This church is a trove of Anglo Saxon architecture - All Saints, Hovingham, North Yorkshire

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-06

[00:00:09]Hello. Welcome to All Saints Church here in Hovingham in North Yorkshire. The main bulk of the church you can see behind me was restored and rebuilt in the 1860s.

[00:00:22]But the tower there on the end is from the 11th century. It's a late Anglian period tower and it's actually probably one of the last Anglo-Saxons towers built before the Norman invasion 1066.

[00:00:38]So, we're going to concentrate on the the tower itself and try and pick out the various features in there that will help us identify Anglo-Saxon churches from this period and even earlier as well. We'll also be going inside the church where there's more features that will help us in our task as well as the 19th century church interior that we'll see in there. So, my name is Chris. This is Church and I'll see you after the map.

[00:01:26]So the place name Hovingham is quite interesting in its own right. Ham being from the word Ham homestead. Ingga meaning the people of so Hoving Ham is probably the people of Hawer's home. So the descendants of Hawer this was their home that had grown up over the centuries here. Hoff is also an old English Anglo-Saxon word for an old hall or a home or even a temple. And interestingly, here at Hobingham, there were the remains of a Roman villa discovered in the gardens of Hobingham Hall, which is right next to us here.

[00:02:06]Hingham Hall has been the seat of the Warsy family for many, many hundred years. But it's in the gardens there.

[00:02:13]While they were doing work in the 18th century, they discovered mosaic floors, hyper costs, underfloor heating. So I think there was a fancy villa and a bath house there. And so it's most likely a lot of the monumental stone that we'll see being reused in the tower to create this Angrian tower. It's from that Roman building. So it could be that Hovingham itself, the place name is either the home of Hoffer's people or it could be itself referring to this fact that there was a a grand ruined Roman villa here already which kind of all ties in. Now if we look in the doomsday boot under the entry for Hovingham it says had eight caricates of land to the gel. If you've seen my video on the church at Kirkdale and the incredible sundial there, it's M who's also listed in the domes book as owning that land. And it's who is listed on the the sundial there.

[00:03:13]Or son of Gamal building that church and we can date the building of that church between 1065 and 1066 because it also mentions Earl Tosik who was the Earl of North Umbrea between those dates. also the brother of Harold Godwinson. So it's possible therefore that this church is part of that same building phase. The the king at that time was Edward the Confessor and he's called the confessor because he's a very uh holy contrite man and there's this big period of sort of emphasis on church building during that period. So this could be part of that.

[00:03:51]So had eight caricates of land to the gal. Caricate is a term you get up here in the sort of Dane law in the north.

[00:04:00]It's a caricate is the amount of land it would take eight oxen to plow. You have different terms in the south in the doomsday book hides and things like that. So eight caricates of land to the gels. The gel is the form of tribute that would be paid. So that's eight caricates of taxable land essentially.

[00:04:19]In the doomsday book you often have the original owner before the Normans arrive. So that would be Or in this case and then the Norman who took over the land. So in the case of the entry for Hovingham it's Hugh Fitz Baldrick and when you say Fitz in relation to a Norman name it means son of. So it's Hugh son of Baldrick but importantly for us it mentions that there's a church here and a priest at the time that the Buou was taken about 1086.

[00:04:49]But we can definitely say that the tower there is from that period 11th century but most likely from that period related to when there was this sort of phase of church building around this area.

[00:05:24]So this is the Anglian Tower behind me and we're right next to Hobingham Hall here. So Hobingham Hall is the family seat of the Warsley family. They've been here since the late 16th century, early 17th century. The hall, as it is now, was built between 1750 and 1770. And as you look at it, there's the big tall entrance with the big arch is actually a riding school. So you entered through the riding school there. The family who were very big on horses. And you can see there's a a Latin inscription above the door which says Vertus in Action consisted which translates as virtue in action consists or virtue is made of action. So they're very much a family of action. Now you might heard of Katherine Warsley. She married Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, Queen Elizabeth II's cousin. So they were married in 1961 in York Minster and famously Katherine Wy processed from Hovington here in a carriage through the Hardian Hills all the way to York Minster. And it was the first royal wedding in York Winster since like the 1320s or something like that. She actually passed away last year, September 2025.

[00:06:49]And the family crypt for the Warsies is just around the corner of the tower here. Quite a low building with a shallow pyramid roof and there's a chairo symbol on the door. So in terms of the Anglosaxon tower here, I'm going to be speaking in the context of the North Umbrean Church.

[00:07:11]So Yorkshire, County Durham, Northland was all part of the Anglian Kingdom of North Umbrea. As you go further south, you get into Mercia in the Kingdom of Lindsay. So you'll see a few changes in the architecture there. We've been to Barton upon Humber in a previous video, the spectacular church there. The first building to be identified as being Anglo-Saxon. We'll hopefully get to Stow Minster one day in Lindsay, another spectacular Anglo-Saxon building, almost cathedral like. If you keep going further south, East Anglia, you get Anglo-Saxon churches made of flint and with round towers. And obviously as you go all the way down to Kent, you've got Anglo-Saxon churches there. They were influenced by the missionaries coming from Rome from the south rather than up here the missionaries coming from the north, the Celtic Christian tradition.

[00:08:09]However, there's lots of similarities.

[00:08:12]So some of the features we'll point out here will help us get our eye in on future videos when we come across Anglo-Saxon features. So, one of the first bits of evidence to talk about in relation to this church is the the monumental masonry itself. As we've seen in churches we've visited previously around the north, they're quite often reusing Roman stone. So, the fact that they've discovered the remains of a Roman villa here in the garden at Hingham Hall is significant. you know, probably using stone here to build the church and that again is possibly reflected in the place name Hoffar Inger. The the remains of the villa here are so spectacular with a hyper cost, under floor heating, um marbled mosaics, what was thought to be a bath house.

[00:09:01]They kind of interpreted it perhaps as a very high up personalist building. We're not far from the Roman legionary fortress in Iberakam, York. And then equidistant from here, there's another Roman military town, now Molton. And there's a Roman road which passes through this area on the way to Molton.

[00:09:21]So it's thought that the villa was perhaps a high ranking official from York. Perhaps even country residence for the emperors when they were here visiting York. Constantine, for example, came here to York. So very possibly stone from the emperor's villa was reused in the building of this church.

[00:09:40]Now I can see in the tower here a lot of the big chunky masonry is more on the lower courses and as you go up those stones get smaller. So presumably that's obviously because they're heavier bulkier in terms of the stability of the tower but also the practicality of lifting them into position. One of the first things you should look at in terms of Anglo-Saxon churches are the coins the coining. And these are the monumental stones which go up the corners of the towers. They're like that to basically give strength and stability to the structure so they can go higher. And there's three main types of coining. You get long and short work, which we've seen on previous churches, which is where you get the horizontal and then the vertical axis of the the stones alternating as you go up. And then here we've got side alternating coiling. So this is vertical side alternating. So you've got the vertical stone going one way and then it flips on the corner and goes the other way and then so on and so on as you go up or you also get horizontal side alternating where you get the this thinner edge alternating as you go up. So we've seen a few of those around as well. Now, interestingly here, as you go up, you'll see there's two coins on the coins that have these arches cut into them upside down, and they are actually reused window lintils from the original church that was here on the site. So, we've seen that type of window lintil, for example, the 7th century church up there, and we'll see it in other churches that go around the area. So essentially they've reused the lintil stones. So you either get lintils that are just a flat stone. Sometimes you get like a triangular lintil made out of two blocks of stone. We've seen that at Barton upon Humber. Or you get the whole arch being cut in the block of stone here. That's what they've reused here.

[00:11:43]And so that's evidence of the fact that there was originally an Anglian church here.

[00:11:49]probably quite a reasonable size given the size of those windows. And then it's been rebuilt, remade with this new tower in the 11th century. And that kind of fits in with what we know about or son of Gamal listed in the doomsday booth and on the sundial kn by Kirkdale. That sundial tells us that the original church at Kirk was al tofallen and troan or fallen down and broken down and son of gamal had it rebuilt from the grund from the ground. So again simply in this period of church expansion under end of the confessor they'd probably reuse stone there to build this church. Now a third thing you get in Anglo-Saxon towers are string courses and these are these lines of stone. You get in this case dividing the church into three.

[00:12:45]We've seen the same at Barton upon Humber and Kirk Hamilton as well. As you can see it breaks the tower up into three. You usually get upper rooms in these towers and these have been interpreted in various ways. For churches of this period you'd start having the land owner hiring a priest.

[00:13:03]So the priest was probably living in the the rooms in the the tower there and we have the belfry up on top. So in a sense they're sort of dividing these three sections up. You can see there's a window on this side around the corner which has a flat lintil on it but the string course actually creates the lintil in that. The same on the opposite side as well. Now these string courses kind of decorative. They're also functional in that they add strength to the structure, but they also, it's thought, leech away rain water from the stonework. So, it encourages water to run off as it drips down, but it also basically encourages drainage away from the wall. Now, a lot of these buildings is thought would have been either lime washed or even plastered. We've seen evidence of white plaster on the church at Eskim, which perhaps explains why a lot of the stonework on these churches is so rough cuz it wasn't intended to be seen in quite the way that we see it now. But again, these string courses would therefore help leech water away to prevent the walls themselves getting damp damp getting into the interior of the plaster work and causing it to peel off. So that could be what we're seeing there. Now we've also got a single course of herring bone stonework. You just see them going along there. We'll see some inside as we go inside the church as well. But this is really decorative. You do find it in Roman architecture. So it seems that the Anglo-Saxon masons were perhaps copying this. But you also see it later in Norman period. Generally the size of the stone increases as you go through the period. Roman times they have been doing this sort of thing with bricks themselves but a herring bone masonry is generally from this late Anglosaxon period so 10th or 11th century so that's another bit of evidence for us to help date this building. Now, another piece of evidence is the windows. But if you go right up to the top, you get the belfry windows as well. And these are double windows with a bolustra in the middle. And this is a feature you see commonly in Anglian belfries in the bell tower. Also in the Norman period as well, but you can usually tell from the form of the boluster, the the column in the middle as to whether it's Anglo-Saxon or Norman. But you you often either see single windows or double or even if you go to sort of some of the bigger minsters you get multiples of these the busters in between the wall.

[00:15:39]Now two other features in this tower help us date this. We've got some crosses embedded in the tower. So again this is masonry reused from that original Anglian church that was on the site here and they've built it into the tower. We've got what's there is an Anglian cross there. So there's a cross, the forearms of equal length and they kind of spread out at the ends. This is very similar to the pectoral cross that was found on the body of St. Kufka when he was reeried. And so it's sort of known as an emblem of the Northian Anglian church in particular. That's probably 8th or 9th centuries.

[00:16:19]If you go right up to the top of the tower, there's a Anglo Danish cross probably 9th 10th century. So probably from the period the century from just before when this church was rebuilt here. It's called a ring plate cross.

[00:16:34]It's got the cross and then like a circular plate behind it. And that was particularly this sort of Anglo Danish influence. And you can see there's not work on there. Also the suggestion of animals on there as well. And it's here in the north that we had a lot of these Danish Vikings settling and becoming Anglo Danes. Now the final bit of evidence is with the door here. So we'll go and have a look at the door now.

[00:17:08]So Anglo-Saxon churches you often get the the main entrance door in the tower.

[00:17:15]itself. So this is a classic example of that. We've got vous. These are the stones going over the top of the arch.

[00:17:25]Interestingly in Anglo-Saxon architecture, you very rarely see a central keystone.

[00:17:32]Normally get right at the top there. So they they kind of do without that. We've also got imposts here. These are the sort of side on bits of stone to help spread the weight. We've then got the hood molding which is the curved stonework on the outer rim of that. We've got the strip work columns on the side here.

[00:17:54]These blocks of stone on either side and a door jams and then the bottom is all sitting on a plinth to again help sort of support and spread the weight. Now the the hood molding being rounded there and these columns is kind of Norman influence which is interesting to think of in the context of when this was built. We know that some of Gamal went to France with Earl Tostig of North Umbrea and we sort of see similar Norman influences in the Anglo-Saxon architecture of Kirkdale as well. So it's possibly that they brought back influences with them from their travels or it could just be part of millier at the time of people sharing ideas. Now the other thing of note here is this stone here with all of these scratch marks in it. Anecdotally it was always said that these were arrow marks where people would sharpen their arrows. It was in the 1320s that King Edward III passed a law whereby every ablebodied male in England had to practice their archery after church with long bows because of the shortage of archers in the hundred years war with France. So anecdotally it sort of said that this is where people would come out of church after a service they'd sharpen their arrows here. They'd go out and practice on the butts their archery. In more recent years, this is kind of been reappraised, however, and it's sort of perhaps this is actually part of local folk medicine. You see them a lot by the entrance, the doors, and it's perhaps where people were coming taking shavings of stone with them to use in medicines, pices, and things like that, various other remedies. It was in a recent video went to heavenfield and it was there that people would come and take pieces of wood from the cross to use in medicines. And similly beads tells us in his ecclesiastical history of the English people that people would take holy soil as well from holy places but also grind up stone from shrines and places like that. So it could be that similar thing was happening here. We think of this tower in the context of the priest who perhaps lived in the upper room above the entrance here. You could have people coming here asking the priest for prayers to heal someone, but they would also probably have a knowledge of folk medicine. And so you could imagine them perhaps taking a few scrapes of this with their dagger to add to whatever remedies they would give it.

[00:20:35]So it's quite a tangible link to the past whether it be arrow sharpening or medicine making.

[00:20:43]So we'll move now from the Anglian entrance to the church through to the 12th century entrance door around the side.

[00:21:48]So, as we come into the 1860s restores church, you can see we've got these neo gothic pointed arches. all the way down the nave aisles on either side. Lots of memorials to members of the Warsley family all the way around. But on the end here, you can see they've incorporated the 11th century Anglian tower. Beautiful font at the bottom.

[00:22:14]Behind that, we've got the Anglian arch.

[00:22:17]Again, you can see no keystone at the top, just like the arch on the outside.

[00:22:22]as well. We've got the champered imposts coming in there. If you keep looking up, we've got another course of herring bone stonework masonry there. So again, indicative of this late Anglian date.

[00:22:37]And if you keep looking up again, we've got, as we've seen in a lot of these Anglian towers, this opening up there up in the tower. You can just see to the left of that where the roof line used to be from the previous church before this 1860s one was built. But again, you can see the original Anglian roof line would have been even higher to incorporate that opening there. And we've seen like a Eskim, the very steeply pitched roofs on these tall Anglian churches. So these were interpreted in various ways, these openings. The one we saw at Skipwith, for example, the room up there inside the tower had niches in it. So it's interpreted to be a relic room. And so the the opening would be for the relics to be brought out on feast days and displayed to the pilgrims coming to the church. Similarly, they're also interpreted in some cases to be priests rooms. And it's around this time when he had land owner and he's investing in church building, they would pay for a priest as well. And that's how you got the sort of parishes, the English parish starting out. Um, so it could be that there was a priest living up there. They would have had access with a ladder going up from the interior of the church. So, it could well be that the priest who lived in here up there was the same person perhaps dispensing holy scrapings from the uh the in post outside there to people to use in their folk medicines. Now, you might have seen in the video I've been putting a little website at the bottom if you wish to donate to the church. They're currently restoring the bells up here. I'm pretty sure it's Hingham Church. They're well known for having a Westminster peel. um very similar to the the famous chimes of Big Ben down in London. They're currently restoring the bells, so that peel isn't sounding. They're also putting new guttering in to help draw damp away from the walls of the church.

[00:24:32]So, if you do wish to help in the upkeep of this church, you can donate by the website below and follow the QR code as well.

[00:24:53]So, in the Lady Chapel behind the side altar, we've got this beautiful riodos.

[00:24:59]Rios is you you find in carved wood or stone behind an altar usually, but this wasn't always a riodos. It's been dated to the 8th or 9th centuries and it's thought that it's part of what was a shrine. So that date then places it before the 11th century tower. So this is potentially from the original church that was here um from which there's also pieces in the tower and in fact this was once built into the southern side of the tower. So they've taken this potentially from a shrine that was on this site and then rebuilt it into the tower there in the wall facing out. So an incredible piece of art, but as a consequence, and you can see here, it's been very heavily weathered by erosion from rainwater. So it was brought in here as part of the restoration and mounted it as a bills here. So there's lots of different theories as to what this shows, but generally speaking, the most convincing argument is that the figures on the left there form the enunciation.

[00:26:09]So we can clearly see an angel there on the far left panel with its wings and they're also holding what looks like a spear.

[00:26:18]Now apparently the end of that spear is actually a lease. And so rather than being a weapon or a wand as you sometimes see them referred to when you look at art from a similar period, it's sort of a staff that a a messenger would carry, a messenger's staff. And in that sense, this is the angel Gabriel visiting Mary on her stool. The enunciation with the angel visiting to say that you're going to have the baby Jesus. And we can see they've both got halos. the angel in particular. You can see there's radial lines coming out from its head. Another clue that this is the Virgin Mary, our lady. You can see there's a little vase to the left to the side of her feet there. And this is a lily growing up from it. Lily being the symbol of the Virgin Mary, obviously. So, it's thought therefore that there's angels on both sides of this bookending it. So, you can just make out the curve of the wings coming down on this side here.

[00:27:22]suggestion that the hand is actually reaching out from this panel into the next panel to touch this person here.

[00:27:29]They're also sat opposite direction. So, it's kind of um mirrored, which is quite, you know, pleasing. There's different interpretations, but it could be that this is Joseph. Joseph is often depicted with his hand on his face. So, this could be the the angel visiting Joseph to let him know that he's going to be having a child soon as well. So in that sense then these are potentially in pairs.

[00:27:53]It's thought that this could be the visitation. The visitation is when Mary went to see her cousin Elizabeth. You can see we've got two characters with halos again and their feet are pointing towards each other. Now clearly these two are the the most heavily worn. Quite difficult to decipher. So there's a few different theories as to who these are.

[00:28:15]It's either the the women at the sephila on Easter morning discovering that the tomb is empty. So it's maintaining this sort of uh the story of Mary as it were and the women or this could be the presentation of Jesus at the temple which is again Mary this potentially being Jesus presented there. It could alternatively be related to Elizabeth here in that this is the circumcision of John the Baptist. So this presumably is maybe the child being held up there in that respect. Now you can see there's beautiful vine work along the bottom here. An indication of a few birds and creatures as well in amongst the vines.

[00:29:03]Just see one down here perched on one of the branches. So if this was a shrine, this means there was obviously a significant building here. If we think to the sister church in Kirkdale inside the church there, there's two Anglian sarcophagi with very fine carving on them. So this church here could have had a a similar status and this could have held some sort of relics to a saint. So it clearly was a significant shrine here telling us that the church that was in Hovingham was perhaps part of a cult center. And that's potentially the reason why there's all those scratch marks by the door. People visiting the shrine here presumably for the power of the relics. The priest perhaps giving away elements of the relic in the form of the the dust from the door in post there either for medicines or for blessings on their journeys.

[00:30:08]So, in the chancel behind the altar, we've got this Anglo Danish cross. And it was found in the 1920s or removed from the the base of the tower. And then it was mounted in this striking way in the 1980s. So, it's been in this position since then. And you can see it's got a beautiful boss in the center of the cross there. It's got this interlacing on the cross itself and then coming down down the shaft itself on all the sides. The back has been kind of hacked away. So perhaps it was also mounted into the tower at one point as well.

[00:30:48]So this is uh what's known as a Stafford knot. this arrangement here, bit like a pretzel, but if you look closely, you'll see on the corners there's a bit more detail as well. So, there's a little head here, two eyes and a jaw and a tail on this side. Similar at the bottom, tail over here, little jaw, two eyes on either side as well. So, it's a serpent.

[00:31:13]And this is jelling yelling style originally from Denmark. He came over with the Danes, the Vikings who settled in the north here. And then you have these generations of Anglo Danish people in the the villages around here. And the jelling style spread where they lived.

[00:31:34]Jelling or yelling style carvings often have these S-shaped animals in them, particularly serpents. Um, and they're often in profile as well. Now, we've got a very similar looking serpent at the the church in Middleton where we visited the Viking crosses there which are quite spectacular. They've got um Viking warriors carved into them along with other elements of Norse Danish and Viking mythology. So it's thought that this is perhaps from either the similar school of artisans who made those crosses not far from here or it's in fact even the same mason because that mean that head is very very similar to the big yman gander serpent we saw in a big s shape bound to the cross and in the carving at middleton you actually see those binds binding yman gander to the the cross Here it could be that they're they're being bound by the notwork of their bodies themselves to the cross. So it's sort of the triumph of the cross over perhaps Yman Gander or Nidhog the other serpent in the underworld which are perhaps parallels to the devil Satan or the serpent in the garden of Eden. Similarly, it could be like the the victory of Christianity again over these pre-Christian pagan entities with the the tree of life, the rude cross in Anglo-Christian terms being a mirror for ye drastel in the the Norse mythology as well. So, it's an interesting combination of ideas around the time that we have this combination of cultures as well. You had the Angles and the Danes intermaring creating these Anglo Danish communities all around this area as we see in the place names.

[00:33:43]So this style in particular is present in the the 10th century. So like a 100 years a generation or so before the tower here was built. So this really speaks to the congenity of the use of this site for Christianity and Christian worship going right back potentially to very early period of the Angrian conversion to Christianity around this area with the shrine for example through to the Anglo North through to the Anglo Normans and the construction of the tower here all the way through to the 1860s and this the current church that we stand in now and the the 1980s with this reordering, reuse of the cross sort of speaking across the generations to us all the way back as well to Norse mythology. So, it's quite a fascinating case study this church. As I say, we'll be going to other churches that are even earlier than this in the Anglian style, but also somes that are even more complete in the Anglo-Saxon style as well, but we'll also be going to a few more medieval churches along the way.

[00:34:48]Now, you've probably noticed I've put a website and a QR code a few times here.

[00:34:54]They're doing a lot of work on the bells at the moment, the guttering, and I know they're going to be starting work on the the exterior stone work as well. So, if you feel like you'd like to support the church here in their work and donate, I know it'll be very warmly received by the the congregation and the treasurer here.

[00:35:11]So, um, I hope that's helped you get your eye in a bit with Angian, Anglo Norse, Anglo Norman architecture, and we'll use that in our future videos.

[00:35:22]But until next time, keep church searching.