you might think…

Rædwald’s other great claim to fame, aside for his alleged occupation of Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, is his double altar at his temple at Rendlesham.  Rædwald is hedging his bets.  He has a Christian altar – that new, exciting religion that was about to whip through Anglo Saxon Britain like wildfire, but was so far just a minority sect, and something that those pesky native Britains do.  He also has another altar – probably to his own ancestor, Woden, and maybe other gods as well – on which sacrifices were made.  Perhaps Rædwald thought he had covered all the angles (boom, boom), ensuring that he was still fine with the old gods, but nonetheless not ruling out the possibility that this new religion might be the right one.

Bede, who records this in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, doesn’t think that Rædwald is doing himself any favours.  Bede considers Rædwald to be apostate – that is that he has wilfully turned away from the True Faith and from Christ.  He is thus worse than those who have not yet been exposed to the new faith.  Bede is not impressed, ‘This King Redwald was a man of noble descent but ignoble in his actions.’[1]

The cause of Rædwald’s apostacy was his wife.  Unlike Rædwald’s friend Edwin, who he assists in becoming King of Northumbria, who is persuaded to Christianity in part by his wife, Rædwald’s wife is an old school heathen who lures him back to the old worship.  Who was Rædwald’s wife?  It has been argued that she might have been an East Saxon, the next door kingdom, because of the close links between the royal families for the next century.

How devout was Rædwald?  Having not one but two altars might make him sound devout – but Bede is of course focusing on religious life.  Rædwald may have been devout – but he was also a politician.  He is baptised probably around the same time as his brother king, Sæberht of the East Saxons.  Bede mentions that both go to Kent to be baptised by the new mission there, which was allowed by the current Bretwalda, at least of southern Britain, the king of Kent, Æthelberht who had also recently converted.  This would have been in the early years of the 7^th century.  So for a short time it looked as if Christianity was taking over southern Britain.  Kent, Essex and East Anglia were all notionally Christian.

But in 616 Sæberht dies, and the country reverts to paganism.  Æthelberht dies the same year, and because of various shenanigans concerning the new king Eadbald and his marriage to his father’s wife (his stepmother) to ensure, in the old pagan fashion, the fertility of the land, the church reacts in a bad way and the bishops Mellitus and Justus skip across to France to sit out the political and religious storm.  We know that Rædwald is persuaded to revert to his old faith – while still keeping the flame of Christianity alive.  In 616 he has the only royal Christian altar in all the Saxon kingdoms!

This was a wobble – soon Christianity was re-established in Kent, and starts to gather pace.  But what was going on elsewhere in East Anglia while Rædwald kept his two altars?  There may have been British believers still left in East Anglia in the early 7^th century – the named Beccles may suggest a place of a Roman church, an Ecclesia, just as the place name Eccles also does – in the case of Beccles, possibly Beata Ecclesia.  But the British are silent in this land from this point on.  A vague whisper of a monster at Iken when St Botolph arrives suggests British desperate to keep the incoming monks away from their fastness to Norman Scarfe[2], and St Guthlac at Crowland in the Fens also hears the sounds of devils – were these also disenfranchised British as Colgrave suggests[3]?

But the man who was buried in Mound 1 was treated in death a pagan through and through.  He goes to the afterlife in a ship with all the riches and finery of his life around him.  No expense is spared to ensure he has a grand entry to the world of feasting and fighting that would make up an afterlife not dissimilar to the life he had on earth.  The metalwork found on his body hints at the story and ritual world he must have been immersed in – the boars on the shoulder clasps, the serpents on the buckle, the birds and quadrupeds that hint at more than we can ever know.  There are hints that the man buried there was aware of the Christian world – he has an Irish hanging bowl with a fish at the bottom.  A Christian reference?  The fish may be a Christian symbol here – but it might not, it might simply be swimming in the liquid these bowls were meant to contain, just a surprise at the bottom! Then there are the spoons – amazing how a theory can hang on so little a thing!  These two silver spoons look like they are marked Paulos and Saulos – Paul and Saul.  Are they a baptismal gift relating to St Paul’s conversion from nasty Christian persecutor (and tent maker – always good to have something on the side, eh?) to Christian zealot (and tent maker, just in case, eh?) given by – who knows? Æthelberht of Kent as his godfather?  Or are they, as is more likely, simply a gift from a Frankish noble or king to another king?  And is the Saulos simply a mistake of the engraver – should they both say Paulos?

Was this the burial the semi-Christian Rædwald would have wanted? More than likely – it honours the traditions of the ancestors, which we know were important to him, and it asserts his power beyond the grave by the high burial mound there on the river, visible to all who passed by and showing the might and wealth of the Wuffing line. Time would have to wait a little way for kings to realise what Christianity could for them…

[1] Bede Ecclesiastical History of the English People (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 133

[2] Scarfe, Norman “St Botolph, The Iken Cross, and the Coming of East Anglian Christianity”, Suffolk in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 39-51 

[3] Stevenson, Jane “Cristianity in Sixth- and Seventh-Century Southumbria”, in Martin Carver (ed.) The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1992), p. 177

When you think of Minsmere, your mind probably turns towards the flagship RSPB reverse that nestles within the woodland and reedbeds south of Dunwich and Westleton. That’s Minsmere today: a bustling place full of birdwatchers and families and walkers – and the wildlife they have all come to see. The Minsmere New Cut stops you from going too far into the marshes to the south, however, unless you are walking the coast path. Beyond that there is a bit of marshland where few people venture, even though it’s still part of the reserve. And that’s where you’ll find the chapel. The chapel of the bells.

From inland there’s a direct path to the beach. Going from Eastbridge, you can walk out very easily to the rather sad looking ruin. My Mum and I did this one warm day in 2012, after being frustrated in getting a coffee at the RSPB reverse café by time and then picking our way along a rather small road that isn’t very advertised but does run from the reserve to Eastbridge! Unfortified by coffee, we hared out along the path to the coast and back again so that we could be in time for a much more important thing – lunch at the Eel’s Foot pub back in Eastbridge with our menfolk who had not joined us on the walk. The path doesn’t actually go to the chapel (and I wouldn’t ever suggest that you trespassed, of course!) but it’s easy enough to see from it. The building, at first glance, doesn’t even look very ancient – there’s an undeniably concrete structure right in the middle of it. Closer inspection shows this to be a WWI pillbox, one of many, many that are found along this stretch of coast, but offering a little more shelter than most.

As your eye gets in, though, you realise that this is an ancient building, and moreover that it is an ecclesiastical one. Most of the larger stones have gone, leaving only the rubble construction behind, but you can see a little buttress here, and the round shape of a Romanesque arch there. A chapel! Then you look around and you wonder why. There’s nothing to see. It’s pretty wild out there, and there is a good mile and a half or so to get back to Eastbridge. Well, never mind, Rendlesham church isn’t very close to the modern settlement, placed as it may be to serve an Anglo Saxon settlement long gone. But this is slightly different.

Minsmere chapel was never a parish church. It was built here to be a desert place for a small group of religious men. The little religious settlement was founded by Ranulf de Glanville in 1182, one of two that this important Suffolk nobleman founded late in life. Ranulf was the Chief Justiciar of England in the last years of the reign of Henry II, and the king’s right hand man, effectively the regent when Henry wasn’t here (most of the time!) The new community was a Premonstratensian community – the White Canons. This was a French order similar to the Cistercians, but canons, ordained priests, who preach and serve in the community, not only in their religious house. I’m carefully not saying monastery – because not being monks, canons don’t live in a monastery! The other one was Butley Priory, which was an Augustinian house, the Black Canons. Not much survives of that, either! Though for different reasons.

The real equivalent to Butley Priory is Leiston Abbey, because just under two centuries later in 1363 the abbey moved to Leiston. It really did move as well – parts of Leiston Abbey are made up of building stone that comes from the Minsmere site – in this area, good building stone was too good to abandon! Only the chapel was left, the canons perhaps unwilling to disturb the house of God. Why did they go? Flooding is the most likely answer, but it’s possible that there was sickness as well – malaria is a possibility, as a recent study of Anglo Saxon populations shows that anaemia without malnutrition was more common in the same coastal and wetland regions as it was in the post-medieval period when we know malaria was definitely here.

It is possible that the church was maintain and a cleric from the abbey was based there throughout the Middle Ages. There may, of course, have been a tunnel to the chapel – Leiston Abbey is well known for its tunnels, which run to the Greyfriars in Dunwich and to Framlingham Castle, they say. So why not to lonely Minsmere as well?

The wild marshland and pasture around the little abandoned chapel doesn’t suggest that anything else was going on except that little religious house. However, areas that look wild now are often discovered to be hotbeds of activity in centuries past. It’s in the Domesday Book, belonging to Roger Bigod, with four free men, and a plough, and a sheriff by the name of Northmann. By 1237 it was described as a port, but when you stand on the empty beach this is hard to imagine. Hard to imagine that is until you remember the little village up the road. Dunwich today is a single street, a church and a few other houses. Everyone knows that in the Middle Ages it was one of the largest ports in England – but then, over the centuries, it was washed away by the sea. The village of Minsmere is gone forever, the people who lived moving perhaps to Eastbridge, or to Theberton where the parish church was.

More recently the coastline had to be guarded. In Tudor times there was some kind of possible artillery fort there against foreign invaders, just like the pillboxes of the Second World War, but in the intervening period a different type of invader had to be patrolled against – smugglers, of course! There was a windpump there from the 19th century: when the marshes were drained for agricultural use – you can even see it at the Museum of East Anglian Working Life in Stowmarket, as it was rescued when it collapsed in 1977. There was even a café and a couple of cottages on the beach by the sluice up to the Second World War, but these were evacuated, used as target practice and then pulled down. The Leiston-cum-Sizewell Newsletter of Autumn 2013 gives details with pictures on pages 15-16.

Now the holiday makers are back, and Sizewell’s gleaming white domes the only threatening things to be seen on the horizon. I recommend the walk down to the beach, and the lunch at the Eel’s Foot, too! Just remember, if you should happen to discover a little bell on the site of the old chapel, just leave it well alone!

This blogpost relates to The Bells of Minsmere, story eight in Suffolk Folk Tales.

All images © Kirsty Hartsiotis, 2012

This is the greatest poem of the Anglo Saxon corpus of poetry, and was written down in its current form around the year 1000, a long time after Bede wrote his history, and even longer after the supposed 6^th century date of the actual events. The content of the poem is probably based on orally transmitted stories – yep, storytelling! – and was written down at some point in the early Christain period.  Whether the poem was composed orally and then written down, or whether it was composed as a written poem from older sources is a source for debate.  It doesn’t matter – whichever way, it is an extremely powerful work, and gives a glimpse into the mindsets of this distant world. 

If you haven’t read it, I would strongly recommend that you do so: not only is it an important poem, but also a gripping story.  The eponymous hero saves the day through his strength and cunning when an unholy monster and his mother threaten the security of Hrothgar’s hall, Heorot.  Ironically, the hall itself is eventually destroyed by fire during the struggles for kingship that follow Beowulf’s intervention.  The story then jumps to Beowulf, now a king, in his old age, and his battle with a dragon.  The language is powerful and raw, and themes cover far more emotional ground than the bare bones of the story suggest.

I was lucky enough to learn Anglo Saxon whilst doing my Medieval Studies MA, and this allowed me (just about!) to read Beowulf in the original language – a swift learning curve, I can tell you, and a galling one, too.  Anglo Saxon is closer to modern German or Dutch than it is to modern English, so the German and Dutch speaking students on the course swiftly pulled ahead of us native English speakers – ah well, at least it illustrated for us the shared culture that dates back to these very times!  I wouldn’t expect that you would want to tackle the original, but there are many translations and retellings out there.  A quick flip onto Amazon shows me the latest retelling by Seamus Heaney from 2009, and the recently released translation by Tolkien.  I confess I have read neither!  But whichever translation you chose, you will be delving deep into the English subconscious. 

The story, however, does seem to have its roots in the reality of 6^th century Denmark, and the characters appear in a number of Scandinavian sagas as well as in the English poem Widsith – including mention of Hrothgar and Hrothulf, and their war with Ingeld.  These sagas tend to be more focused on the ordinary wars between the various peoples of Denmark, rather than the fascination with monsters that makes Beowulf such a compelling read.