St Laurence's Church,

Bradford-on-Avon Bradford-on-Avon (sometimes Bradford on Avon) is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in west Wiltshire (district), Wiltshire, England, near the border with Somerset. The town's canal, historic buildings, shops, pubs and restauran ...

, Wiltshire, is one of very few surviving

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

churches in England that does not show later medieval alteration or rebuilding. The church is dedicated to St Laurence, and documentary sources suggest it may have been founded by Saint

Aldhelm Aldhelm (, ; 25 May 709), Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey, Bishop of Sherborne, and a writer and scholar of Latin poetry, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been the son of Kenten, who was of the royal house of Wessex ...

around 700, although the architectural style suggests a 10th- or 11th-century date. St Laurence's stands on rising ground close to the larger

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

parish church of the Holy

Trinity The Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the Christian doctrine concerning the nature of God, which defines one God existing in three, , consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, thr ...

. The building was used as a combined school (nave) and cottage (chancel) for many years, both on more than one storey.Pevsner & Cherry, 1975, pp.129-131 It was rediscovered in 1856 by William Jones, rector of Holy Trinity, and restored between 1870 and 1880. In 1952 the church was designated as

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

The date of the building has been much debated. H. M. Taylor stated some 50 years ago that he believed the main fabric of the walls to their full height belongs to Aldhelm's time, after discussions with Dr Edward Gilbert. Most recent sources give a later date for all or most of the structure. It has been suggested it was built after 1001, when King

Æthelred the Unready Æthelred II (,Different spellings of this king's name most commonly found in modern texts are "Ethelred" and "Æthelred" (or "Aethelred"), the latter being closer to the original Old English form . Compare the modern dialect word . ; ; 966 � ...

gave the site to the nuns of

Shaftesbury Abbey Shaftesbury Abbey was an abbey that housed nuns in Shaftesbury, Dorset. It was founded in about 888, and Dissolution of the monasteries, dissolved in 1539 during the English Reformation by the order of Thomas Cromwell, minister to King Henry VI ...

, refugees from the Vikings.Backhouse, Turner, & Webster, 139-141 They were the custodians of the body of King

Edward the Martyr Edward the Martyr ( – 18 March 978) was King of the English from 8 July 975 until he was killed in 978. He was the eldest son of King Edgar (r. 959–975). On Edgar's death, the succession to the throne was contested between Edward's sup ...

, Æthelred's half-brother and already regarded as a saint, and it may have served as a

mortuary chapel A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of ...

for him for a period, which might help explain why such a small but elaborate building was created. It is the most complete Anglo-Saxon survival from this period, and follows what seems to have been a typical monastic plan at the time, though in miniature. In particular the decoration including fragments of large reliefs gives a hint of richness which documentary remains record in monastic churches. Although the existing church seems all or almost all Anglo-Saxon, it has clearly been altered in a number of ways, apart from the modern restoration, which included removing the stairs inside and filling in windows. For its small size, with the nave only some long and a little over wide, the height of the building (around inside the nave) is notable. A

porticus __NOTOC__ In church architecture, a porticus (Latin for " portico") is usually a small room in a church. Commonly, porticuses form extensions to the north and south sides of a church, giving the building a cruciform plan. They may function as ch ...

to the south has been lost, but otherwise the structure of the building seems complete in its final Anglo-Saxon state. The pair of angels flying horizontally, in

relief Relief is a sculpture, sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''wikt:relief, relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give ...

at about half life-size, probably flanked a large sculptural group of the Crucifixion, perhaps over the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

arch. The arcading on the exterior walls is produced, not by incision (as thought by Jackson and Fletcher),noted architectural historians: Fletcher (Eric George Molyneux) and Jackson (Edward Dudley Colquhoun) but by setting the massive stone

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

-strips forward from the wall-face. In this they are similar to St Andrew's Church, Great Dunham and the tower of St Mary's Church,

Tasburgh Tasburgh ( ) is a civil parish and a village in the south of Norfolk, England, located approximately 8 miles south of Norwich. It lies on the A140 road, north of Long Stratton and south of Newton Flotman. The River Tas flows nearby and Tasb ...

, both in Norfolk, and also to All Saints' Church, Earls Barton in Northamptonshire and

St Peter's Church, Barton-upon-Humber St Peter's Church is the former parish church of Barton-upon-Humber in North Lincolnshire, England. It is one of the best known Anglo-Saxon buildings, in part due to its role in Thomas Rickman's identification of the style. It has been subj ...

in Lincolnshire.

References

Sources

* Backhouse, Janet, Turner, D.H., and Webster, Leslie, eds.; ''The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 966–1066'', pp. 130, 139–141, 1984, British Museum Publications Ltd, * *
PDF account from "Anglo-Saxon Churches"
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bradford on Avon, Saint Laurence Standing Anglo-Saxon churches 8th-century church buildings in England Church of England church buildings in Wiltshire Grade I listed churches in Wiltshire Saint Laurence's Church