(Medieval History and Archaeology) Michael D. J. Bintley, Michael G. Shapland - Trees and Timber in The Anglo-Saxon World-Oxford University Press (2013)

Medieval History and Archaeology
General Editors
JOHN BLAIR HELENA HAMEROW
Trees and Timber in the

Anglo-Saxon World
MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND
ARCHAEOLOGY
General Editors
John Blair Helena Hamerow
The volumes in this series bring together archaeological, historical, and visual
methods to offer new approaches to aspects of medieval society, economy, and
material culture. The series seeks to present and interpret archaeological
evidence in ways readily accessible to historians, while providing a historical
perspective and context for the material culture of the period.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES
VIKING IDENTITIES
Scandinavian Jewellery in England
Jane F. Kershaw
LITURGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND SACRED PLACES IN

ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
Helen Gittos
RURAL SETTLEMENTS AND SOCIETY IN

ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
Helena Hamerow
PARKS IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

S. A. Mileson
ANGLO-SAXON DEVIANT BURIAL CUSTOMS

Andrew Reynolds
BEYOND THE MEDIEVAL VILLAGE

The Diversification of Landscape Character in Southern Britain
Stephen Rippon
WATERWAYS AND CANAL-BUILDING IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

John Blair
FOOD IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Diet and Nutrition
Edited by C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron
TREES AND TIMBER
IN THE ANGLO-SAXON
WORLD
Edited by
MICHAEL D. J. BINTLEY
AND
MICHAEL G. SHAPLAND
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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Preface and Acknowledgements
The Anglo-Saxons were a society for whom trees were of fundamental import-
ance. They dwelt in timber houses, relied on woodland as an economic
resource, and created a material culture of wood at least as meaningfully
imbued, and vastly more prevalent, than the sculpture and metalwork with
which we associate them today. As profound was the central place of trees to
Anglo-Saxon belief systems, which saw continuity into the Christian period
not least in the figure of the cross itself. Despite this, the transience of trees
and timber in comparison to metal and stone has meant that the subject has
received comparatively little attention from scholars, and most of that has been
focused on practicalities such as carpentry techniques and the extent of wood-
land coverage, rather than the place of these things in the intellectual lives of the
early medieval inhabitants of England. The nature of the available evidence
demands input from scholars of several disciplines: in this book archaeology,
place-names, landscapes and written sources have been brought together in an
attempt to show how this scholarly balance can be redressed.
This volume started life as an interdisciplinary conference of the same name
held at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, on 13–15
November 2009. The editors would like to thank all those who attended and
helped make this event a success, particularly Sandra Bond, Nat Cohen,
Damian Goodburn, Eric Lacey, Andrew Reynolds, Vicky Symons, and the
Institute for its financial backing and the use of its facilities. We would also
like to extend our deepest thanks to the series editors, John Blair and Helena
Hamerow, and Stephanie Ireland and Christopher Wheeler at Oxford Univer-
sity Press for their time, support, and numerous valuable contributions to the
completion of this volume, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their
necessary and thoughtful comments.
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Contents
List of Figures and Table ix
1. An Introduction to Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World 1

Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland
PART I: TIMBER IN ANGLO-SAXON

BUILDING PRACTICE
2. Meanings of Timber and Stone in Anglo-Saxon Building Practice 21
Michael G. Shapland
3. The Sophistication of Late Anglo-Saxon Timber Buildings 45

Mark Gardiner
4. References to Timber Building Materials in Old English Place-Names 78

John Baker
PART II: PERCEPTIONS OF WOOD

AND WOODEN OBJECTS
5. The Wooden Drinking Vessels in the Sutton Hoo Assemblage:
Materials, Morphology, and Usage 107
Martin G. Comey
6. The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights into Wooden Artefacts 122
Jennifer Neville
7. Brungen of Bearwe: Ploughing Common Furrows in Exeter Book

Riddle 21, The Dream of the Rood, and the Æcerbot Charm 144
Michael D. J. Bintley
8. Breaking the Mould: Solving the Old English Riddle 12 as

Wudu ‘Wood’ 158
Pirkko Anneli Koppinen
PART III: TREES AND WOODLAND

IN ANGLO-SAXON BELIEF
9. What is a ‘World Tree’, and Should We Expect to Find One
Growing in Anglo-Saxon England? 177
Clive Tolley
viii Contents
10. Holy Beams: Anglo-Saxon Cult Sites and the Place-Name

Element Bēam 186
John Blair
11. Recasting the Role of Sacred Trees in Anglo-Saxon Spiritual

History: The South Sandbach Cross ‘Ancestors of Christ’ Panel
in its Cultural Contexts 211
12. Christianity and the ‘Sacred Tree’ 228

Della Hooke
Index 251
List of Figures and Table
2.1 Settlement sites in England with excavated evidence for masonry
domestic structures 23
3.1 Building A at Middle Harling (Norfolk) 50
3.2 Structure U at Bishopstone (Sussex) 52
3.3 Aisled building at Roundwood, Stansted (Essex) 53
3.4 Possible sequence for laying out the aisled building at
Roundwood, Stansted (Essex) 54
3.5 Building S15 and part of S14 at Portchester (Hampshire) 55
3.6 Tenth-century buildings at Portchester (Hampshire) set around
the courtyard 56
3.7 The southern wall trench of Structure C at Bishopstone village (Sussex) 58
3.8 Two postholes from Building A at Market Field, Steyning (Sussex) 59
3.9 The entrance of Building B at Market Field, Steyning (Sussex) 60
3.10 Field plan showing the building identified as the kitchen at Sulgrave
(Northamptonshire) 60
3.11 Naked figure wielding axe from the lower margin of the
Bayeux Tapestry 61
3.12 The angle-sided Structure 37 at Rookery Hill, Bishopstone (Sussex) 66
3.13 The reconstruction of a Fyrkat type bow-sided building 67
3.14 Structure 2000 at Chapel Street, Bicester (Oxfordshire) 68
3.15 Approaches to the long ranges at (a) Goltho (Lincolnshire)
(after Beresford) and (b) West Cotton (Northamptonshire) 71
4.1 Beam bridge, Sinharaja Rain Forest (Sri Lanka) 83
4.2 Causeway bridge on caissons, Paanajärvi village (Russian Karelia) 85
4.3 Timber causeway across swamp, Pisa National Park (eastern Finland) 87
5.1 A walnut burrwood veneer 111
5.2 Transverse section through a yew log 113
5.3 Tangentially cleft yew log 113
5.4 Tangential yew stave recovered from a souterrain at Larne (Co. Antrim) 114
10.1 Selected place-names incorporating the element bēam 192
10.2 Great Torrington (Devon): bēam and stapol names
beside the River Torridge 193
10.3 Elham (Kent): the environs of Bladbean and Grims Acre as
shown on Andrew, Dury, and Herbert’s Map of Kent (1769) 195
10.4 The location of Bempton in relation to other monuments
in east Yorkshire 197
x List of Figures and Table
10.5 Bampton (Oxfordshire): the medieval town in relation to

earlier ritual monuments 199
10.6 Bampton (Oxfordshire): the parish church and Deanery
chapel in relation to the underlying Bronze Age barrows 200
10.7 Bampton (Oxfordshire): Anglo-Saxon finds 202
10.8 Bampton (Oxfordshire): observations of burials and Romano-British
settlement to the south-west of the Beam chapel 204
10.9 Bampton (Oxfordshire): the cottage on the site of the Beam chapel 205
11.1 General view of the Sandbach Crosses (Cheshire) 213
11.2 The ‘Ancestors of Christ’ panel on the south
Sandbach Cross (Cheshire) (detail) 214
12.1 Routeways approaching Tardebigge church (north Worcestershire)
with items noted in boundary clauses and place-names 233
12.2 A sculpture of c.960, preserved in Romsey Abbey (Hampshire),
showing living tendrils emerging from Christ’s rood 240
All figures are the work of the respective authors unless otherwise stated in the captions.
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders. If notified, the publisher
will be pleased to amend the acknowledgements in any future edition.
Table
3.1 A Preliminary List of Angle-Sided Buildings in England 65
1
An Introduction to Trees and Timber
in the Anglo-Saxon World
(Canterbury Christ Church University)
and
Michael G. Shapland
(Institute of Archaeology, University College London)
Origins and Aims

This volume had its beginnings in the ‘Woodlands, Trees, and Timber in the Anglo-
Saxon World’ conference hosted at the Institute of Archaeology at University
College London in November 2009, organized by the editors. The aim of the
conference was to bring together a range of specialists working in a variety of
fields throughout Anglo-Saxon studies and in other areas whose work engaged
with woodlands, trees, or timber. A specific aim of the conference was to
address the issue of what an interdisciplinary approach to the study of trees in
early medieval England might reveal about how the Anglo-Saxons thought
about and utilized them on various different levels. To this end, the conference
featured speakers from a variety of different backgrounds, including historical
geographers (John Baker, Della Hooke, Oliver Rackham), archaeologists and
experts in woodworking (Martin Comey, Richard Darrah, Damian Goodburn,
Carole Morris), buildings archaeologists (Mark Gardiner, Michael Shapland),
historians and archaeologists of religion and landscape (John Blair, Sarah
Semple, Jane Sidell), and specialists in comparative religious literature and
symbolism (Michael Bintley, Clive Tolley). To a certain degree this volume
represents the proceedings of that conference, although not all speakers were
ultimately able to produce chapters for the volume, and three chapters have been
added by Jennifer Neville, Michael Bintley, and Pirkko Koppinen to bring literary
balance to the discussion elsewhere of objects, materials, and landscapes.
The aim has been to produce a work representative of contemporary
scholarly perspectives on trees and timber in the Anglo-Saxon world. The
2 Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland
interdisciplinary emphasis of this volume is based on the belief that correspond-

ences between written and material sources, be they objects or landscapes, are
indicative of a ‘deeper level of cultural structure and practice’, as John Hines has
put it—‘whether, superficially, they coincide or not’.1 This is to say that the
study of any aspect of woodland, trees, and timber in the Anglo-Saxon world
will be enriched by a heightened awareness of the complex interrelationships
between practical application and religious belief, architectural utility and liter-
ary conceit, or functionality and symbolism. None of these categories is mutually
exclusive, of course; human experience inevitably lies somewhere between.
Modern Westerners rarely appreciate their reliance upon sustainable forestry
and woodsmanship to anything like the same extent as the Anglo-Saxons did,
and as many present-day societies still do. There may be some general aware-
ness of the value of trees, but the distance at which most stand from the means
and methods of production effectively severs this connection. This was not a
luxury that could be afforded in the Anglo-Saxon world. The woodlands of
England were not only deeply rooted in every aspect of early English material
culture, as a source of heat and light, food and drink, wood and timber for the
construction of tools, weapons, and materials, but also in their spiritual life,
symbolic vocabulary, and sense of connection to the beliefs of those who had
gone before them. To conceive of the Anglo-Saxons as being separate from their
woodlands, in this sense, is unthinkable; the relationship between culture and
environment was inseparable. It is this gap in our experiential understanding of
this relationship which this volume aims to address.
In recent years early medieval scholarship has witnessed renewed attention to
wood, trees, and woodland. Whilst this is by no means limited to Anglo-Saxon
studies, and must stem in part from a growing interest in landscape and an
increasing awareness of our effect on the well-being of our planet, the articles
collected here all suggest a compellingly close relationship between the Anglo-
Saxons and their woodland. In an area of study long befuddled by pseudo-
scholarship and fanciful mythologizing about druids, wizards, green men, and
the like, the chapters here open doors for legitimate scholarly enquiry. The
editors and authors hope that these chapters will be read and appreciated
both as studies in their own right, and as an encouragement to further research
in the various allied fields with which they engage.
Existing Scholarship
Trees and Timber as Material Culture
Wood and timber were such a fundamental aspect of Anglo-Saxon material
culture that it is all the more unfortunate that they survive so poorly in the
archaeological record. Waterlogged sites such as London’s medieval waterfront2
1 2
Hines 2011, 974. Milne 1992.
Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World 3
and the Coppergate excavation in York3 remain notable exceptions. Archaeolo-

gists have privileged the description and interpretation of durable materials such
as gold coins and human bone, often overlooking the wood and timber that
would have been far more familiar in the practice of Anglo-Saxon daily life.
Nevertheless, a remarkable array of wooden artefacts survives from the period,
from flutes4 to furniture,5 board-games6 to buckets.7 The structures of some
buildings are also known, notably the extant stave-built church at Greensted
(Essex),8 the excavated lower part of a mill at Tamworth (Staffordshire),9 and
sizeable fragments of structures from London10 and York.11 There are several
useful summaries of the range and nature of this material, which need not be
rehearsed here,12 and new material is constantly coming to light.13 Wood and
timber will instead be considered here in the context of the wider study of Anglo-
Saxon material culture.
Wood and Timber in the Ritual of Everyday Life

The interpretation of Anglo-Saxon wood and timber has traditionally been
concerned with craftsmanship and technology, and the practical functions of
buildings and objects.14 This is valuable work, but there have been few attempts
to engage with wood and timber as meaningfully imbued material culture,
informative about wider aspects of Anglo-Saxon society. Where wooden mater-
ial culture occurs in explicitly ‘ritual’ contexts—such as graves—there is a far
greater willingness to explore interpretations beyond the immediately prac-
tical.15 Where it is found in domestic contexts, its symbolic potential is typically
ignored: it can be taken for granted in our readings of the past.
Wood and timber were integral to the practice of Anglo-Saxon daily life, but
their interpretation has often been uncritically structured by an often arbitrary
modern distinction between ritual and domestic spheres. This is found in
3 4
Morris 2000. Richardson 1959, 84–5.
5 6
e.g. Speake 1989. Morris 2000, 23, 50–1.
7
Summarized in Cook 2004.
8
The church represents Britain’s earliest known standing timber building (Hakon et al. 1979);
dendrochronology now indicates a construction date of 1063 1100 (Tyers 1996).
9
Rahtz and Meeson 1992.
10
Milne 1992; Goodburn 1993.
11
Hall 2002.
12
Wilson 1976; essays in McGrail 1982; Leahy 2003; Hather 2007; Biggam 2011.
13
e.g. the Pyx Door at Westminster Abbey has now been dated by dendrochronology to 1042 1065
(Rodwell et al. 2006). Unfortunately, the importance of existing material is not always recognized: the
original 1053 roof structure of Odda’s Chapel, Deerhurst (Gloucestershire) is thought to have survived
until its removal in 1963 (Currie 1983).
14
e.g. Hewett 1980; Morris 2000. Wilson (1976), for example, dedicates just over a page to describ-
ing timber objects but five to carpentry tools and techniques. This descriptive and technological approach
also characterizes the more recent summaries (this chapter, n. 12).
15
See for example Stoodley’s discussion of spears and male identity in early Anglo-Saxon graves
(Stoodley 1999, esp. 29), and Kitzinger’s classic study of the late-seventh-century timber reliquary coffin
of St Cuthbert (Kitzinger 1956).
Durkheim’s early contention that ‘man’s notion of the sacred is always and
everywhere separated from his notion of the profane’.16 If everyday objects,
craft production, agriculture, and the exploitation of raw materials can be
explained in practical terms—so the unstated argument runs—why complicate
the issue with social meaning or ritual practice? In recent years, prehistoric
archaeology has sought to contest this outlook, positing that the symbolic and
the ritual were in fact an extension of daily living, arising from the practices and
objects of everyday life.17
These ideas are now being applied to the study of Anglo-Saxon wooden
material culture. Domestic halls may have been focal places of pre-Christian
cult activity; their form and internal arrangements have been seen as expres-
sions of the social ideologies of their builders.18 At the mid–late Anglo-Saxon
settlement at Bishopstone (Sussex), a ninth-century cellared timber tower con-
tained a hoard of twenty-five iron objects, including hinges, locks, and agricul-
tural tools. Deposited between the dismantling of the tower and the backfilling
of the cellar, it was interpreted as a termination deposit marking the ‘death’ and
‘burial’ of the tower. The hoard was analogous to grave-goods, and may have
referred to aspects of the economy and wealth of the Bishopstone estate.19
There is no suggestion that this tower was a shrine or a church, but it may
nevertheless have been invested with ‘ritual’ significance whilst fulfilling its role
as a domestic timber structure.
In this volume, John Baker’s survey of the depth and subtlety of timber
building materials in Anglo-Saxon place-names provides a window onto a
vanished landscape of locally distinctive structures and techniques.20 Similarly,
Mark Gardiner seeks to move away from what he terms the ‘mud-and-wood’
view of certain Anglo-Saxon buildings through a fresh appreciation of their
meticulous layout and careful construction. Thus, the everyday practice of
carpentry and joinery is transposed into an eloquent demonstration of the
wealth and power of the Anglo-Saxon elite.
Turning to artefacts, both Jennifer Neville and Michael Bintley go beyond the
use of the tenth-century Exeter Book riddles as a catalogue of ephemeral
objects, emphasizing the riddles’ potential to shed light on how these objects
were perceived in daily life. More significantly, Neville contends that the
absence of single solutions for these riddles indicates the mutability of these
16
Durkheim (2001 [1912], 39), emphasis added.
17
Brück 1999; Bradley 2002; 2003, esp. 28–36 and 119–20; Insoll 2004, esp. 16–17. In an Anglo-
Saxon context, see now Semple 2010.
18
Hamerow 2002, 52; Hamerow 2006, esp. 29–30; Walker 2010, drawing upon Herschend 1998.
19
Thomas 2008, esp. 382–93.
20
A related discussion is that of Reynolds and Langlands (2011). The Anglo-Saxon traveller would
have perceived a ‘nuanced grammar of landscape’, comprising the accumulated physical characteristics
and ideological meanings of natural and man-made features and monuments. Thus, social meaning
cannot be divorced from the bend in a lane, the crookedness of a tree, or—as here—the use of a
distinctive type of beam in the construction of a house.
objects’ meanings and identities, and the potential for one object to act as the
metaphor for another.21 An everyday object such as a lathe becomes a gallows, a
battering ram, or the cross of Crucifixion. This is a welcome reminder to be
wary of fixed classifications—such as ‘domestic’ or ‘ritual’—in our study of
Anglo-Saxon wooden material culture. Also drawing upon the Exeter Book,
Pirkko Koppinen makes a parallel argument that the meanings and images
encoded within an Anglo-Saxon riddle would have been based on the poet’s
daily experience of his or her material world. As such, it is only through the
study of surviving material culture, which may be banally domestic in origin
and usage, that the potential of these poems can be realized as insights into
Anglo-Saxon world views.
The Materiality of Wood

Over the past decade, the anthropologist Tim Ingold has sought to engage
material culture studies with the materiality of the objects with which it
deals.22 The properties of stone, ivory, and wood cannot be divorced from the
objects into which they are crafted, and yet finished objects dominate academic
discourse at the expense of their materials and crafting. Wood, for example, is a
living material which—particularly if unseasoned—will continue to warp and
shape itself long after it has been made into a ‘finished’ object.23 It is not an inert
substrate onto which human culture is imposed, and the choice of tree species,
tree, and branch will affect the craftsman at every stage of production.24 Ingold
rightly cautions against seeking an objective list of innate material properties,
since these properties will be experienced differently from craftsman to crafts-
man, and from society to society.25 Modern, Western perceptions of trees and
timber will differ from those of the Anglo-Saxons, whose outlook can be
explored through the type of interdisciplinary study advocated by this volume.
Archaeologists are beginning to engage with the insight that materials as well
as objects can be meaningful.26 However, discussion of the materiality of Anglo-
Saxon wooden material culture has rarely progressed beyond the physical
properties of different species of tree.27 It has been realized that alder, for
example, was favoured for bowls and cups due to its suitability for lathe-turning
and resilience to extremes of temperature, whereas the lightness and durability
of ash made it ideal for tool handles and spears.28 An exception to this limited
21
A useful related study is that of Tilley (1999).
22
Ingold 2000, 339–48; 2007.
23
Cultural perceptions of wood as a living material are discussed in Rival 1998, 22.
24
This point is also made by Martin Comey, this volume, 109–15.
25
Ingold 2007, 12–14. See now Coneller 2011, 4–7.
26
Coneller 2011.
27
e.g. Watson’s (1994) identification of lime, maple, alder, poplar, willow, birch, beech, and oak in the
construction of Anglo-Saxon shields.
28
Biggam 2011, 40–1.
perspective is John Blair’s recent discussion of the development of Anglo-Saxon

fonts.29 Until the end of the eleventh century, the great majority would have
been made from timber, adapted from domestic or agricultural vessels such as
buckets and troughs. Thereafter they came to be made of stone. He interprets this
process of lithicization as a movement away from the local, ‘quasi-vernacular’
Christianity of the earlier period towards the institutionalized parochial system
of the mid-eleventh century and later.
In this volume, Martin Comey explores the social significance of the eighteen
wooden drinking vessels from the princely burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo
(Suffolk). The assemblage consists of six maple flasks, eight walnut cups and a
larger tub, and three buckets made from yew. He suggests that the wood used
for each type of vessel was selected for its practical and aesthetic properties, its
rarity and difficulty of manufacture, and suitability for different drinks. This
may in turn have been linked to particular ritual or spiritual meanings attached
to different species of tree, and to the suitability of these vessels’ use in the
afterlife. Michael Shapland notes the scarcity of evidence for Anglo-Saxon
domestic stone buildings despite the prevalence of stone in contemporary
church construction. He suggests that timber from living trees was perceived
as suitable for everyday life, whereas dead stone was reserved for the construc-
tion of churches, town walls, and funerary monuments due to its various
associations with Rome, death, and eternity.30 Additionally, both chapters
question modern assumptions about the value of different materials, particularly
the inherent inferiority of wood and timber compared to stone, metal, and glass.31
Natural and Artificial in Wooden Material Culture
Wooden material culture was ubiquitous in Anglo-Saxon society, and trees were
prominent both in the landscape and in most aspects of daily life. They were
exploited for everything from food and fuel to medicine, transport, and
weapons.32 Anglo-Saxon paganism was rooted in the natural world,33 and
sacred trees were prominently incorporated into Christian practice.34 This
raises the question of where the natural world ends and the artificial world
of material culture begins: where a log becomes a boat, a branch a rod, or a
tree a post in the ground.35 Natural places and things may be significant to
29
Blair 2010.
30
See also Cohen 1999, 5.
31
See also Mark Gardiner, this volume, 47–8.
32
Biggam 2011.
33
Semple 2010 is a useful recent summary.
34
Hooke; Blair; Bintley, ‘Sandbach Cross’, this volume, 231–47, 188–91, and 222–5. In this they were
far from alone amongst north and west European societies; see Tolley, this volume, 177–84.
35
‘Why should the material world include only either things encountered in situ, within the land-
scape, or things already transformed by human activity, into artefacts? Why exclude things like [stones],
which have been recovered and removed but not otherwise transformed? And where, in this division
between landscape and artefacts, would we place all the diverse forms of animal, plant, fungal and
past societies and social practices even where their outward form remains
unmodified.36
Appreciation of the artificiality of our distinction between natural and artificial
material culture is not new to the study of Anglo-Saxon material culture, but it is
often left unstated. The unmodified pebbles and stones placed in the eyes and
mouth of certain bodies should be no less considered as ‘grave-goods’ than rings
or coins.37 Gallows were potent manifestations of Anglo-Saxon royal power and
judicial authority. Usually made from timber posts,38 a galhtreowe (‘gallows-
tree’) occurs in a set of charter-bounds dated 956,39 indicating that gallows did
not have to be artificially constructed to convey their powerful symbolism.
However, due in part to their poor survival, trees and wood have rarely been
considered.
In this volume, Della Hooke examines the evidence for the survival of sacred
trees into the Anglo-Saxon Christian period and their incorporation into Chris-
tian practice. These were ordinary trees, but had been planted or singled out for
devotion, to be appropriated or destroyed like any other form of material
culture. John Blair also draws upon Anglo-Saxon traditions of ritually signifi-
cant trees, their potential identification using the place-name element beām, and
evidence for the construction or retention of these ‘trees’ as dead posts—
stapolas—in the ground. Michael Bintley’s discussion of the ‘Ancestors of
Christ’ panel on one of the Sandbach Crosses draws attention to the staffs
borne by the depicted figures, and traces their origin in the rods and standards
of pre-Christian royal and religious practice. These objects may have been
carved rods or natural branches, and they drew their significance from the
sacred trees venerated by pagans and Christians alike. The fluidity of the
boundaries between timber artefact and living tree is also explored in Bintley’s
discussion of the Exeter Book’s Riddle 21, The Dream of the Rood, and the
Æcerbot Charm.
Trees and Woodland in the Anglo-Saxon Landscape

The early medieval landscape of England was densely wooded in many places,
yet not so heavily as was once thought. Developments in the study of woodlands
and their ecology over the course of the twentieth century led to various myths
being dispelled about the extent of surviving British wildwood. These myths
have been replaced with a far more nuanced understanding of how landscapes
were inherited, managed, and transformed in the early medieval period. As
bacterial life? Like artefacts, these things might be attributed formal properties of design, yet they have
not been made but have grown’: Ingold 2007, 4. See also Rival 1998, 2; Coneller 2011, 29–75.
36
Bradley 2000. This has been applied to the Anglo-Saxon landscape by Semple (2010, 24–5).
37
Surveyed in Hadley and Buckberry 2005, 138–40.
38
Four examples are known from excavation (Reynolds 2009, 157–9).
39
Sawyer 1968, 592; Kelly 2009, 234–7; Reynolds 2009, 223.
Oliver Rackham notes—in what remains the standard work on trees and
woodland in the British landscape—‘most of the English landscape existed in
the time of the Anglo-Saxons, but was not necessarily created by them’.40 An
understanding of the complexity of this process, which is still far from being
comprehensively understood, has not yet filtered through to many fields of early
medieval studies, despite the realization that the romantic picture of colonizing
settlers carving out niches in primordial forest is as outdated as the notion of a
‘Dark Age’. The individual contributions of historical geographers, place-name
experts, and other specialists whose quiet revolution has contributed to this
reassessment are too numerous to adequately represent here. It is worth noting
that their frequently excellent work sometimes appears in publications not
necessarily well-known to Anglo-Saxonists, and is often focused on localized
and highly specific contexts. This can make it difficult to maintain a clear
perspective on current thinking. Aside from synthesizing overviews and sup-
porting literature on British trees and woodland offered by Rackham and
others,41 specific place-name studies have a vital role to play in advancing our
knowledge of how trees and woodlands were identified and used in the land-
scape; the chapters by John Baker and John Blair in this volume are but two
examples.42 Much work in this field and its adjuncts builds on Margaret
Gelling’s classic studies of place-names in the British landscape, which have
helped a broad readership of specialists and non-specialists alike to appreciate
some of the complex ways in which the early English made use of and managed
their woodlands, and that their methods did not remain static over time.43 The
most recent complete study of this material, which also builds on a series of
major publications on landscapes and charters,44 remains Hooke 2010 at the
time of writing.45 This study, like the present volume, is amongst the first to
insist on the value of interpreting the relationship between the Anglo-Saxons
and their woodlands by means of an interdisciplinary approach that also seeks
to account for religion, folklore, and literature.46 What is perhaps most evident
from the development of scholarship on trees in Anglo-Saxon landscapes over
the past century has been the increased recognition of the inadequacies of
blanket approaches to the British landscape. General trends are most valuable
when understood in the context of specific human interactions,47 where the
40
Rackham 1990, 57; first published in 1976. See also Hooke 2010, 113–37.
41
Rackham 1990; Muir 2006; Muir 2008.
42
See Baker and Blair, this volume, 78–103, 186–210.
43
Gelling 1984, 188–229; Gelling 1997.
44
e.g. Hooke 1981; Hooke 1983; Hooke 1990; Hooke 1994; Hooke 1998; Hooke 1999; Hooke
2000; Hooke 2008.
45
Hooke 2010.
46
See also Bintley 2009.
47
A point forcefully made by Ian Hodder (e.g. Hodder 1987) and by others: see Trigger 1989,
348–50.
latter can be determined, with a due awareness of the complex and multilayered
ontological relationships between trees and humans.
Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England

That trees were venerated in Anglo-Saxon England throughout the period is
becoming fairly well established, though the contexts in which this took place
are decidedly more difficult to plot, whether they were pre-Christian, Christian,
folk-magical, or other. Binary distinctions often made in the twentieth century
between pre- and post-conversion practices, favouring either the ‘primitive’
Germanic or the ‘civilized’ Christian,48 have undergone a much-needed
reassessment in recent scholarship, encouraging a more refined and self-reflexive
approach to the study of belief in early medieval England.49 Trees, as universal
emblems of the natural world, have fallen prey to the designs of those who have
sought to either promote or obliterate interest in pre-Christian belief, both in
ancient and modern times, and in religious and scholarly contexts.50 Tolley’s
recent study of shamanism in Norse myth and magic literature has, in addition
to advancing various important reinterpretations of evidence on this subject,
also demonstrated both the transferability of this symbolism and the problems
encountered when this transferability is presumed, rather than subjected to
rigorous analysis.51 Like many aspects of the natural world, trees have played
such an essential, basic role in so many systems of belief that numerous aspects
of their symbolism are universalizable,52 a position which recent studies by
Hooke and Cusack have reinforced.53 This makes it all the more difficult for
those who have become accustomed to categorizing in terms of similarity and
difference to recognize their value in helping to understand processes of reli-
gious change in their own right, but simultaneously all the more rewarding.
John Blair’s and Michael Bintley’s studies of trees in this volume as agents of
religious transition are examples of attempts to show just this, though the same
idea has also been explored elsewhere in some detail.54 One of the most
significant adjunct areas of study that has seen development in recent years by
Blair and Semple (amongst others)55 has been that of free-standing posts of the
kind seen at Yeavering. These, and other landscape features like them, which
have been attributed religious significance since they were first excavated,56
have been seen as precursors to wooden crosses of the kind raised by Oswald
at Heavenfield, and those later wooden preaching crosses which may in turn
48 49
e.g. Stanley 1975, 1. Carver et al. 2010.
50 51
Russell 1979. Tolley 2009.
52
Davies 1988; Bloch 1998.
53
Hooke 2010; Cusack, 2011.
54
Blair and Bintley, this volume, 186–210 and 211–27. See also Tolley 1992; Tolley 2009; North
1997; Bintley 2009; Bintley 2011a; Bintley 2011b.
55
Semple 2010; Semple 2011; Semple (forthcoming); also Blair 1995.
56
Hope-Taylor 1977; Meaney 1995.
have preceded stone crosses such as the Ruthwell and Bewcastle monuments.57
Much work remains to be done here, however, and this is by no means a simple
or agreed chronology. Recent work, in particular, has highlighted the import-
ance of understanding landscape features like these in relation to their land-
scape settings and experiential value, as Semple has highlighted.58 A thorough
assessment of the role played by trees and posts in the landscape, in addition to
those aspects of trees in the archaeological record that have been inadequately
studied (such as tree throw holes), must be actively pursued if we are to
understand all that they have to offer.59 This process may be most revealing,
as this volume demonstrates, if it is conducted as part of, or with an awareness
of, the need for a corresponding re-evaluation of other early medieval texts,
whether these are documentary sources, manuscript illustrations, stone sculp-
ture, or artefacts.
Trees and Woodland in Anglo-Saxon Artistry

Trees and woodland have not yet become the centre of their own scholarly
discourse about the artistic achievements of the Anglo-Saxons, which is some-
what strange given their prevalence in this material. One of the period’s most
famous works, The Dream of the Rood, features a speaking tree, and inanimate
wooden objects that speak are not unusual elsewhere in Old English litera-
ture.60 Representations of the natural world in Anglo-Saxon art and literature
have long played their part in helping scholars to interpret (or misinterpret)
religious and other cultural practices.61 In this capacity, naturally occurring
features and events—whether trees, bodies of water, or inclement weather—
have been seen as serving a subordinate role to the more recognizable realm of
human experience. In one of the first studies to engage with this issue directly,
Jennifer Neville has argued that this pattern does emerge from the literature in
the eternal human struggle for survival against harsh and unforgiving elemental
forces.62 Trees as a specific focus of study have emerged from this milieu in the
last decade or so, and often in contexts which have been informed by work in
other fields. At the turn of the millennium a collection of essays edited by Carole
Biggam that originated in the first Anglo-Saxon Plant-Names Survey (ASPNS)
symposium, set a benchmark for the interdisciplinary study of plant-life in early
medieval England.63 In that volume, Jane Hawkes demonstrated the enthusi-
asm with which the Anglo-Saxons had embraced art styles derived from the
57 58
Bintley 2009; Hooke 2010. Semple 2010.
59
e.g. Reynolds and Langlands 2011.
60
Wilson 1992, esp. 22–43 and 173–80, provides a good introduction to this topic. See e.g. Neville,
Bintley, and Koppinen on the Exeter Book riddles, this volume, 122–43, 144–57, and 158–74.
61
The introduction to Beowulf in Chambers (1959) is a fine example of this.
62
Neville 1999.
63
Biggam 2000. For further information on the ASPNS, see <www.arts.gla.ac.uk/STELLA/ihsl/
projects/plants.htm>.
Late Antique world that depicted plant-life,64 and Jennifer Neville sounded a
cautionary note about the problems of relying on Old English poetry as a source
for plant names.65
The point at which the Anglo-Saxons distinguished between a plant and a
tree remains to be established,66 and this distinction may have been far more
loosely defined than modern English interpretations that trees are reliant on
possession of a ‘woody main stem or trunk’.67 Groundwork for the study of
trees as distinct from plants has been reinforced in recent years by interdisciplin-
ary study, and a wide range of trees in Anglo-Saxon and Norse art and literature
has been considered by Hooke, Tolley, and Bintley in the context of landscape,
religion, and ecology.68
The chapters offered in this volume by these authors aim to build on the work
that has been carried out on trees so far, and all suggest ways in which this may
be advanced by future research, whether implicitly or explicitly. Once again, an
understanding of the complex role that trees played in Anglo-Saxon art and
literature can only benefit here from cross-cultural analysis, in an area of early
medieval studies that is still in its infancy.
This Volume
The chapters in this volume are divided into three parts: ‘Timber in Anglo-
Saxon Building Practice’, ‘Perceptions of Wood and Wooden Objects’, and
‘Trees and Woodland in Anglo-Saxon Belief ’. The first three chapters (by
Gardiner, Shapland, and Baker) focus on the use of timber in the construction
of buildings, albeit from three different perspectives which demonstrate the
ubiquity of timber in Anglo-Saxon buildings and the skill of the builders, the
contrast between wood and stone architecture in early medieval England, and
the Anglo-Saxons’ characterization of their landscapes with a rich diversity of
trees and wooden structures. Michael Shapland begins with an investigation
of the relationship between wood and stone which highlights the need to
overturn long-established assumptions that wooden buildings were essentially
inferior to their stone counterparts. This chapter proposes the alternative possi-
bility that the division between timber and stone buildings in, respectively,
secular and religious sites may represent their distinct functions: the one being
a place for the living, whose perishable timbers shadow the lives of humans
clustered beneath their rafters, whilst the other, the house of God and the
temporal locus of the eternal Church, is fittingly constructed from eternal
stone. Continuing in this vein, Mark Gardiner discusses the discrepancy
64 65
Hawkes 2000. Neville 2000.
66
The term ‘tree’ itself is a pan-cultural construct with no ecological basis (discussed in Ellen 1998,
esp. 68–75).
67
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘trunk’, sense 1.
68
Hooke 2010; Tolley 2009; Bintley 2009; Bintley 2011a.
between modern interpretations of Anglo-Saxon buildings which have empha-

sized a crude lack of sophistication and those which have supposed their lofty
grandeur. As he demonstrates, many Anglo-Saxon builders were demonstrably
capable of a degree of skilled craftsmanship which is only now being evaluated
on its own terms. One of the most striking characteristics of this new approach
is that it does not seek to dissect Anglo-Saxon buildings using an imposed and
arbitrary framework of values, but rather to construct an authentic system by
which to appreciate their character, seeking the terms of this meaning from the
buildings themselves. Concluding this reassessment of the role of timber in
Anglo-Saxon architecture, John Baker offers an insightful overview of the
place-name evidence for specific sites devoted to the production of wood for
construction and manufacture. Baker’s reading reveals a highly nuanced under-
standing in early medieval England of those places where one might find timber,
and an accordingly subtle appreciation of the role played by timber in its
environmental and architectural fabric.
The second part of this book engages with the Anglo-Saxons’ perception of
wood and wooden objects, in four chapters (by Comey, Neville, Bintley, Kop-
pinen) which turn from its defining role in architecture to consider its use in the
manufacture of domestic and industrial objects and tools. Once again, each of
these studies offers its own challenge to the way in which wood has been
portrayed in previous scholarship. Martin Comey presents the first dedicated
study of the wooden drinking vessels in the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 assemblage,
which have long been overshadowed by the burial’s sumptuous metalwork. He
suggests that these objects were made from timber selected, and perhaps care-
fully cultivated, for aesthetic appeal, and that these objects were evidently
regarded as highly as those items which have more successfully maintained
their glister in the intervening centuries. As Comey establishes, this directly
contradicts many of our preconceptions about the perceived status of wooden
and metal objects in Anglo-Saxon England, and raises a number of serious
questions about the ways in which scholarship has often privileged the imper-
ishable. Old English literature is frequently used as a means by which to uncover
how people thought about and used these wooden objects in early medieval
England, sometimes without much thought being given to the nature of the
texts from which this information is derived. Jennifer Neville addresses some of
the difficulties involved in attempting to reconstruct and interpret these items
using tantalizing clues from the Exeter Book riddles. However tempting it may
be to attempt an imaginative reconstruction of wooden objects based on the
details they present, it is wise to remember that an essential aspect of their
function lies in deception and making the familiar seem strange. This said, as
Michael Bintley argues, they can still provide an invaluable means of under-
standing the various symbolic networks associated with woodland, trees, and
timber in the Anglo-Saxon world if their due limitations and possibilities are
critically evaluated. Bintley draws on a riddle, a poem, and a magical charm, to
show how each makes use of the common idea of a tree that plays a significant
role in a process of regeneration, perhaps due to some retained agency stem-
ming from its woodland origins. Pirkko Koppinen offers a case study which
challenges the accepted reading of another Exeter Book riddle by demonstrat-
ing the process by which the reader may use extra-textual material in order to
reach the more satisfying solution of ‘wood’ via knowledge of wood, wood-
lands, and woodworking. This chapter, whilst also cautious of placing the
burden of a single solution on this riddle, cogently demonstrates the need for
a two-way dialogue between material and documentary studies. As with the rest
of the chapters in this section, it explores some of the problems and possibilities
that wood presents for those attempting to bridge the gap in understanding
between the early medieval world and our own, especially for a material as
ubiquitous, shapable, and yet short-lived as wood.
The final part of the volume examines current approaches to the part played
by trees and woodland in the various belief systems of early medieval England.
Four chapters have been assembled, broadly according to the chronology of
their subject matter, to evaluate contemporary perspectives on trees and wood-
land in relation to the religions of the Anglo-Saxons, beginning with Clive
Tolley’s assessment of the relevant cultural and mythological backgrounds to
the question of whether or not the Anglo-Saxons may have been familiar with
the concept of a ‘world tree’ analogous to the Norse Yggdrasill. Tolley’s argu-
ment also serves as a reminder of the complex pluralism of pre-Christian beliefs,
especially when they are associated with symbols as readily accessible and
transferrable as trees. He suggests that in searching too earnestly for a single
unifying concept we are all the more likely to be misled. As John Blair notes,
whilst discussion of the religious and ritual dimension of trees is alive and well
in contemporary scholarship, finding examples of these holy trees (in the form
of bēam place-names in the landscape) can be rather more difficult. In suggest-
ing that Bampton in Oxfordshire presents one such possibility, Blair endeavours
to bridge the problematic gap between nebulous concepts surrounding sacred
trees and evidence from Anglo-Saxon England that can be more rigorously
assessed. Michael Bintley’s second chapter attempts a similar process, connect-
ing sacred trees, pillars, and rods represented in Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture
with their parallel function in the compilation of the Junius manuscript and
Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Bintley argues that Anglo-Saxon Christians were
encouraged to think of the role of sacred trees, posts, and rods in the religion of
their heathen forebears as precursors to the cross of Christ. This drew upon the
same Christian tradition which had similarly recast the sacred trees, posts, and
rods of Judaic Scripture as antecedents to the cross. Della Hooke concludes with
a wide-ranging overview of some of the various ways in which pre-Christian
religious practices associated with trees were either eradicated by, or absorbed
into, the framework of Anglo-Saxon Christianity during the conversion period.
Whilst Hooke argues that the Church gave heathen customs like these relatively
short shrift, and in many ways the various prohibitions against tree worship
which arose in the post-conversion period are unsurprising, it is also clear that
many religious practices associated with trees underwent the sort of change
which allowed them to become assimilated into the teachings of the Anglo-
Saxon Church.
Into the Woods

This book is about attempting to understand and appreciate the importance
of wood in all its uses in Anglo-Saxon culture. It calls for a re-evaluation of the
status that has been allotted to the wood that was used to construct objects that
are small enough to hold in one’s hand and the timber that was employed to
provide shelter in the feasting halls of kings. To continue to think of wood only as
the material of low-status objects is at best negligent, and at worst intellectually
unsound. In this volume, we see that things made from trees were recognized
as having had their origins in the forest, emphasizing the links between the
constructed wooden world of the Anglo-Saxons and the natural environment
surrounding them. These links profoundly affected the way in which the Anglo-
Saxons expressed their relationship with the landscape, in terms of place-names,
the organization of settlements, and the way in which they conducted their
religious observances. These beliefs were so integral to the orthodoxies of
Anglo-Saxon society that they firmly resisted, and in fact came to strongly influ-
ence, the development of various aspects of social, cultural, architectural, and
religious change throughout the period. Acknowledgement of the significance of
these beliefs in early medieval studies is long overdue, and it is of great importance
that they be accorded due respect and attention if we are to hope to understand
the character of the Anglo-Saxons’ relationship with their world.
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Stoodley, N. (1999), The Spindle and the Spear: A Critical Enquiry into the Construc-
tion and Meaning of Gender in the Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Rite, BAR, British
Series, 288 (Oxford: John and Erica Hedges).
Thomas, G. (2008), ‘The Symbolic Lives of Late Anglo-Saxon Settlements: A Cellared
Structure and Iron Hoard from Bishopstone, East Sussex’, Archaeological Journal,
165: 334–98.
Tilley, C. (1999), Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell).
Tolley, C. (1995), ‘Oswald’s Tree’, in T. Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen, and
A. A. MacDonald (eds.), Pagans and Christians: The Interplay Between Christian
Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Groningen:
Egbert Forsten), 149–73.
Tolley, C. (2009), Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic, 2 vols., Folklore Fellows’
Communications, 296–7 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia).
Trigger, B. (1989), A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Tyers, I. (1996), Tree-Ring Analysis of Timbers from the Stave Church at Greensted,
Essex, Ancient Monuments Laboratory Reports, 20, no. 14/96 (London: English
Heritage).
Walker, J. (2010), ‘In the Hall’, in M. Carver, A. Sanmark, and S. Semple (eds.), Signals
of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited (Oxford: Oxbow),
83–102.
Watson, J. (1994), ‘Wood Usage in Anglo-Saxon Shields’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in
Archaeology and History, 7: 35–48.
Wilson, D. (1992), Anglo-Saxon Paganism (London: Routledge).
Wilson, D. M. (1976), ‘Craft and Industry’, in D. M. Wilson (ed.), The Archaeology of
Anglo-Saxon England (London: Methuen & Co), 253–82.
PA RT I
TIMBER IN ANGLO-SAXON
BUILDING PRACTICE
2
Meanings of Timber and Stone in
Anglo-Saxon Building Practice
Michael G. Shapland
(Institute of Archaeology, University College London)
Listen to the merit which is acquired by the man who, in the name of
any Deva, or for the attainment of any desire, builds and consecrates
and gives away a temple. He who gives away a thatched temple shall
live in the region of the Devas for ten thousand million years. He who
gives away a brick-built temple shall live a hundred times that period,
and he who gives away a stone-built temple ten thousand times the
last-mentioned period.
The Tantra of the Great Liberation 13: 23–5.1
Introduction
It has long been recognized that timber was the standard building material of
the Anglo-Saxon world. Surveys of Anglo-Saxon buildings have been domin-
ated by timber halls with usually little more than a brief mention made of the
slender archaeological and documentary evidence that exists for stone domestic
structures.2 The implicit assumption is that this paucity of evidence is simply a
gap in our knowledge which future excavation will fill. This may indeed be the
case, but until that happens it is worth discussing why it is that there is so very
little evidence for masonry domestic buildings in a society so rich in stone
churches. After all, the durability of stone might lead us to expect such buildings
to be over-represented in the archaeological record. It is therefore first worth
briefly examining the present archaeological and documentary evidence for
Anglo-Saxon stone domestic buildings, divided into settlement sites, lordly
buildings, and urban defences. Then an attempt will be made to explain why
1 2
Avalon 1972, 297–8. e.g. Rahtz 1976.
22 Michael G. Shapland
timber seems to have typified the secular buildings, with stone being confined to
the religious buildings of Anglo-Saxon society.
Survey of the evidence

Settlement sites
Only ten of the hundreds of settlement sites that have been excavated in
England from this period have revealed masonry domestic structures
(Fig. 2.1). At Mawgan Porth (Cornwall) three stone ‘courtyard’ houses were
occupied from the late-ninth century to the later-eleventh century. This site was
characterized by distinctively local pottery-types and is thought to have been
outside Anglo-Saxon influence.3 Thirty miles to the south-west, at Gunwalloe
on the Lizard Penninsula, a seventh- to tenth-century fishing and farming
settlement site was found in 2011.4 The excavated structure was characterized
by clay-bonded stone walls; as with Mawgan Porth, Gunwalloe is likely to have
been outside Anglo-Saxon influence. Also in Cornwall was the drystone settle-
ment at Gwithian (sixth to tenth century)5 and a probable mid-ninth- to mid-
eleventh-century stone house at Hellesvean.6 Of the remaining six sites, Simy
Folds (Co. Durham) is a small drystone-constructed settlement site on the
higher slopes of the Tees valley, occupied by perhaps three farming families
from the late-eighth to the late-eleventh centuries. The excavators suggest that
the site was of Scandinavian rather than Anglo-Saxon origin.7 At Ribblehead,
Lancashire, a mid- to late-ninth-century farmstead of three rubble-built struc-
tures was found which consisted of one large hall and two smaller structures,
one very poorly built.8 Bryants Gill on the south Cumbrian fells, remains
unpublished and conclusions are difficult to draw from the brief interim report.
A 10 5 m hall of eighth-century date was found, although it is unclear even
whether the building itself or just an area of the floor was stone built.9 On
Malham Moor in Cumbria two sites were excavated in the 1950s, but their
significance has only recently come to light. One, the ‘Priest’s House’, consists
of a single limestone building 7.35 by 5.5 m in size with walls 1.5 m thick, of
possible late-eighth- or early-ninth-century date.10 A mile to the south at Prior
Rakes a building of similar size and construction was uncovered, dated by coin
evidence to the ninth century.11 The final site, Green Shiel near Lindisfarne
(Northumberland), consists of a group of five buildings of mid- to late-ninth-
century date, probably a large farmstead, that were crudely built with stones
from the adjacent beach. They are thought to have been constructed in the
3
Bruce-Mitford 1997.
4
An interim report by the excavator, Imogen Wood, is available at: <www.mag.webeden.co.uk/
#/gunwalloe-excavations-2010/4543547825>.
5 6 7
Thomas 1957–8, 59–64. Guthrie 1952–3. Coggins et al. 1983.
8 9
King 1978. Dickinson 1985.
10 11
Raistrick 1962; King 2004, 337–8. King 2004, 338.
Timber and Stone in Anglo-Saxon Building Practice 23
Fig. 2.1. Settlement sites in England with excavated evidence for masonry domestic struc-
tures: (1) Green Shiel, Northumberland. (2) Simy Folds, Co. Durham. (3) Bryants Gill,
Cumbria. (4) Ribblehead, Lancashire. (5) The ‘Priest’s House’, Malham Moor, Cumbria.
(6) Prior Rakes, Malham Moor, Cumbria. (7) Mawgan Porth, Cornwall. (8) Hellesvean,
Cornwall. (9) Gunwalloe, Cornwall.
immediate aftermath of the departure of the monks from Holy Island, as local
materials were pragmatically used following the collapse of the exchange
infrastructure managed by the monastic community upon which the acquisition
of structural timber would have then depended.12
Overall, it seems that the evidence for Anglo-Saxon stone domestic structures
is confined to a few quite specific contexts. Of the three sites which have
been published, Green Shiel appears to have been built following the cessation
of Christian influence following the departure of the Lindisfarne monastic
12
O’Sullivan 1995, 78–88.
community. Simy Folds and Ribblehead have been seen as Scandinavian;13

together with Bryants Gill and the sites on Malham Moor they seem to
form a regional group in the relatively treeless uplands of the Cumbrian
region and were not part of the mainstream of Anglo-Saxon settlement
forms. The same argument can be made for the concentration of sites in
Cornwall. When this is set against the numerous early medieval settlement
sites excavated in England, timber must be seen as the overwhelming build-
ing material of Anglo-Saxon domestic settlement up to the Norman
Conquest.
Lordly buildings
The second context for domestic stone buildings in the pre-Conquest period is
on lordly or manorial sites. There are six of these. At Old Windsor (Berkshire),
the site of a royal palace known from the time of Edward the Confessor, the ex
situ stones from a probable ninth-century building were found. They were
interpreted as coming from a stone domestic building from an earlier phase of
the palace, but the site is unpublished and the basis for this interpretation is
unknown.14 This leaves five sites, two of which may in reality have been
ecclesiastical rather than secular. At Northampton a large hall was rebuilt in
stone in the early-ninth century. Initially interpreted as part of a royal palace,15
it is now thought to have been a monastic hall.16 In Winchester (Hampshire), St
Mary’s church was preceded by a stone building of probable ninth-century
date, interpreted as a secular building that was later turned into the church.17
However, this interpretation seems doubtful due to an adjacent cemetery of
seventh-century origin, suggesting a long-standing Christian presence on the
site. Beneath Eynsford Castle (Kent) was a rectangular stone building, pos-
sibly two stories in height but with nothing to indicate it was a tower. It
stands in a ditched and banked enclosure on the site of a later Norman castle,
and has therefore been interpreted as a late Anglo-Saxon hall, although it
could quite easily be Norman in date.18 The close proximity of a late Anglo-
Saxon cemetery also raises the possibility that it was a church. At Sulgrave
(Northamptonshire) a later-tenth-century timber hall was constructed with
a small stone cross-wing to the south.19 At Faccombe Netherton (Hamp-
shire) a small north/south-aligned hall with slender flint walls was built in
the mid-ninth century in close association with an aisled timber hall.20
13
Morris 1981; Richards 2004, 122.
14
Wilson and Hurst 1958, 183–5. This was the site of a minster (Blair 1985, 109), and the building
could easily have been a church (John Blair, pers. comm.).
15 16 17
Williams et al. 1985. Blair 1996. Biddle 1975, 312–13.
18 19 20
Horsman 1989. Davison 1977. Fairbrother 1990, 83–5, 103–5.
These last two examples provide the best evidence for non-ecclesiastical
lordly buildings constructed out of stone with a securely pre-Conquest date
in England.
At Sulgrave a building measuring 7.62 m by 3.66 m with walls around 0.8 m
thick was subsequently constructed to the north of the existing hall, probably in
the mid-eleventh century, potentially after the Conquest.21 Although the excav-
ator of the Sulgrave building suggested that it was a small stone hall, other
interpretations have been made, including that it was a timber building merely
erected on stone footings22 or that it was a tower.23 Pauline Stafford has further
suggested that it was a tower and church combined,24 a tower-nave church of
a type apparently not uncommon in the lordly residences of Anglo-Saxon
England.25 To these excavated examples can be added a single written source,
from Asser’s description of the deeds of King Alfred, which is outlined and
discussed below.
Urban defences
The third area where the Anglo-Saxons employed non-ecclesiastical stone was
in urban defences, although in the majority of cases this was within the context
of the repair or reconstruction of existing Roman masonry walls. Indeed, until
the late Anglo-Saxon period masonry defences only occurred where Roman
ones pre-existed.26 Following the pioneering work of Radford27 it is accepted
that the West Saxons and Mercians in particular rebuilt many of their hitherto
earth and timber defences in stone:28 the evidence for each site is summarized
below.
There are eight sites for which we can be confident of a pre-Conquest date for
the addition of stone defences. At South Cadbury (Somerset) the Iron Age
hillfort was briefly refortified as a burh with a church and a mint under
Æthelred the Unready in the early-eleventh century.29 At Hereford the existing
earthen bank was faced with stone prior to the town’s first murage grant of
1224. The excavator argued that this occurred in the early- to mid-tenth century
on the basis of stratified finds and associated radiocarbon dated material,30
a conclusion upheld in a recent reanalysis of the evidence.31 A stone wall was
added to the existing earthen rampart at Tamworth (Staffordshire), dated by a
single stratified coin to a terminus post quem of 975–8, and more precariously
to the tenth century by ‘Saxon coarse pottery’, now lost. A date in the reign of
21 22
Davison 1977. Richards 2004, 111.
23 24
Reynolds 1999, 129. Stafford 1985, 165.
25
Audouy et al. 1995; Shapland 2008. The late Anglo-Saxon stone tower at Portchester Castle,
Hampshire, was accompanied by a cemetery and almost certainly functioned as a church of this type
(Cunliffe 1976).
26 27 28
Turner 1970, 53. Radford 1970. Bassett 2008; Haslam 2009, 100.
29 30 31
Alcock 1995. Shoesmith 1982, 73. Bassett 2008, 182–91.
Æthelred II therefore seems likely.32 At Oldaport (Devon) a spur of land was

enclosed by a stone wall to form a defensive site, radiocarbon dated to the
period 873–1020.33 A stone wall was added to the earth defences of Winch-
combe (Gloucestershire), dated to the late-tenth or early-eleventh century by
uncertain archaeological and rather stronger documentary evidence.34 At
Christchurch (Dorset) a stone wall was probably added to the Alfredian
defences in the early-tenth century, dated by the excavator’s certainty that the
precarious unrevetted turves of the original circuit could not have lasted for
many decades after they were put in place.35 A stone wall was added to the
earth defences of tenth-century Southampton (Hampshire), securely dated by
stratified late Anglo-Saxon pottery.36 Finally, although the dating evidence for
the revetting of the defences of Oxford in stone can only be approximately
dated to between the early-tenth and early-thirteenth centuries,37 the tentative
dating of the extension of the defences at the north gate to the second half of the
eleventh century means that the stone revetting of the earlier defensive line is
likely to be of Anglo-Saxon date.38
To these seven sites can be added a further six for which the date of the
rebuilding in stone is less certain. A stone wall was added to the existing earthen
defences of Cricklade (Wiltshire) in the eleventh century, but there was no firm
evidence to assign a pre- or post-Conquest date.39 At Wareham (Dorset) the
earthen defences were rebuilt in stone, dated by sherds of pottery found
throughout the site sequence from the initial construction of the burh into the
post-Conquest period.40 The pottery therefore seems either to have been relict
from the first phase of the site or to be of sufficiently vague chronology to
prevent precise dating. The earth and timber defences of the Anglo-Saxon burh
of Wilton (Wiltshire) were replaced in stone, but no direct dating evidence for
this was found.41 At Lydford (Devon), the granite wall was added to the bank
some time before the construction of the late-twelfth-century castle.42 At Totnes
(Devon) the burh is known to have had a stone retaining wall added to it, which
remains undated.43 Finally, at Wallingford (Berkshire) the original Anglo-Saxon
earthen defences are described as having been furnished with a stone wall
during the pre-Conquest period, but the excavations remain unpublished.44
Overall, however, the evidence points towards a widespread rebuilding of
defences in stone in the late Anglo-Saxon period. The possible reasons for this
are discussed below.
32 33
Bassett 2008, 201–13. Rainbird 1998, 158; Rainbird and Druce 2004.
34 35
Bassett 2008, 213–26. Jarvis 1983; Haslam 2009.
36 37
Cottrell 2007. Munby and Wilkinson 2003, 147, 164.
38 39
Durham et al. 1983, 14–18. Radford 1970, 88–91.
40
Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England 1959, 127–31.
41 42 43
Andrews et al. 2000, 201. Saunders 1980, 15. Dyer and Allen 2004, 64.
44
Wilson and Hurst 1967, 262–3. The wall was not found in a later excavation of the town, at Kine
Croft (Simpson 1973, 14).
Explanations: Timber as the Material of Secular Society

The usual explanation for the tendency of Anglo-Saxons to build in timber is
one of technological inferiority or incompetence. Theirs was ‘a period when the
lesser arts triumphed’ due to a ‘falling-off of skills’45 which ‘reinforces the
picture of Western decline’ in the post-Roman period.46 As recently as 2003
timber was considered as a ‘primitive’ medieval material indicative of unskilled
labour.47 It is now recognized that we should not apply our modern views of
technology and what is pragmatic upon the past, but instead see technology and
materials as conscious choices, potentially, or even invariably, indivisible from
social meaning.48 It has been recognized by Le Goff,49 in apparent contradic-
tion to his belief in the ineptitude of Anglo-Saxon building practices, that the
early medieval period was one defined by its use of wood.50 The common theme
of this volume is the sheer care and craftsmanship that the Anglo-Saxon
invested into their wooden material culture, from cups51 to halls,52 and the
concern for trees and timber in Anglo-Saxon place-names,53 literature,54 and
religion.55
The stone buildings imposed on England by the Romans would have been
‘startling’ and ‘exceptional’,56 and following the collapse of Roman society in
the fifth century there was a widespread return to timber building, a ‘cultural
shift’ that is not possible to explain by recourse to technological determinism.57
Anglo-Saxon building forms were very much part of this general building
tradition.58 Timber was ‘the natural building medium of the age’:59 the very
Anglo-Saxon word for ‘building’ is timber. The absence in England of place-
names of the form timber-tūn, ‘settlement constructed from timber’60 can be
taken as further evidence of its universality as a building material. And yet,
in the seventh century stone had rapidly become integral to Christianity in
England and the resulting impact of stone architecture on the Anglo-Saxon
landscape of timber-built settlements would have been ‘extraordinary’.61 This
division of materials has been borne out by the archaeological evidence and
represents the nub of the matter: why, in nearly half a millennium of settlement
45 46
Le Goff 1988, 119. Ward-Perkins 2005, 108.
47 48
Hiscock 2003, 13. Dobres 2000, 10–11, 98, 126.
49
Le Goff 1988, 203.
50
See now Gardiner, this volume, 62 ‘construction in timber was so deeply imbued in the mind of the
Anglo-Saxon worker that it was the method of building’.
51
Comey, this volume, 119–20.
52
Gardiner, this volume, 72–3.
53
Baker, this volume, 78–103.
54
Koppinen and Neville, this volume, 165 and 138–9.
55
Bintley, Blair, Hooke, and Tolley, this volume, 222–5, 188–91, 231–47, and 182–4.
56 57
Greenhalgh 1989, 122. Wickham 2005, 486.
58 59
Hamerow 1999, 119–28. Turner 1970, 53–4.
60 61
Baker, this volume, 89–90. Greenhalgh 1989, 124.
construction, did the Anglo-Saxons almost never extend their mastery of stone
construction to domestic, secular structures?
In answer to this question it has been suggested that the Anglo-Saxons were
reluctant to build in stone due to its relative expense compared to building in
timber.62 This is unconvincing, not least because it is not even certain that stone
was the more expensive material in the first place. It has already been seen how
at Green Shiel the population readily adopted local stones following the appar-
ent collapse of trading networks for timber, implying that if all things had been
equal stone would have been the natural choice. More significantly, unlike in
the Carolingian world, late Anglo-Saxon royal halls continued to be of timber
in the manner of Yeavering centuries before, even though the king could clearly
have mustered the resources to build in stone.63 Their preference must have
been a conscious choice, perhaps an expression of ‘deeply-embedded Germanic
identity’ on the part of the Anglo-Saxon royalty.64 Other explanations need to
be sought for the near-absence of secular stone architecture in this society: why
does stone seem to have been reserved for the construction of churches?
Christianity and Rome in Anglo-Saxon England

Early medieval Christendom drew much of its power from the idea that it was
the successor to the Roman Empire in Europe. Rome was the seat of the Pope,
and from the fourth century onwards the adoption of Christianity in the Empire
meant that to be Roman meant to be Christian—the two concepts converged in
the idea of Romanitas.65
Christianity persisted in Britain and Ireland after the collapse of Roman rule.
From 597 the Augustinian mission and subsequent ‘Conversion’ resulted in the
Anglo-Saxon Church becoming increasingly the Church of Rome, an idea
central to Bede’s polemical Ecclesiastical History.66 Roman Christianity was a
powerful tool by which the Anglo-Saxon royalty in particular could justify its
place in the social order. It was the means by which one king, starting with
Æthelberht of Kent, could aspire to weld a disparate island together, a single
‘gens Anglorum’ under the archiepiscopal see in Roman Canterbury67 with
Rome itself as its capital.68 It was therefore very strongly in the interests of
the Anglo-Saxon elites to promote the Roman Church at the expense of existing
British and Irish Christian practice. Roman material culture was curated and
used in Christian ceremonies, and Roman towns and forts were granted by
English rulers for the foundation of minsters and cathedrals.69 The idea of
62 63
Lewis 2005, 25. Higham and Barker 1992, 193.
64 65
Reynolds 2009, 70–1. Markus 1990, 157–77.
66 67
Cramp 1974, 30–1; Higham 2006, 87. Brooks 2000.
68
‘ . . . within the political and conversion history of the Anglo-Saxons, Rome was the capital of England’
(Howe 2004, 156).
69
Hunter 1974, 36; Blair 1992, 235–9.
Rome was broadcast in the landscape, with stone crosses copying Roman
sculptural forms and commonly erected at sites of Roman occupation.70 In a
useful parallel to the forthcoming discussion, stone sculpture in the pre-Viking
period in England appears to have been exclusively ecclesiastical: stone was a
material seemingly reserved by the Church for this purpose.71 The Anglo-Saxon
Church also promoted its Roman origins and allegiance through the construc-
tion and location of its buildings.
Surviving Roman buildings would have been a significant presence in the
landscape throughout the Anglo-Saxon period.72 They seem to have been
shunned by the early Anglo-Saxon settlers, who as we have seen had their
own tradition of rural timber settlement, and whose conception of the timber
hall as the heart of earthly life and happiness survived their conversion to
Christianity.73 In Beowulf,74 for example, the timber hall of Heorot is used as
a powerful symbol of order against the chaotic and monstrous stone mere of
Grendel.75 After the Conversion the Anglo-Saxon conception of stone had
changed to accept stone churches, which until the ninth century at least
would have been constructed from reused Roman masonry (spolia).76 This
reference to Rome is central to understanding the changing conception of
stone with the coming of Christianity.
The topic of spolia is too large to cover here, but briefly Higgitt77 and
Cramp78 were the first to suggest their conscious use by the Church as a
deliberate promotion of Romanitas. Shortly afterwards, Hunter79 published a
discussion on the respect and awe in which Roman ruins were held in Old
English poetry; the comprehensive recent study of the reoccupation of Roman
sites and buildings by Tyler Bell has borne out this early work.80 In terms of the
reuse of Roman masonry, Tim Eaton81 has developed David Stocker and Paul
Everson’s idea of the Anglo-Saxons’ meaningful, or ‘iconic’, use of spolia,82
concluding that it was often characterized by a deliberate appropriation of
Roman authority by the Church.
Bede makes it clear in both his Ecclesiastical History and his Historiam
Abbatum that the masonry construction of churches, including his own at
Jarrow, was undertaken morem Romanorum, ‘in the manner of the Romans,’
70 71
Hawkes 2003. Hawkes 2003.
72
See examples in Higgitt 1973, 1–2; Hawkes 2003, 72; Bell 2005, 14; Reynolds 2009, 72–4.
73
Addyman 1972; Earl 1994, 114–15.
74
Although the actual date of composition of the Beowulf poem, whose surviving manuscript dates to
c.1000, is the subject of fierce debate, it clearly contains much that has its origins in pre-Christian Anglo-
Saxon culture.
75
Beowulf, ll. 65–85 and 1414–17; Bintley 2009b, 207.
76 77 78
Parsons 1990, 5. Higgitt 1973, 6–7. Cramp 1974, 33–4.
79 80 81
Hunter 1974, 35. Bell 2005, esp. 88–9. Eaton 2000, 124–7.
82
Stocker and Everson 1990.
in explicit contrast to existing traditions of timber construction.83 When this

masonry was itself of Roman origin the Roman reference could not have been
clearer. At Escomb (Co. Durham), the care and precision in the use of spolia has
led it to be interpreted as a conscious re-creation by the Anglo-Saxons of a
Roman building.84 Even at Canterbury, Bede believed that St Augustine’s first
cathedral had been ‘repaired’ or ‘recovered’ (recuperavit) from an existing
Roman church, when in fact it had been newly constructed from Roman
materials.85 Indeed, the significance of spolia in the Anglo-Saxon mind seems
to have run sufficiently deep that all churches were perceived as Roman-built
due to their masonry construction.86 The remarkable conservatism in English
ecclesiastical architecture in the 500 years before the Norman Conquest has
been ascribed to the continuity of this Roman reference.87 Importantly, no
anachronism was meant: the Christian Church was Roman; therefore a
masonry church was a Roman building, especially if it was made with Roman
stone, regardless of its objective age. Thus, the ‘creation of continuity’ was
made with the past.88
The importance attached to masonry by the post-Augustinian Church in
England made reference to Rome by more than just evoking the physical
remains of her empire. Rome’s first bishop and most important church was
founded by the apostle Simon, who assumed the name Peter. This was a
derivation of the Greek petra, ‘stone’; thus Peter became ‘the rock upon
which the Church was built’.89 This was not just a piece of scriptural wordplay:
time and again in medieval sources, ‘Peter’ was used as shorthand for Rome and
the Papacy as a whole,90 which placed the very concept of stone at the heart of
Roman Christendom. At a lower level, there are numerous metaphors in Anglo-
Saxon religious works which likened Anglo-Saxon congregations to the stones
from which both churches and the Church were built.91
This use of stone by the Roman Church was more than just a symbol of
allegiance, it could be a highly political act, especially in the century or so after
St Augustine’s mission when pre-existing British Christianity was still strong. At
Ripon, an early timber-built daughter-house of Aidan’s monastery at Melrose
initially refused to surrender to Roman Christian practice until it was taken
over by St Wilfred in 660. The year after the acceptance of Roman over
Irish practice at Whitby in 664, the church was rebuilt in stone and rededicated
83
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica (= HE) v.21, in Plummer 1896, 333; Historiam Abbatum 5, in Plummer
1896, 368.
84
Fernie 1983, 36; Hawkes 2003, 75.
85
HE i.33, in Plummer 1896, 70; Brooks 2000, 230–1.
86
Blair 1992, 243–5; Gilchrist 2009, 395.
87
Fernie 1983, 176–7; Ó Carragáin 2007, 103.
88
Blair 1992, 243–5, referring to Bradley 1987.
89
Matthew 16:18.
90
Krautheimer 1942, 12.
91
Bintley 2009b, 261–3.
in a ceremony following Roman liturgy and practice, all as part of the

policy of ostentatiously using stone for the Romanization of the Northumbrian
Church.92
There do seem to be exceptions to the apparent restrictions on masonry by
the Anglo-Saxon Church. In terms of the few stone-built domestic settlement
structures, those at Green Shiel appear to have been built in the vacuum
following the departure of the Lindisfarne community, whilst the sites in Cum-
bria seem to represent a distinct regional building tradition that has been
suggested to be Scandinavian in origin. The only securely pre-Conquest lordly
buildings to be of stone that did not also apparently act as chapels or lie in
graveyards are the two appendages to timber halls at Faccombe Netherton and
Sulgrave and the royal halls of Alfred mentioned by Asser:
De aulis et cameris regalibus, lapideis et ligneis suo iussu mirabiliter constructis? De
villis regalibus lapideis antique positione motatis et in decentioribus locis regali imperio
decentissime constructis?93
And what of the royal halls and chambers marvellously constructed of stone and wood
at his command? And what of the royal residences of masonry, moved from their old
position and splendidly reconstructed at more appropriate places by his royal
command?
In his description, Asser seems to be referring to two different buildings, or

types of building. The first is Alfred’s ‘royal residences of masonry, moved from
their old position and splendidly reconstructed at more appropriate places by
his royal command’, which sounds like a reference to the reconstruction of
existing buildings with curated masonry. The obvious context for this would be
the re-creation of Roman buildings with spolia to form high-status residences.
This may not have been a unique act: an authentic charter dated 889 records
that the Bishop of Worcester was given ‘the old stone building’ (antiquum
petrosum aedificium) as his London court (curtem), although it is uncertain
whether it was refurbished or used as a quarry.94 Alfred was one of the few
Anglo-Saxons known to have been to Rome and returned, twice,95 and it may be
that his appropriation of Roman buildings was part of the desire to cultivate the
Romanitas shared by Anglo-Saxon kings since the days of Æthelberht of Kent.
Alfred’s second apparent building-type, his ‘royal halls and chambers mar-
vellously constructed of stone and wood’, may simply represent an unnecessar-
ily verbose description of stone halls with the timber roofs that would have been
such an inevitable feature of Anglo-Saxon construction that it is surprising that
they merited separate mention. Alternatively, the passage may be describing
92
Hawkes 2003, 74.
93
Asser, Life of King Alfred 91, in Stevenson 1904, 77; trans. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 101.
94
Sawyer 1968, 346; Jones 1958, 91–2; Bullough 1983, 392.
95
Cramp 1974, 35.
buildings of stone and wood, of the type apparently excavated at Sulgrave.

Alfred is said to have sought to spend half his time, by day and night, in religious
observance,96 and there is record of a late Anglo-Saxon bishop having a room
within his residence, not thought to have been a separate chapel structure,
reserved for prayer.97 Writing at the beginning of the twelfth century, William
of Malmesbury bemoans how the Anglo-Saxon nobility preferred to hear
mass in their own chambers rather than making their way to church.98 It is
conceivable, although speculative, that the stone elements of Alfred’s halls were
just such household chapels, of a type potentially present at Sulgrave in this
period.
Finally, it is clear that the Anglo-Saxons used stone for town walls. Although
defensive expediency would be the obvious explanation for this, there is grow-
ing awareness that medieval town walls should, like medieval castles, not
simply be viewed as purely functional structures but as architectural expressions
of social or symbolic meanings.99 Anglo-Saxon defences have yet to fully benefit
from this valuable work, but a few points can still be made. The first is that
Anglo-Saxon towns were sacred in origin: pre-Viking minsters were perceived
as towns and performed many of their functions. The late Anglo-Saxon period
was one of increasing urbanization, typified by the establishment of the Alfre-
dian burhs. Many of these new towns simply developed from existing monastic
sites, and the expectation was that each town would contain a minster.100
Importantly, these new towns, in common with early medieval towns across
Europe, remained places structured by religious meaning beyond their role as
population or commercial centres, in continuity with their monastic origin.
Towns, like monasteries, were earthly exemplars of the City of God and the
Heavenly Jerusalem,101 and the conceptual unity between town, fortress, and
monastery which is so distant from modern experience can be seen in the
flexibility of contemporary terminology. The terms ‘burh’ and ‘urbs’ were
used to describe enclosed monasteries from the time of Bede until after the
Conquest, whilst ‘burh’ could acquire the sense of ‘minster’.102
The walled precincts of early medieval monasteries defined the sacred space
within from the profanity of the outside world.103 They were the walls of the
96
Asser, Life of King Alfred 103, in Stevenson 1904, 89; trans. Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 107–8.
97
Williams 2008, 95.
98
Gesta Regum Anglorum iii. 245. 3, in Mynors 1998, 459.
99
Creighton and Higham 2005.
100
Blair 2005, 246–62; 330–41.
101
Doherty 1985, 46–7; Lilley 2009, 44–5, 185; Maddox 2009, 50–9.
102
Campbell 1986, 107–8; Blair 1992, 23; 2005, 250–1. A good illustration of this point is the Abbey
of Peterborough. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ‘E’ for 963 records that when abbot Cenwulf of Mede-
shamstede (992–1006) built a wall around his abbey it became known as ‘Burch’, afterwards Peterbor-
ough (Swanton 1996, 117). Excavation of the precinct enclosure has demonstrated the presence of a
substantial stone wall 2.35 m thick of probable Anglo-Saxon date, interpreted as being the wall of
Cenwulf (Selkirk and Selkirk 1983).
103
See Lilley 2009 for a recent summary of this topic.
City of God, earthly imitations of the Heavenly Jerusalem with its successive
walls bounding increasing degrees of sacred space.104 Later towns retained the
idea that their walls were ‘moral cordons’ separating the order within from
the chaos of the outside world,105 something which may have begun with the
sanctification of the walls of Anglo-Saxon towns with churches along their
circuits and atop their gates. The majority of towns are thought to have become
strategically, economically, and socially important in England only from the
tenth century onwards,106 which coincides with the earliest evidence for the
rebuilding of their walls in stone. A recent study has suggested that the purifi-
cation and sanctification of urban landscapes would have been required with
the increasing urbanization of late Anglo-Saxon England, in order to distance
the new urban spaces from the ‘work of giants’ of earlier imagination.107 It is
possible that the rebuilding of late Anglo-Saxon town walls with stone was an
attempt to express the sanctity of the towns which they defined.
Anglo-Saxon town walls may also have expressed Romanitas. It has recently
been argued that Anglo-Saxon burhs were originally conceived as forts,
castra, rather than towns and several were deliberately built with rectangular
layouts in imitation of Roman practice, even where no Roman predecessor
was present.108 The adoption of stone in the walled circuits of Anglo-Saxon
towns would only have emphasized this explicit reference to Rome. As with
the contemporary perception of new stone churches as Roman buildings (see
above), these burhs may have been perceived as Roman castra by the Anglo-
Saxons.109 The similarity in plan form between a number of Roman and
Anglo-Saxon towns is accompanied by a blurring in contemporary termin-
ology. From the ninth century, burh was increasingly used in preference to the
Roman terms ciuitas, urbs, and castrum: it was used for any enclosed site
regardless of its Roman origin, and was even used to denote the Heavenly City
of Jerusalem itself. By the tenth century all four terms were increasingly used as
synonyms, with no distinction made between a Roman and an Anglo-Saxon
urban place.110 This was the same time that stone walls began to be con-
structed around apparently non-Roman towns: if these towns were perceived
as both Roman and sacred, then they would have been highly expressive of
Roman Christianity.
104
Revelation 21.
105
Creighton and Higham 2005, 37.
106
Summarized in Astill 2000.
107
Bintley 2009b, 249–65; Bintley 2009a.
108
Originally suggested of Wareham and Wallingford by Ella Armitage (1912, 28); see now Lilley
2009, 44; Carver 2010, 143–5.
109
Although this clearly was not ‘true’, we should be wary of imposing upon the past modern ideas of
chronology and the relative age of things.
110
Maddox 2009, 161–6, 188.
Christianity, Stone, and the Eternal

It is likely that stone would have carried meaning in Anglo-Saxon society
beyond its associations with Rome and the church, just as timber would have
carried meaning beyond being the defining material of a society upon which
Rome and Christianity were successively imposed. An illuminating anthropo-
logical study of recent years that may help us to look at these materials in new
ways is that of the Zafimaniry of eastern Madagascar.111 Their domestic dwell-
ings, which are invariably timber, embody concepts of reproduction and the
family unit. Their monuments to the ancestors of these family units, on the
other hand, are invariably of stone and take the form of megalithic versions of
aspects of their domestic dwellings. These monuments are set apart from daily
life and reproduction, both spatially and conceptually; over time they become a
part of the landscape, to the extent that sometimes no distinction is made
between them and natural outcrops of stone. The landscape is a manifestation
of the Zafimaniry god and it is eternal and permanent, and the more ancient
stone monuments are venerated accordingly. Conversely, the timber dwellings
grow and change with each successive generation that inhabits them.
This study has been used by Mike Parker-Pearson and Ramilisonina to
interpret Stonehenge and Avebury as representing the transition from timber-
built places of the living to stone-built places of the dead; the permanence of
stone linked it with the eternal world of ancestors, whilst the cycle of human
lives was linked with the perishability of timber.112 Whilst they are rightly wary
of cross-cultural generalizations, they argue that the analogy of stone as a
material of permanence compared to the life of trees or people is a useful and
widely applicable one.113 Similar arguments can be applied to stone long-
barrows as ‘houses of the dead’ that replicate the timber long-houses of the
living.114 Indeed, Roberta Gilchrist has suggested that their work may be
applied to the ‘Great Rebuilding’ of parish churches in medieval England
(c.1050–1150), which involved their transition from timber to stone.115 She
suggests that their rebuilding was a deliberate attempt to contrast the perman-
ence and the ‘promise of spiritual eternity’ that churches represented with the
transitory timber houses of the communities in which they stood.
This interpretation of stone and wood may be of relevance to Anglo-Saxon
domestic buildings. Recent study has indicated that the Anglo-Saxon creation
myth of a common origin between humans and trees survived the introduction
of Christianity, and was incorporated (along with so much other pagan belief)
into the new religion. In numerous Anglo-Saxon poetic texts, some from
111
Bloch 1995.
112
Parker-Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998.
113
Parker-Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998, 309–11.
114
Surveyed in Bradley 2002, 61–5.
115
Gilchrist 2009, 395. For the ‘Great Rebuilding’ see Gem 1988.
explicitly Christian sources, humans are conceived of in terms of trees whilst

timber objects are anthropomorphized. Most strikingly the True Cross itself
speaks as if it were human in the Dream of the Rood, and there are numerous
references to the limbs (leomum) of trees and humans, and the bosoms (bearm)
and ribs (ribba) of ships.116 It is therefore fitting that a theme of Anglo-Saxon
Christianity is the perishability and temporal nature of the human body in
contrast to the eternal soul, which belongs to God.117
Something of this is visible in Anglo-Saxon building practices. A recent
review of the archaeological evidence has suggested that their timber buildings
were not generally repaired or replaced in any sort of pragmatic fashion. The
majority either remained structurally sound until their abandonment, or no
effort was made to prolong their life beyond the ‘natural’ span of their initial
construction. After abandonment, it has been suggested that there is remarkably
little sign that major timbers were salvaged and reused.118 As with the timber
buildings of the Zafimaniry, Anglo-Saxon timber buildings may therefore have
been perceived as temporal or even cyclical, perhaps being abandoned after
the span of the life of its inhabitant. This is fitting, considering that trees
were associated with the human body, and the human body was earthly and
perishable.
Stone, on the other hand, was perceived by the Anglo-Saxons as the material
of the ‘giants’ of the past, in contrast to the human beings of the present.119 This
seems to have had real power beyond that of a mere literary conceit: the fort of
Corstopitum on Hadrian’s Wall is named after the Old English giant believed to
have actually built it.120 The phrase ‘work of giants’ occurs eight times in extant
Old English poetry to describe ancient architecture; in all cases, stone architecture
is explicitly meant, and in all cases it acts as a symbol of age and durability.121
Furthermore, a common theme of these works is that man can vainly strive for,
but not attain, permanence and eternity on earth: it is attainable only in heaven
and God destroys such follies, a concept visible in a number of other Anglo-
Saxon sources.122 It is therefore quite probable that the only proper context for
stone, the material of permanence, on the earth was in God’s house—the
church—and that it would have been vanity in the extreme to imply earthly
permanence in one’s secular buildings. These were of timber, as befitted the
transitory human body, whereas only the human soul was eternal.
116 117
Bintley 2009b, 63–75. Bintley 2009b, 203–5.
118
Hamerow 2006, 29 and note. An exception is the aristocratic hall at Springfield Lyons (Essex): see
discussion by Gardiner (this volume, 47).
119
Cohen 1999, 5–7; Howe 2002, 97–8.
120
Rosemary Cramp (1974, 32–3) records the suggestion of Professor Eric Birley (Durham Univer-
sity) that: ‘Corstopitum was once the home of the one called Yoten, whom they fable to have been a
giant—this is obviously a survival of the Old English word Eoten—giant’.
121 122
Franks 1973, 254–7. Franks 1973, 266–7.
It is clear from other evidence that appropriation by the Church of this

powerful symbol of permanence would have articulated well with its intended
place in society. There is a large literature on how the Church sought to associate
itself with the past, and with ancient and pre-Christian sites, in order to usurp
these powerful places and legitimate its authority with their antiquity.123 Stone
minsters were fixed points in a landscape of shifting rural timber settlement,
settlement that often later coalesced around them.124 Stone was the Anglo-
Saxons’ defining material of permanence and antiquity, so it seems not only
fitting but expedient for them to have reserved it for the Church whilst secular
society contented itself with trees and timber. This is particularly true if one
accepts that the very concept of age in a society of cyclical, agricultural life was
integral to the Christian conception of time as linear, regulated, and eternal.125
A further aspect of the Church’s apparent monopoly over stone is suggested
by the analogy with the Zafimaniry described above, who reserved stone for
their monuments to the deceased. From the late Anglo-Saxon period onwards
we witness the Church’s ever-increasing concern with burial as churches became
focal points for the Anglo-Saxon dead.126 By the tenth and eleventh centuries
the practice of burial outside of graveyards in domestic settlement contexts had
all but disappeared over a period which saw a dramatic increase in the
establishment of local burial grounds.127 In the areas where this localization
of burial was most acute, late Anglo-Saxon stone funerary sculpture became
more widespread than elsewhere:128 stone monuments as well as stone churches
may have been particularly suitable to mark this regularization of the treatment
of the dead. An interesting sidelight may be that contemporary with this
regularization was the spread in northern England of the house-shaped hogback
tomb, which despite being a Danelaw phenomenon was not part of any native
Scandinavian tradition of stone carving at this time.129 Instead, it has been
argued that these tombs represented an amalgam of pagan and Christian
imagery, and that they were expressions of the conversion of the Hiberno-
Norse elite to Christianity. Their house shape may have been imitative of real
tenth-century lordly halls, complete with bowed sides and wooden shingles, but
were formed from stone rather than wood.130 The bears which commonly
123
e.g. Morris 1989, 46–92; Semple 1998; Harvey 2000; Blair 2005, 182–91.
124
Blair 1996, 121; Turner 2003, 53.
125
Le Goff 1988, 165–6, 174; Hamilton and Spicer 2005, 9.
126 127
Bullough 1983, 186. Zadora-Rio 2003; Blair 2005, 463–71.
128 129
Blair 2005, 468–9. Schmidt 1973, 68; Lang 1988, 16.
130
There is debate as to what extent hogback tombs were naturalistic copies of contemporary halls.
Collingwood (1927, 164), Walton (1954), and Schmidt (1973, esp. 68–77) interpreted them as such,
whereas Lang (1984, 93) and Gardiner (this volume, 48 n. 14) are more dubious. Mussett (2005, 70) has
noted depictions of hogback-type buildings on the Bayeux Tapestry, which is widely thought to be of
insular workmanship. For present purposes the question of the accuracy of hogback tombs is immaterial
beyond the fact that they were clearly stone analogues of timber structures. It is unknown whether
hogback tombs were also executed in timber at this date.
adorned the gables of these skeuomorphic tombs were a well-understood medi-

eval symbol of conversion from Paganism to Christianity.131 Hogback tombs
may therefore have represented the rendering in stone, the material of Chris-
tianity, death, and eternity, of the transitory timber house of earthly existence
into a fitting habitation for the newly Christian deceased.
This late Anglo-Saxon concern by the Church over burial was accompanied
by wider reforms of the material culture of religious practice. Timber churches
had continued to be built after the Conversion period, albeit in diminishing
numbers at an ever-lower social scale; the eleventh century is thought to have
witnessed a ‘great rebuilding’ of local churches into stone.132 The mid-eleventh
century seems also to have seen a wholesale replacement in stone of Anglo-
Saxon timber fonts133 and altars.134 This has been seen as a movement away
from a relatively domestic and ‘quasi-vernacular’ local church to more institu-
tionalized pastoral care imbued with some of the stability and formality of the
old minsters,135 which would ubiquitously have been of stone construction.
Indeed, if we accept Brooks’ argument that the ‘Conversion’ of England after
597 was a royal, and later archiepiscopal, attempt to impose authority upon a
disparate island,136 then we could view stone minsters as outposts of this
Roman Church, whilst existing local worship remained in the open or in
unpretentious timber churches that were built with no desire to project the
authority of Rome. Finally, and rather more prosaically, Blair may be correct in
suggesting that church-builders aspired to stone as far as their wealth
allowed,137 and more recently Richard Morris has questioned the assumption
that stone churches were necessarily preceded by a timber phase.138 This is
supported by the scarcity of early place-name evidence for churches of this
type.139
Conclusion
It has long been known that the dominant Anglo-Saxon tradition of domestic
architecture was of timber rather than masonry buildings; the near-absence of
any stone structures aside from the hundreds of churches in the early medieval
landscape continues to be backed up by archaeological excavation. That so few
have thus far come to light, including a distinct and possibly Scandinavian
regional tradition in the Cumbrian uplands and a specific instance following
131 132 133

Stocker 2000, 198–9. Gem 1988. Blair 2010, 155.
134
William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani iii.14.2, in Winterbottom and Thomson 2002, 128–9 and
notes therein.
135
Blair 2010, 175–7.
136
Brooks 2000. ‘English identity was best strengthened by asserting in every possible way how
Roman was Canterbury and how Roman was royal power in the Christian kingdoms, while yet omitting
all interest in the Romano-British history of the church of Canterbury’ (p. 246).
137 138
Blair 1992, 265. Morris 2011, 184–5.
139
Baker, this volume, 92–3.
the local collapse of monastic authority, must be treated as a significant phe-

nomenon in its own right. This does not seem to have been result of the selective
nature of archaeology, particularly since one might expect durable masonry to
be over-represented in the archaeological record in comparison to perishable
wood. A pattern as clear and potentially significant as this deserves an attempt at
explanation beyond resort to technological determinism or modern preconcep-
tions of the relative value of materials, and it is one of the themes of this volume
that the Anglo-Saxons were superlative tree-wrights and craftsmen in wood
whose skill was universally valued. It is suggested here, therefore, that stone
was a reserved material of the Roman Church: it was expressive of Rome, the
source of the only other prominent stone architecture in the Anglo-Saxon land-
scape, and it was associated with permanence. Both of these things made it a
highly potent material with which the Roman Church could contrast itself from
the perishable timber that defined the communities that it sought to control, and
by which it could distinguish itself from existing British Christianity.
Stone domestic buildings appear in England, abruptly and in large numbers,
after the Norman Conquest, which may have been an attempt by a new regime
to lend itself an air of permanence.140 It may also have represented a deliberate
break with the past by the incoming aristocracy. The Normans were inheritors
of Frankish society, which was unified under the Holy Roman emperor and had
an unbroken Roman civic tradition. They imposed themselves through archi-
tecture upon a society with no such tradition and great sense of the remoteness
of its Roman past.141
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank John Baker, John Blair, Mike Bintley, Lindsey
Büster, Andrew Reynolds, Duncan Wright, and the two anonymous reviewers
for their kind help with the preparation of this chapter.
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3
The Sophistication of Late Anglo-Saxon
Timber Buildings
Mark Gardiner
(Queen’s University Belfast)
Sum mæg wrætlice weorc ahycgan

heahtimbra gehwæs; hond bið gelæred,
wis ond gewealden, swa bið wyrhtan ryht,
sele asettan, con he sidne ræced
fæste gefegan wiþ færdryrum.1
One can artistically plan the construction of each lofty building;
his hand is skilful, wise and controlled,
as is right for a worker, in order to erect the dwelling;
he knows how to join fast the wide building against sudden collapse.2
Anglo-Saxon wood-working can be divided into two branches which equate to

the present-day distinction between joinery and carpentry. The first was the
precision shaping and working of wood. This is poorly represented in the
archaeological record. However, such examples as the doors of the Pyx Chamber
at Westminster Abbey dated to 1032–64 and of Hadstock church, Essex, dated
to c.1050–75 provide an insight into the quality of work of which Anglo-Saxon
joiners were capable.3 The evidence for structural woodworking is more abun-
dant, though it too remains poorly understood and opinions of the quality of
work vary widely. Some scholars, faced with the evidence from excavation,
have reconstructed timber buildings as crudely made structures with unsophisti-
cated woodworking. Such houses evoke nothing so much as the rustic dwellings
1
The Gifts of Man, ll. 44–8, in Krapp and Dobbie 1936, 138.
2
Translation after Howe 2008, 53.
3
Leahy 2003, 28–9; Miles et al. 2004, 98; Rodwell et al. 2006. Other examples of joinery have been
found in York: see Morris 2000: 2286–92. For the Anglo-Saxons’ skill in shaping wood, see also Comey,
this volume, 107–21.
46 Mark Gardiner
of the poorest nineteenth-century cottagers. Others, drawing particularly on the

study of later medieval houses, have conjured up spacious and lofty halls,
elaborately decorated and with complex timber-work.4 The question of the
way in which we should envisage Anglo-Saxon timber buildings is examined
in the present study. If Anglo-Saxon joiners were capable of producing fine
work in wood, should we assume that their fellows working with structural
timber were able to prepare their materials with a similar proficiency, or are we
making a false comparison between two quite different crafts?
The diversity of opinion about the quality of building stems in part from the
types of evidence which we chose to draw upon. Our understanding of Anglo-
Saxon building techniques has been transformed in the last few years by the
discovery, particularly in London, of surviving timbers from buildings.5 How-
ever, while some pieces have been found in situ, most have been discovered in
waterlogged conditions where they have been reused. Houses were rarely built
in locations which were permanently wet, and timbers have been preserved only
where they have been removed from their original site and incorporated in
places with anaerobic conditions, such as waterfronts. As a result, it is often
difficult to interpret the function of individual timbers within buildings. For
example, the timbers originally identified as sole plates are now considered to be
wall plates—they belong not at the bottom of walls, but to their top.6 Moreover,
it is not certain whether the range of timbers found in London was typical of the
practice of structural woodworking in England generally. Although mortise-
and-tenon joints do not appear in excavated material from London before the
late-twelfth century, they have been found in Kempley church (Gloucestershire)
dated to 1128–1132.7 Similarly, trenails or pegs were widely used in the late-
eleventh- or early-twelfth-century bridge at Hemington (Leicestershire), but are
uncommon in the finds in late Anglo-Saxon London.8 Whether these differences
reflect variation in local practice or developments over time is unclear. It is
important, therefore, that a range of types of evidence from a number of sources
is brought to bear on the question of the character of buildings and that we
avoid placing too much reliance on any one approach.
Our preconceptions about late Anglo-Saxon buildings have played an
important part in our interpretation of them. It is broadly accepted that timber
buildings with earth-fast posts will have stood only for a matter of decades
before the timbers had begun to rot and required replacement, support, or
rebuilding. We tend to associate the idea of short-lived housing with badly
built housing, even though they are entirely different. A high-quality building
4
Charles 1981: 19; Millett and James 1983, 244–5.
5
Horsman et al. 1988; Milne 1992.
6
Goodburn 2007, 309.
7
<http://www.dendrochronology.net/gloucestershire.asp>.
8
Ripper and Darrah 2009, 28.
Late Anglo-Saxon Timber Buildings 47
can be constructed, even though the builders know that it will have a limited
lifespan. It is notable that a number of late Anglo-Saxon buildings show
evidence for the introduction of supports to the walls, which were presumably
added as the structure showed signs of instability.9 We can interpret this as
indicative of the poor quality of construction or as evidence that elaborate
buildings were worth further investment to prolong their use, the explanation
preferred here. One example discussed is the large hall (Building 3) at Spring-
field Lyons (Essex). The lines of postholes either side of the main doorway set
one metre beyond the south wall side of the building were almost certainly for
supports for the face of that wall. The posts seem to have begun to rot and the
building must have begun to rack laterally so that the south wall required
additional strengthening.10 This was probably a manorial centre and the occu-
pants are unlikely to have invested in propping up the walls of a structure which
did not reflect their status.
Preconceptions about the quality of work cannot be put aside, even though
we seek to be dispassionate and analytical of the evidence. This question of the
quality of construction has confronted all architectural historians who have
contemplated the excavated evidence for timber buildings of the early medieval
period. How should we approach the reconstruction of structures from the
large numbers of apparently poorly aligned postholes? The interpretations
vary from the crudely constructed ‘rustic’ buildings suggested by Philip Dixon
for Catholme to the remarkable and sophisticated buildings proposed by
Martin Millett and Simon James for Cowdery’s Down and by Freddie Charles
for Cheddar.11 We should certainly expect a considerable difference in the quality
of work on peasant houses in the first of these settlements from those in the
second and third, which were of higher status. However, as critics have observed,
the reconstructions of the latter two have been largely essays in imagination.12
The question of the level of sophistication of buildings has been summarized
in a succinct manner by Dixon:
A recent full-size museum reconstruction of a late prehistoric interior displays elegant
bronzework engraved with intricate detail and other highly elaborate artefacts hanging
on pegs which have been roughly hacked into posts still partially covered with bark. It is
supposed to be a safer form to reconstruct the scene, since it makes no assumptions of
sophistication, but it is not, for in reality it makes an assumption that is certainly
mistaken.13
This is no less true for the Anglo-Saxon period, where the mud-and-wood image
of buildings sharply contrasts with the skill implied by the production of
9
Hamerow 2011, 136–8.
10
Tyler and Major 2005, 129–30.
11
Charles 1981, 19; Dixon 2002, 97–9; Millett and James 1983, 244–5.
12
Alcock and Walsh 1993; Rahtz et al. 1982.
13
Dixon 2002, 90.
48 Mark Gardiner
elaborate metalwork, carved stone, and illuminated manuscripts. Merely

observing this disparity does not get us very far. We need to reconsider the
evidence with the reasonable expectation that the buildings of the elite, at least,
were well constructed and ornate. The most productive way to do this is to leave
aside the more intractable problems of the detail of the timber joints and the
form of roof structure. We also have to set aside the issue of decoration, for
which there is little evidence.14 These are important questions and relevant to a
consideration of sophistication, but it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from
the evidence. It is more productive to examine the fundamental issue of preci-
sion in building, and particularly the precision of footings and post alignments.
This is a subject to which archaeology can readily contribute. If a building is to
endure, it must be constructed carefully so that it has structural integrity.
A precisely built structure will also appear more impressive than one which is
irregular.
There is one group of buildings which should be excepted from this last
statement. These are churches in which the nave and chancel are misaligned,
a feature which is sufficiently common that examples are said to have ‘weeping
chancels’. The term derives from the folk belief that the chancel in plan repre-
sents the head of Christ on the cross. The chancel, like the head, has been
thought to have been inclined to one side. However, the most recent, systematic
investigation of this phenomenon has concluded that ‘weeping’ chancels were
not necessarily inclined to the north, or towards Christ’s left shoulder, as folk
belief suggested. Nor were they the result of poor alignment with the nave when
rebuilding the chancel. Instead, when chancels were reconstructed, they were
set out on a new alignment closer to True East. The original west–east orienta-
tion of the church was often inaccurate, and later builders reconstructing the
chancel corrected the error, at least for the new work.15 As far as we are
concerned here, we can excuse medieval builders from the charge that ‘weeping
chancels’ were the results of poor setting-out. Such misalignment was the result
of a changing emphasis in doctrine, not inadequate practice.
We need to distinguish two aspects of precision in considering other Anglo-
Saxon buildings: exactitude in layout and meticulousness in execution. For the
first, we should look for evidence of planning the building and careful layout of
postholes and post-trenches. The second may be demonstrated by the care with
which posts are placed. Beyond the question of precision, there is a further
question of the complexity of the structure. Again, it is better to leave out the
14
Karkov 1991; Owen-Crocker 2008, 119–37. How far hogback tombs can be used as evidence for
the external appearance of buildings is open to question. Lang (1984, 93) is very dubious, but Schmidt
(1973, 68), though cautious, is more positive. My own view leans more towards Lang than Schmidt:
though hogback tombs are clearly house-like, they are not replica houses. See also comments on p. 64,
and Shapland, this volume, 34.
15
Hinton 2004.
structural aspects, since there remains so much uncertainty, and confine discus-
sion to complexity of plan.
Precision of Anglo-Saxon Plan

The case has been strongly argued that many sixth- to eighth-century buildings
may have been laid out on a double-square plan.16 Whether this actually
required the buildings to be carefully measured and planned, or whether the
builders found that these approximate ratios of width to length were satisfac-
tory is less clear. Few buildings were exactly twice as long as they were wide.
In some examples this ratio seems to have been achieved by excluding the
central passage between doorways; in others the central passage was additional
to the double-square relationship. This flexibility certainly suggests that if the
buildings were systematically laid out, it was done without slavishly adhering to
any rigid schema. Attempts to interpret later buildings, including the Long Hall
at Cheddar and those at Brandon Road, Thetford, in the same way are less
persuasive.17 By the ninth century these simple ratios of length to breadth seem
to have been abandoned and there was greater variety in the proportions.18
The generalized use of simple ratios does not necessarily imply precision in
planning and the details of the metrical sizes of these buildings have yet to be
investigated. The question of whether these buildings were laid out in a system-
atic or casual manner is therefore unresolved.19 Some light may be cast on the
problem by Building A at Middle Harling in Norfolk. This particular structure,
which is not closely dated and belongs to either the Middle or Late Anglo-Saxon
period, is notable because not only was it laid out in the double-square plan, but
there is also evidence for the method of setting-out. At exactly the centre point
of the southern wall is a posthole which divides the two halves of the wall trench
(Fig. 3.1).20 This seems to have been the point from which arcs were struck to
establish the length of the south wall and the width of the building. Evidently,
the post remained in position while the wall trenches were dug for the south
wall, since the two halves extended up to the central point. It is possible that this
central post remained even while the posts were erected to ensure that they were
carefully aligned. Yet, in spite of the evidence of the use of careful planning, the
north wall, though parallel to the south, is about 0.5m shorter. Both the west
and the east end of the north wall are equally short of the equivalent points on
the south wall. The simplest explanation is that the length of the north wall was
16
James et al. 1984.
17
James et al. 1984, 206–7; James and Millett 1993, 39.
18
Hamerow 2011, 133. However, Hamerow (2006, 29 n. 125) also notes, particularly with regard to
the Early Anglo-Saxon period, how few houses show evidence of repair. This subject, including the
criteria for identifying remedial work on buildings, deserves further investigation.
19
However, for investigations into the metrical sizes of Anglo-Saxon buildings, see Huggins et al.
1982 and Kjølbye-Biddle 1986.
20
Rogerson 1995, 23, fig. 13.
50 Mark Gardiner
post from which

arcs were struck N
0 5m
Fig. 3.1. Building A at Middle Harling (Norfolk), showing the arcs used (i) to define the
length of the south wall and width of the building, and (ii) to establish the length of the north
wall (after Rogerson 1995).
also determined by an arc struck from the central post in the south wall.
However, the radius was too small and the north wall, as a result, was the
wrong length.
The use of pegs and cords provides a more satisfactory explanation of the
way in which buildings were planned than any assumption of a knowledge of
geometry. Euclid’s Elements, which was the basis of medieval understanding of
the subject, was not translated before the early twelfth century into Latin
from Arabic—the language in which the text reached western Europe in the
Middle Ages.21 However, it has been suggested that a practical knowledge of
geometry survived in Europe amongst builders after the end of Antiquity.22
Whether this was a continuing tradition of knowledge or a rediscovery of
simple geometric principles is open to question. At Middle Harling the builders
had a basic knowledge of the way in which a building of double-square plan
could be laid out, but without sufficient practical geometry to solve the more
complex problem of setting-out a parallel wall of equal length. We may wonder
whether such a building really demonstrates a survival of any knowledge of the
principles of Euclid.
21 22
Glenn 1990, 52. Zenner 2002, 75.
Discussion of the application of practical geometry in medieval Europe has

been conducted largely in the context of the great churches of the twelfth
century and later. It has been demonstrated that root two (1.414) recurs as a
common ratio in the plan of a number of churches.23 This is not a magic
number, but simply the ratio of the diagonal of a square to its sides. It did not
therefore require a knowledge of mathematics, since it could be derived on the
ground. In the Middle Ages, the use of diagonals of squares was known as ad
quadratum and it is widely agreed that its use owes nothing to Euclid and
everything to empirical tradition.24
Churches provide a useful context in which ideas of planning may be investi-
gated, since their walls have not moved and distances can be measured with
precision.25 Timber buildings present quite different problems, however,
because the evidence of timbers usually remains only as stains in the soil and
crucial distances are rarely measured precisely during excavation but instead
are recorded in plans with varying degrees of accuracy. It is necessary perforce
to work from the published records of excavation, even though these do not
allow the rigorous testing of hypotheses about planning. We need to recognize
these limitations and should not rely upon small differences in length which
may not have been precisely portrayed in the published plans. If we accept these
limitations in the evidence, then we can begin to investigate the possibilities of
the use of planning.
Aisled buildings reappeared in the tenth century and are among some of the
most carefully designed of all buildings. This must reflect the use of this form of
construction only on sites of high status. Aisled construction made more
demands on the builder than structures of a single-span, since it required a
consideration of the angles of the roof over both the central structure (hereafter
termed the ‘nave’) and the aisles. If a continuous fall in the slope of the roof
from the ridge to the top of the wall was desired, it was necessary to ensure that
the aisle plate and wall plate were at appropriate heights. The simplest way was
to make the aisles half the width of the nave and then the height of the apex of
the roof above the wall plate would be twice as great as the difference in height
of the aisle plate and the wall plate. This was the approach adopted for Building
2 at Faccombe Netherton (Hampshire), where both the side aisles and return
aisles at the ends of the building are half the width of the nave.26 We can be
certain that this is not coincidence, but reflects a carefully planned structure.
Furthermore, phase one of the period 4 hall at Goltho (Lincolnshire), probably
to be dated to the first half of the tenth century, has a similar ratio between the
width of the nave and the aisles.27
23 24
Fernie 1976. Glenn 1990, 52; Hiscock 1999, 20.
25
For example, the papers in Wu 2002 and also Kjølbye-Biddle 1986.
26
Fairbrother 1990, 87–93.
27
Measurements from Beresford 1987, fig. 65. Dating is based on Creighton 2002, 24.
52 Mark Gardiner
0 5m
Fig. 3.2. Structure U at Bishopstone village (Sussex), showing the lines and arcs used to lay
out the plan (after Thomas 2010).
There is rather different evidence of planning in the mid- to late-tenth-century

aisled building, Structure U, at Bishopstone village (Sussex), where the spacing
of the aisle posts seems to have been determined by the application of simple
geometry.28 This is a three-bay structure with aisles marked by a trench on the
south side and individual postholes on the north side (Fig. 3.2). The south-aisle
wall was replaced during the lifetime of the building with a wall set further
away from the aisle posts, providing a greater area for the structure. Although
described by the excavator as comprising three equal bays, lines drawn through
the centres of the post-settings suggest that only the two outer bays were the
same size. The central bay was about 0.4 metres smaller. This may be, as the
excavator suggests, because it was the bay containing the entrance. We cannot
be certain here of the way in which it was laid out, but the geometry does
suggest a plan of two overlapping squares arranged so that the length of the
squares determined the width of the central bay.
28
Thomas 2010, 57–9, 190.
0 2m
‘stake holes’
Fig. 3.3. Aisled building at Roundwood, Stansted (Essex), showing the lines and arcs used to
lay out the plan (after Havis and Brooks 2004).
The final example is rather later than most of the buildings considered here,
but is chosen to demonstrate a more complex system of planning. It is apparent
that the six aisle posts of the building at Roundwood, Stansted (Essex), dated
to the period 1150–1300, were set out using a double-square plan (Fig. 3.3).
The key to understanding the rest of the plan lies in the interpretation of
the excavated evidence. The excavators suggested that the two ditches on the
long sides of the building contained numerous stakeholes.29 These have an
29
Havis and Brooks 2004, 387.
54 Mark Gardiner
Fig. 3.4. Possible sequence for laying out the aisled building at Roundwood, Stansted (Essex):
1. Arcs are struck from two pegs located on the intended position of the central aisle posts. 2.
The centre-line of the building is established from between the intersection of the arcs. 3. The
distance between the peg and the centre-line is measured. 4. The positions of the other aisle
posts are established by measuring along to a point the centre-line and from that point to the
line of the arcs. 5. The lines of the walls are established by measuring the distance from the peg
to the point an arc cuts the line at right angles to the axis of the building.
incoherent pattern and do not look structural. Instead, these may be interpreted
more satisfactorily as eaves-drip trenches, to channel away water falling from
the roof, and the ‘stakeholes’ may be from roots of plants growing close to the
building or created by water seeping away. The walls of the building are clearly
marked by lines of postholes on the east and west and less clearly to the south.
The aisles in this building are not half the width of the nave, but rather smaller.
In fact, they are almost exactly 1.41 times the width of the nave, suggesting the
use of root-two (1.414).
Knowledge of this ratio was not necessary to lay out the buildings, since it
could be derived by a series of arcs. Fig. 3.4 shows how this might have been
done using arcs struck from the location of the central aisle posts and a stick or
cord for measuring distance. In spite of the work on the building plan, the
builders failed to lay out the west wall parallel with the aisle plate, which must
have caused considerable problems for the roof over the aisle.
These examples have been chosen from buildings which show evidence for
planning, but it would give a partial view if those buildings which were less
S14
S15
0 1 2 3 4 5m
Fig. 3.5. Building S15 and part of S14 at Portchester (Hampshire). The post ‘ghosts’ are
show by tone (after Cunliffe 1976).
regular in plan were ignored. S15 at Portchester Castle (Hampshire), for

instance, is an unusual and complex hall with aisles which are rounded at the
ends (Fig. 3.5).
The aisles were supported on six posts set in large postholes creating two bays
of unequal width. The entrances, indicated by a break in the aisle walls, were
clearly in the larger bay. The aisle posts on the west side of the building were
broadly in a line. Those on the east were clearly not. The post on the north-east
side in particularly seems to have been poorly set. This initially appears to be a
building in which the planning was particularly incompetent. The north-east
corner, however, deserves further consideration, partly because the post is so far
out of line that it is hard to imagine how such a gross error could be made. It is
also notable that that posthole has been cut at an angle to the axis of the
building. This raises the possibility that it was not that the post was inexactly
set in the hole, but that its position might have been intended. The site
plan shows that there was another building (S14) adjoining the north-east
corner of S15 (Fig. 3.6). The published phasing indicates that the two, though
56 Mark Gardiner
S17
limit of
excavation
S14
S15
courtyard
well
S13
N
0 5m
Fig. 3.6. Tenth-century buildings at Portchester (Hampshire) set around the courtyard (after
Cunliffe 1976).
both tenth-century, were not contemporary.30 However, if we consider the

possibility that S15 was constructed after S14, which does not contradict the
archaeological evidence, then a clear explanation for a number of the inexplic-
able features emerges. The builders were faced with the problem of fitting a
prestigious, aisled building into a constricted space. Building S15 had to form
the third side of a courtyard created by S14 and S13. If S17 lying to the north
had been built already, then S15 also had to be constructed in line with it, for
that was certainly the intention of the plan. Whatever the exact sequence of
construction, the builders were clearly faced with a difficult problem of design,
30
Cunliffe 1976, fig. 99.
but their solution was ingenious. They did not construct a rectangular hall, but
one which quite exceptionally had curved corners. This resolved some of the
difficulties of fitting the hall into the space next to S14. They also brought the
north-east corner inwards to gain further space and allow a passageway
between it and the adjoining structure.31 The result was to create not an
enclosed courtyard, but one with passages around the hall at its ends.
Once we allow the possibility that buildings were planned, then it is possible
to begin to understand the processes which lay behind their organization.
Anglo-Saxon builders were both inventive and pragmatic. They did not simply
reproduce the same plans time after time, but had a repertoire of techniques
which could be drawn upon when laying out buildings and which they could
adapt to different circumstances. Moreover, the halls at Middle Harling,
Bishopstone village, and Roundwood show the development over time of
progressively more complex systems of planning. On the evidence of these
buildings, we might wonder whether ad quadratum planning with its emphasis
on root two emerged from the practice of laying out ground plans for timber
buildings using arcs struck from pegs and string lines. It may not have been the
sudden discovery in the twelfth century by masons with an interest in geometry,
nor the result of the translation of Euclid’s Elements, but the outcome of a
longer experience of planning.
The second aspect of sophistication in building, and one which so far has
been assumed but not demonstrated, is meticulousness in execution. By the late
Anglo-Saxon period there was a clear desire to ensure that posts and other
elements were carefully aligned, using either grooved base plates, or by setting
the posts in a trench.32 In order to achieve a similar precision of alignment for
ground-fast posts, it was necessary to cut the post-settings into the ground with
considerable care. It is difficult to demonstrate this when the post-settings were
dug into a soft material, such as clay, for it is often hard during excavation to
distinguish with exactitude the edges of the cut from the body of the fill. Where
the post-settings were dug into a harder subsoil, we can examine the degree of
attention with which the work was undertaken.
The footings of the late Anglo-Saxon buildings at Bishopstone village (Sus-
sex) had been cut into chalk. Excavation of Structure C showed that the inside
faces of the long wall trenches were absolutely straight in plan and vertical in
section (Fig. 3.7). The line of the inner edges must have been set out with a string
to achieve such a degree of precision. This contrasts with the external edges
which were less regular in all respects. Though it could not be demonstrated
with absolute certainty in that building, elsewhere it is apparent that the posts
were set hard against the straight edge of the cut.33 Indeed, there would be little
31 32
Cunliffe 1976, fig. 102. Horsman et al. 1988, 102–5.
33
Thomas 2010.
58 Mark Gardiner
Fig. 3.7. The southern wall trench of Structure C at Bishopstone village (Sussex), with the fill
partially removed. The inside of the building is on the right and is cut perfectly straight and
vertical in contrast to the more irregular outside face on the left. Total scale length 0.3 m. (By
permission of Gabor Thomas, University of Reading.)
purpose in expending so much effort in cutting the post-setting if that was not
the intention.
Equivalent evidence for precision in post-settings can be seen in buildings
with individual postholes. On some sites the postholes were dug not only to
ensure precise alignment, but had been cut to size for the timbers which were
placed within them. This is clear, for example, on the south wall of the tenth-
century Building A at Market Field, Steyning (Sussex), where the outline of the
posts can be identified from the absence of packing stones (Fig. 3.8). The post-
holes carefully match the shape of the individual timbers, though they have been
cut larger to allow the posts to be packed firmly in position. Again the posts are
set against the inside face.34 Indeed, where evidence does not survive for the
34
Gardiner 1993, 28–30.
Fig. 3.8. Two postholes from Building A at Market Field, Steyning (Sussex). The positions of
the posts are marked by the stone-free fill. The post-settings have been cut to reflect the shape
of the timbers. Posthole 287 contained a radially split timber which was wedge-shaped.
Posthole 293 may be from a tangentially split timber with a partially rounded outer face. The
timbers have been set with their straight face hard against the inner edge of the postholes (to
the top of the photograph). Scale lengths 0.2 m. (Photo: author.)
outline of the timber, its shape may be often inferred from the shape of the post-
setting.
We may assume that the two postholes at the door of Building B were almost
certainly rectangular in scantling;35 the door was probably attached to a hinge
on the larger post (Fig. 3.9).
Something very similar is found at Sulgrave (Northamptonshire), where the
posts were also carefully set in neatly cut sockets in the Blisworth limestone
(Fig. 3.10).36
35 36
Scantling is the cross-sectional dimensions of a timber. Davison 1977.
60 Mark Gardiner
Fig. 3.9. The entrance of Building B at Market Field, Steyning (Sussex). No evidence of the
timbers was found, but they probably had plank-like scantling. The thick post to the left
probably supported the door. Scale lengths 0.2 m and 0.3 m.
Fig. 3.10. Field plan showing the building identified as the kitchen at Sulgrave (Northamp-
tonshire). It is apparent that the postholes were carefully cut to take timbers of rectangular
scantling. Some of the timber ‘ghosts’ (shaded) were recorded in the postholes on the right of
the drawing.
Fig. 3.11. Naked figure wielding an axe, from the lower margin of the Bayeux Tapestry.
No tool marks were observed in the bedrock at any of these sites, but we can
speculate on how they may have been cut. The post-trench at Bishopstone
village could have been roughed out using a pick, but it would have been
more difficult to dig the straight sides that way. These were probably finished
using a broad-bladed, short-handled axe, such as that wielded by a naked figure
cutting a board in the margin of the Bayeux Tapestry (Fig. 3.11) and the
carpenter in the Old English Hexateuch.37 An example of such a T-shaped
axe head was found in Winchester in association with one of the eleventh-
century timber houses.38 Such a use would be comparable to the method used to
cut stone ashlar before the adoption of the chisel in the second half of the
twelfth century. An axe could hardly have been used in the narrower spaces of
the postholes at Steyning and Sulgrave. There, an adze or chisel may have been
employed to achieve the vertical faces.
Such a practice is quite distinct from earlier, prehistoric, and indeed subse-
quent, methods for cutting post-settings.39 These treated the hole merely as a
void in which a timber was placed. Its exact position was either unimportant or
could be determined by manoeuvring it into the correct place and then packing
around it. The methods described here suggest that the post-setting itself was
regarded as a structural element of the building. It is quite likely to have been
cut by the carpenters with the tools they otherwise used for working wood. This
would be consistent with the careful fitting of the shape of the post-setting to the
timber, which implies a close association between the person preparing the post
and the cutting of the hole to receive it. The clear distinction which is now made
between woodworking tools and those used for preparing stone does not seem
37
London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B. iv, f. 13v.
38
Goodall 1990, 273 and fig. 58.
39
See for example, the shelter shed at New Farm, Carborough and Elmhurst (Staffordshire), discussed
in Meeson and Welch 1993, 4–8.
62 Mark Gardiner
to have existed before the twelfth century. Rodwell has made the point that
many Anglo-Saxon stone churches appear to have been built by people more
familiar with timber-working techniques. He has argued that they simply
applied the same methods, often inappropriately, to building in stone.40 Con-
struction in timber was so deeply imbued in the mind of the Anglo-Saxon
worker that it was the method of building.41 The evidence here suggests that
the gap between the working of timber and stone hardly existed in late Anglo-
Saxon England and bedrock was regarded as material to be cut to size, no less
than the timbers which fitted against it.
A similar approach is more difficult to demonstrate on clay subsoils for the
reasons already explained, but there is no reason to think approaches used for
buildings on these were any different. Examples of timbers set against the inside
edge of trenches are also found in these soils, such as in Building 15 at Faccombe
Netherton (Hampshire).42 However, the clearest evidence that settings cut in
these soils were regarded in the same way as those cut in rock comes from the
character of the base of post-trenches. A common observation made is that the
floor of the post-trenches has been deepened to accommodate individual posts.
This is found, for example, at the hall (T29) at West Cotton (Northampton-
shire) and in numerous other buildings elsewhere.43 The post-setting was fitted
to the timber rather than the other way round. This is contrary to what we
might expect, but consistent with a perspective which saw the timber super-
structure and the footings as elements of an integral structure, and treated them
in much the same way. It also implies that not only was the alignment of posts of
importance, but also the height of the top of the post where it met the wall plate
needed to be set with precision. If a post was too low, it would not have
supported the wall plate sufficiently. Extra strain would have been placed on
the wall plate, possibly leading to cracking.
If the postholes were cut so accurately to fit the intended timbers, why were
they not cut to exactly the right size? A posthole cut to the size of the timber post
would require that the timber was dropped in vertically to the hole and
extracted by lifting it out similarly. It is probable that Anglo-Saxon carpenters
worked not in the manner of a modern lathe operator who can prepare a
machine part to exact tolerances. Woodworking, then as later, is more likely
to have worked by cutting posts and other timbers to the rough size and then
‘offering the parts up’, or checking the exactitude of fit by placing the parts
together. The postholes may have been prepared to the general dimensions, the
posts then being erected into position and removed again if it was necessary to
adjust either the timbers or the post-settings. A certain looseness of fit between
the posthole and post was therefore desirable as it allowed the timbers to be
inserted and removed. As important, it also allowed the timbers to be adjusted
40 41
Rodwell 1986, 171–4. Shapland, this volume, 21–44.
42 43
Fairbrother 1990, 125–7. Chapman 2010, 42–4.
marginally to obtain a better degree of fit. The loose-fitting character of Anglo-

Saxon joints, which has been noted in London, was part of a practical approach
to construction which arose from fitting a timber assembly into an earthen or
stone base. A certain amount of play between the timbers allowed the marginal
adjustment of all the structural elements to ensure that they might fit together
and be held tightly in the ground.
The argument has been presented here that there was both an exactitude in
layout and a meticulousness in the construction of timber buildings by the late
Anglo-Saxon period. One may suggest the other, for without careful work in
construction the effort expended in planning would have been negated. In any
case, the distinction between competency in layout and in execution is to some
extent false since there is no evidence of a separation between those who
designed a building, the surveyors who laid it out, and the builders who
constructed it.44 That division of tasks exists only in the current building
industry. Insofar as we can extrapolate backwards from late medieval masons’
practice, we can assume that elements of the design of a building emerged as it
was constructed, though the work began with a general conception of the
character of the finished structure. This is a process which is familiar to anyone
who has constructed anything more complicated than bookshelves. The antici-
pation of structural problems and their solution depends upon the skill and
experience of the builder, but adjustments are invariably made during the course
of work as problems arise.
We can now return to the interpretation of Portchester building S15. In this
case the post-settings were unusually large in relationship to the posts within
them. The problem here was that this was an irregular building which was being
fitted into a restricted space. The practical problems associated with such a
structure had to be worked out as it was erected, and precision of plan and
execution was secondary to the practical issues arising during the course of
construction. If we accept that there was precision in the layout in most late
Anglo-Saxon buildings, then we should also seek to identify the rationale for the
design, even in apparently irregular structures. Incompetency of planning is
unlikely to be a sufficient explanation, certainly for high-status buildings, which
are likely to have been built by more accomplished craftsworkers. The second
part of this chapter examines one group of buildings with plans which, though
not irregular, were unusual.
Complexity of Anglo-Saxon Buildings

Archaeologists have been cautious in their appraisal of those buildings which
were once referred to as ‘boat-shaped’ and more recently have been described as
‘bow-sided’. The obvious parallels for such buildings were the curved long walls
44
Pacey 2007, 62–3, 72.
64 Mark Gardiner
of houses found in Scandinavia and it was a short step then to argue that the
form was introduced to Britain through Viking settlement. More recent writers
have been less certain in their attribution, but comparison with Scandinavian
buildings has underpinned the interpretation of these structures.45 It is assumed
that these buildings had been carefully planned with gently curving walls and
with a similar carved ridge to the roof. A parallel for such a roof profile may be
found on the house-like hogback tombstones found in northern England and
Scotland.46 The design of such buildings involve considerable complexity, and
comparison with boats might not be wholly misplaced, for they would require
three-dimensional curving shapes to be formed from a series of timbers. The
question of the character of bow-sided buildings is, therefore, central to any
evaluation the complexity of Anglo-Saxon construction.
Archaeologists have been quick to claim that buildings were bow-sided
wherever there were any perceived irregularities in the setting-out. However, a
number of such structures can be dismissed. The tenth-century cellared building
(Structure 4) from Lower Bridge Street in Chester does not show any clear
evidence of bowing, but its odd plan is the result of extending it northwards at a
later stage. It cannot properly be called bow-sided.47 Structure A at St Neots
was claimed to be ‘boat-shaped’, although the plan and the reconstruction both
show more correctly that the walls were not curving, but angled. The joists for a
timber floor are unique, if it was an Anglo-Saxon structure. It is more probable
that this was Roman, an interpretation which is entirely compatible with the
stratigraphy.48
The removal of spurious bow-shaped buildings allows a list of more reliably
identified structures to be compiled. Bow-sided structures in Scotland, such as
the house at Underhoul on Unst in Shetland have been excluded too, because
they are generally of a quite different form, and are more certainly of Viking
origin.49 The list shown in Table 3.1 suggests that bow-sided construction was a
distinctive form which flourished in England particularly in the late Anglo-
Saxon period, but with earlier examples dating to back to the eighth century,
and possibly earlier. All are large and many have been identified by their
excavators as halls, often in high-status settlements. There is good reason,
then, for treating them as a single and distinctive class of structure. An examin-
ation of their plans shows immediately that none of the buildings, in fact, has
curved walls, but all have angled sides made up of straight alignments. The
term, bow-sided is a misnomer, and they might better be described as angle-
sided buildings.
45
Hope-Taylor 1961; Rahtz 1976, 88.
46
Lang 1984, 91–3; Schmidt 1973, 68–77.
47
Mason 1985, 10–21.
48
Addyman 1973, 54–8.
49
Small 1967.
Table 3.1. A Preliminary List of Angle-Sided Buildings in England

Dimensions Angle of Difference
Publication (length and wall in ridge
Site name reference Date breadth) deviation height
Bicester, Harding and 1000–1100 23.0 m by 1.2 0.29 m

Structure 1185 Andrews 2003: 5.75–6.25 m
160
Bicester, Harding and 1000–1100 14.8 m by 1.9–3.1 0.46 m and
Structure 2000 Andrews 2003: 4.9–5.7 m and 0.29 m
160–61 5.2–5.7 m
Cheddar, Long Rahtz 1979: 850–950 27.8 m by 1.9 0.52 m
Hall 99–107 5.4–6.3 m
Goltho, Period Beresford 1987: excavator: Phase 1: 24 m 2.1 0.52 m
3 Long Hall 46 850–950 by 5.3–6.2 m
Phase 2: 23.2 2.2 0.52 m
m by 5.3–6.2
m
Raunds Audouy and 850–950 19 m by 2.4 0.46 m
Furnells, Chapman 2009: 5.8–6.6 m
Building A 71–74
Raunds Audouy and 850–950 21.7 m by 2.4 0.52 m
Furnells, Chapman 2009: 4.8–5.7 m
Building B 68–69
Rookery Hill, Bell 1977: 202–6 uncertain, 10.2 m by 2.8 0.29 m
Structure 37 perhaps 3.4–3.9 m
450–600 or
later
Southampton, Holdsworth 1976: ?10–11th at least 8.5 m uncertain 0.35 m
Albert Road, 35–7; Morton century by 5.2–5.8 m
Structure 1 1992: 155–6
Springfield Tyler and Major ?10th century 20.4 m by 1.7 0.35 m
Lyons, 2005: 129–30 5.5–6.1 m
Building 3
Thetford, Rogerson and uncertain: 15.2 m by 4.9 0.75 m
Hut 13 Dallas 1984: 850–1050 2.8–4.1 m
17–18
Wainscott, Clark et al. 2009: 775–850 15.7 m by 5.8 0.81 m
Structure 3 15–19 4.2–5.6 m
Structure 3 at Wainscott (Kent) and Structure 37 at Rookery Hill, Bishopstone

(Sussex; Fig. 3.12), may be considered together, because they are earlier than
most of the angle-sided buildings. The dating evidence for both is not very
precise. Wainscott is associated with enclosures and pits containing Middle
Saxon pottery, including Ipswich Ware, and occupation is attributed to the
period 775–850. The medieval phase of settlement at Rookery Hill is dated
loosely to the period from the mid-fifth to the sixth century, but one building set
apart from the others is possibly as late as the seventh or eighth century. There is
66 Mark Gardiner
0 1 2 3 4 5m
Fig. 3.12. The angle-sided Structure 37 at Rookery Hill, Bishopstone (Sussex) (after
Bell 1977).
no good dating evidence for Structure 37.50 A distinctive feature of both

buildings is the use of paired or alternate posts, apparently to clasp horizontally
laid timbers in the long walls. These timbers cannot have been very substantial
because the paired postholes were only 8 to 10 cms apart.51
There can be no doubt that the buildings included in Table 3.1 were deliber-
ately constructed with angled long walls. It was quite possible for builders to
construct straight walls if they so wished, as we have already seen. Furthermore,
angled walls created considerable problems, particularly in the construction of
the roof trusses, all of which had to be individually prepared to fit a building of
varying width. We know little of the detail of how roof couples were assembled
in the late Anglo-Saxon period, though we can infer something of the process
from later practice. The roof is likely to have been formed from common
rafters—rafters of equal width—set at centres between 0.5 and 1 m apart.
The rafters at Odda’s chapel, Deerhurst (Gloucestershire) dated to 1056, were
set at a distance of 0.67 m.52 The practice at Wistanstow church, Shropshire,
dated to 1200–21, a building with straight and parallel walls, was to use one
rafter couple as the template for the subsequent one. The rafters for one couple
were laid over an already completed truss and assembled so they were identical.53
That method is a very likely to have been used at an earlier date as it obviated the
50
Bell, 1977, 202–6; Clark et al. 2009, 15–19; Gardiner 2003, 153.
51 52
James et al. 1984, 194–8. Currie 1983, 58.
53
Miles 1997.
need to measure each element of the truss using a ruler or string. The labour
involved in constructing an angle-sided building was therefore much greater than
making one with parallel sides. Each truss had to be slightly wider or narrower
than the preceding one. The production of trusses was an altogether more skilful
and time-consuming piece of work, and hence this form of structure was only
used for substantial halls. The groups of buildings at Goltho, Raunds Furnells,
and Springfield Lyons, which include angle-sided halls, seem to have been man-
orial curiae. The other buildings may also have been. The Long Hall at Cheddar
was part of the royal palace. Angle-sided construction was very probably a form
used for prestige or display structures.
To understand the impression that such a building might make, we need to
consider its the structural and visual implications. There are two possible ways
of forming a roof for an angle-sided building. The first is to construct a roof
with a horizontal ridge. As the width of the trusses are greater at the centre than
the ends, the pitch of the roof must be reduced towards the middle to maintain
the horizontal ridge. The effect would be to produce a roof with a dished profile.
Such a roof funnels rainwater running down its slope towards the centre of the
building where the door was usually located. Apart from the inconvenience for
those entering the building, water channelled in that way will result in more
rapid decay of the thatch in the centre. The alternative solution is to have a roof
of constant pitch with a ridge which increases in height towards the widest part
of the building. That was the solution which it is assumed was adopted in
Scandinavian bow-sided buildings (Fig. 3.13). The effect is striking, for it
emphasizes the height of the building and it seems the most likely way of roofing
a high-status angle-sided building.
The figures derived from the excavation records allow us to consider the
geometry of angle-sided buildings. Table 3.1 shows the angle by which the walls
deviate in plan from a straight-line (Fig. 3.14; Table 3.1).
These have not been measured from plans, but calculated using the formula
w wmin
angle of deviation ¼ tan1
max
l
0 5 10 m
Fig. 3.13. The reconstruction of a Fyrkat type bow-sided building by Holger Schmidt (after
Schmidt 1994).
68 Mark Gardiner
angle of deviation
N
0 1 2 3 4 5m
Fig. 3.14. Structure 2000 at Chapel Street, Bicester (Oxfordshire), showing the angle of
deviation (after Harding and Andrews 2003).
where w is width and l is length of the building. The subsequent column shows
the difference between the height of the ridge at the widest and narrowest parts
of the building. It has been assumed that the roof has a consistent pitch of 49 ,
which is a suitable angle for thatch, though a steeper angle would give a larger
difference. The formula used is:
w w
difference in height ¼ tan49 tan 49
max min
2 2
The figures are expressed with a greater precision than is probably possible
given the nature of the data, but this does allow a better comparison to be made.
The figures for Hut 13 at Thetford and Structure 3 at Wainscott are consider-
ably greater than the others. The remainder suggests that the effect of setting the
walls at an angle would have been subtle. Equally, the difference in height of the
ridge-line of the roof between the ends and centre of a building would have been
small, but apparent.
To set these figures for late Anglo-Saxon buildings in context, we may
compare them with the paper reconstructions by Holger Schmidt of the bow-
sided buildings from the late tenth-century Viking fortress at Fyrkat. An
example of such a building was subsequently erected on the excavated site.54
This was larger than any of the English buildings, measuring 28.4 m in length
and with a width of 5.0 m at the end and 7.4 m in the middle. If the walls had
been straight, which they were not, the angle of deviation would have been 4.8 .
54
Schmidt 1994, fig. 43.
The difference in ridge height as reconstructed is about 1.35 m, but Schmidt has
assumed that the building had a wall plate which also rose towards the centre of
the building and had hipped ends. The main conclusion to draw from such a
comparison is that the deviation from a rectilinear form in the Fyrkat hall was
considerably greater than in almost any Anglo-Saxon building (excepting Thet-
ford) and the effects of this on the building form would have been more marked.
Why then were the English angle-sided buildings constructed with such a
slight deviation from simple rectilinear form? The broadening of the centre of
the building did not produce a significantly greater floor area and that can
hardly have been its purpose. The suggestion that the roof may have had better
aerodynamic qualities and have been able to resist high winds is also unconvin-
cing. The difference in height of the ridge between the peak and the ends was
too slight to make a significant impact in wind flow. A third possibility, which
deserves rather more consideration, is that changes in angles of the building
may have been intended to alter the perception of the building by exaggerating
the effect of perspective. Subtle changes are more effective in creating such an
illusion because they are less readily identifiable by the viewer.
The use of architectural devices to play on the viewer’s perception of the
building has a very long history. Vitruvius, the classical writer, discussed two of
these in De Architectura: ‘horizontal curvature’, which is the introduction of
slight curves into apparently flat surfaces, and entasis, the bulging of columns
around the mid-shaft.55 These ‘refinements’, as they are sometimes termed,
were intended to reduce or eliminate the effects of perspective.56 The aim of
such adjustments was to use optical illusions to create the appearance of what
we imagine reality to be by compensating for its actual appearance. Without the
use of horizontal curvature at the base of a temple, for example, the stylobate—
the base upon which the columns were set—appeared to sag at the ends.
Classical architecture also used other devices to give a misleading impression
of buildings. The use of entasis in a classical column to ‘correct’ an appearance
of concavity needs to be distinguished from diminution or the tapering of
column towards its top.57 The purpose of diminution was to make the column
appear taller than it was by exaggerating the effect of receding lines. It used the
effect of perspective in which things further away appear to be smaller and
accentuated it so that the top of the column appeared to be more distant from
the viewer than it actually was. We may separate the two architectural devices:
entasis was a type of refinement that corrected or compensated for appearance,
while diminution gave a false impression of scale.
There is no evidence that Anglo-Saxon builders were concerned with refine-
ments, in the strict use of that term. Builders, of course, used string courses and
pilaster strips to help ‘articulate’ or divide up the mass of stone churches and so,
55
Vitruvius, De Architectura iii.13, in Granger 1931–4.
56 57
Goodyear 1912. Robertson 1943, 115–18.
70 Mark Gardiner
as we might expect, were clearly aware of the aesthetics of structures. It is

also worth considering the possibility that they may have used exaggerated
perspective in secular timber buildings. It should be said immediately that the
Anglo-Saxon understanding of perspective appears to have been rudimentary.
Few manuscript illustrations demonstrate a grasp of how to depict three-
dimensional space by using perspective drawing and where they do, such as in
the depiction of the seated Ezra writing in front of a book cupboard in the
Codex Amiatinus, it is because the illustrations have been copied from late
antique sources.58 However, a knowledge of the depiction of perspective in an
illustration is rather different from practical experience of its manipulation in
the real world. We have established that, where we can tell, angle-sided con-
struction was only used in high-status halls, and we may assume that those
involved in the building of such large structures were more skilful than most
woodworkers. They may have had practical experience in the manipulation of
perspective. The falling roof ridge and the walls which were angled back away
from the approaching visitor in Anglo-Saxon buildings had a common effect:
they exaggerated perspective and made the building appear to recede into the
distance at the ends more than it actually did and so seem longer than it was.
This effect might have been accentuated further by making the wall plate rise
towards the centre of the structure, as Schmidt has envisaged in his reconstruc-
tion of the Fyrkat house, though we have no evidence of this practice in Anglo-
Saxon England.
This interpretation must be conjectural to some extent, since we cannot be
certain that the exaggeration of perspective was the intended effect. However, it
is possible to adduce clear evidence that there was a tendency to emphasize the
length of buildings to the visitor. The ‘long range’, a series of buildings con-
structed in an axial manner to form a single line of structures, was first identified
in excavations at West Cotton and Raunds Furnell.59 The number of examples
has subsequently increased and it is now a more widely recognized pattern to be
found in manorial curiae.60 Typically, the hall is joined to a separate but
contiguous chamber building to form a structure. At Raunds Furnell the total
length of the range was 38 m in length. At West Cotton and Goltho the
approach to the buildings can be identified from the ditches which mark the
edge of the track. Visitors arrived at the buildings along tracks which were set at
right angles to the axis of the hall and chamber so that they would have
appreciated the full length of the range (Fig. 3.15).
The practice of situating buildings in an axial alignment was not confined to
secular buildings, nor to those of the late Anglo-Saxon period. The seventh-
century buildings of the Northumbrian palace at Yeavering were arranged
58
Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Codex Amiatinus 1, f. 4; Meyvaert 1996, 870–2.
59
Audouy and Chapman 2009, 79–80; Chapman 2010, 42–50.
60
Gardiner 2007, 172.
(a)
kitchen
hall
chamber
cesspit
kitchen
cesspit
0 50 m
(b)
cesspits
chamber
hall
kitchen
barn
Fig. 3.15. Approaches to the long ranges at (a) Goltho (Lincolnshire) (after Beresford) and
(b) West Cotton (Northamptonshire) (after Chapman 2010).
72 Mark Gardiner
along an axis and so too were the near-contemporary churches of St Mary and
Sts Peter and Paul at St Augustine’s in Canterbury.61 At the latter site, further
buildings of the tenth and eleventh century filled the gap between the two
separate churches and extended the range westwards. Rodwell has speculated
that there were two axially aligned churches at Lichfield, perhaps those of St
Mary and St Peter mentioned by Bede, and he has also drawn attention to the
other examples of churches complexes arranged in this way.62 The best under-
stood instance is the Old Minster at Winchester where the seventh-century
church was extended westwards in the period 971–4 to link up with an isolated
building, probably the tower of St Martin. The east end was then rebuilt and
enlarged, with work being completed by the time of its dedication in 994.63
The construction of axial-aligned buildings goes back to the seventh century,
but the work of uniting them into a single extended structure, on the evidence of
Canterbury, Winchester, and Glastonbury, belongs to the tenth century.64 It is
unlikely to be coincidence that the long range also emerges amongst domestic
buildings at this time for there seems to have been a developing Romanesque
aesthetic, first to join up buildings, and then to create larger internal spaces. The
aims in both ecclesiastical and domestic buildings were similar: to create a
sense of magnitude, not through their height, but through the length of a series
of conjoined structures. The effect sought by the builders of angle-sided
houses was not unrelated. It too emphasized the magnitude of buildings, and
particularly their length, through the use of exaggerated perspective.65
Conclusion
Buildings were amongst the most sophisticated artefacts commonly created by
craftsworkers in pre-modern England. They required the resolution of engin-
eering problems (standing up to and resisting the lateral effects of wind) and of
functional issues (shedding rainwater and maintaining heat). They also had to
satisfy cultural norms in the disposition of space. We might expect that as
complex artefacts they not only performed these functions, but also displayed
the status of their occupants. The evidence from Yeavering, Cowdery’s Down,
and Cheddar suggest that buildings were used in this way to display wealth and
power. On those grounds alone, the approach which has been characterized
here as the mud-and-wood view of Anglo-Saxon houses, the minimalist
approach to buildings, should be dismissed as contrary to the evidence. We
might reasonably assume that the buildings of the elite more generally will have
been constructed with considerable sophistication. Certainly, the author of The
Gifts of Man (quoted at the head of this study) considered the ability to plan and
61 62
Saunders 1978. Rodwell et al. 2008, 54; Rodwell 1984, 18.
63 64
Biddle 1970, 317–21. For Glastonbury, see Radford 1981.
65
Gardiner 2011, 203–6.
erect a building to be a human attribute requiring no further explanation. The

challenge for archaeologists is to move beyond the basic evidence provided by
postholes and waterlogged timbers to think about how a building might have
been assembled and the impact it may have made on those who saw it.
The gap between Late Anglo-Saxon joinery and structural woodwork, to
which attention was drawn at the opening of this chapter, was probably narrower
than it has seemed. We have established that buildings were constructed with
some degree of precision so that all the elements, from the base of the posts to
the structure of the roof, fitted closely together. The method of building required
that the footings be dug with a care not seen in later buildings, either masonry or
timber, where the footings or underpinning at or below ground level were
simply a crude base which supported what went above. Anglo-Saxon construc-
tion was fundamentally different, regarding the elements below ground as
important, and requiring as much careful preparation as those above. Joinery
and coopering, discussed elsewhere in this volume by Martin Comey, was
different from Anglo-Saxon structural woodwork only in degree and scale.
The latter commonly used grooves in the sides of timbers to place planks,
wattle, or fillets. Such a practice would hardly be possible if the timbers were
not cut and set with precision. For example, fillets of wood were set in grooves
in the side of the staves which formed the walls of the church at Greensted
(Essex) built c.1080.66 These sealed the walls of the church and ensured that it
remained weatherproof. Such work demonstrates the ability to marry work on
the large timber staves with more precise woodworking required to hold the
fillets set between.
We have accepted too readily the idea that short-lived ground-fast timbers
were constructed in a rough and ready manner because of the way in which later
buildings of this form were made. The tradition of precisely cut ground-fast
footings disappeared once timbers were set on the surface. As a result we have
been unable to appreciate the evidence of Anglo-Saxon structural woodwork
which has emerged through excavation of post-settings, waterlogged timbers,
and even in such rare survivals as the church at Greensted. Once we embrace the
idea of sophistication in the planning and execution of buildings, then a number
of otherwise inexplicable observations become clear, and we open the way to a
new appraisal of Anglo-Saxon methods of construction. A society which was
based around the working of wood was always likely to have found satisfactory
methods of construction. It is a reflection of our lack of familiarity with wood
that we have failed until now to appreciate sufficiently the evidence for the skill
in its usage.
66
Christie et al. 1979, 97.
74 Mark Gardiner
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to Gabor Thomas for allowing me to see a copy of the report of

his excavations at Bishopstone village in advance of publication and to Libby
Mulqueeny for preparing the line drawings. Richard Ivens made available a
copy of the Sulgrave site plan. Michael Shapland offered many useful sugges-
tions and comments on the first draft of this text.
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4
References to Timber Building Materials
in Old English Place-Names
John Baker
(Institute for Name-Studies, University of Nottingham)
Timber was of great importance to the Anglo-Saxons as a construction material

for secular buildings and ecclesiastical sites. Even where standing walls were not
of timber, internal carpentry would have been required to support roofs, and
timber scaffolding may often have been used during the building process. Not
surprisingly, therefore, references to timber in place-names are relatively fre-
quent, especially in minor names; that is to say, in local toponymy below the
level of parish- and major settlement-names.1 A wide range of terms is evi-
denced. OE timber was certainly used, but a number of other words denoting
types of beam and other worked timber products are also found, many of which
are not on record in Old English (OE) texts. In some cases, the implication of
these names may be that types of timber could be obtained at or were manufac-
tured and supplied by such places;2 in others, the timber in question may have
been a distinctive feature in the local landscape or in the architectural style of
the structure being described. The following discussion aims to throw light on
the wide range of timber-related place-names recorded in England. There is not
space here to provide a comprehensive gazetteer of the many place-names that
fall into this category, but an attempt is made to provide a detailed overview of
the types of place-name in which words denoting timber occur, and to discuss
the meaning and possible significance of such names. Such an overview may
1
Grundy and Roberts (1997, 101–2) note the importance of ‘timber’ words in the wider Old English
vocabulary of construction.
2
Place-names of the Wootton type (from OE wudu-tūn ‘wood farm or settlement’), which are not
discussed here in detail, are thought to denote sites with a functional attachment to woodland, perhaps
centres from which a wood was managed. It is conceivable that such management included the provision
of timber, but there were plenty of other ways in which woodland could be exploited (Gelling 1984, 227;
Gelling and Cole 2000, 258).
Timber Building Materials in Place-Names 79
throw light on the sources and uses of timber in Anglo-Saxon England and
provide parallels for those approaching the subject from other disciplines.
The categories used here are primarily for convenience. To divide the data
according to the likely significance of the reference to timber—whether it
specifies an exploitable resource, a manufactured or otherwise supplied prod-
uct, a post or beam used as a landscape marker, or the material used in
constructing a site—would assume a clearer understanding of these names
than the evidence at present allows. In many instances, the precise semantic
implications of a timber place-name are equivocal and it would be impossible in
such cases to assign a category. The format adopted by the editors of The
Vocabulary of English Place-Names is not followed since it would demand an
exhaustive discussion of individual timber terms,3 rather than the more general
examination of place-name references to timber set out here, and would prob-
ably also result in some repetition. Two OE terms that might sometimes denote
timber, bēam and stapol, are discussed in detail elsewhere in the present
volume.4 It is impossible to exclude them entirely from the material considered
here, but analysis of them has been kept as brief as possible to avoid unneces-
sary overlap.
Timber as a Specific
The present study will concentrate on instances where timber is used to qualify
various generics. Timber terminology is most frequently found as the first
element, or specific, in compound place-names, constituting a relatively large
corpus. This can be divided into two sub-categories: those place-names where
a reference to timber qualifies a generic denoting a natural topographical
feature and those where the second element refers to a man-made structure or
structures.
Timber with Generics denoting Natural Features

In a large proportion of cases, the generic refers to woodland of some kind, and
these names probably indicate places where timber could be obtained. Ekwall
discussed the recurrent place-names Yardley (from OE gerd-lēah), Stockley
(OE stocc-lēah), and Staveley (stæf-lēah), and proposed an association with
timber as a resource, thus taking them to mean (respectively) ‘the wood from
which spars, stocks, or staves were got’.5 OE lēah (or ME ley) is also the generic
with timber in Timberley, Sussex;6 with hrōst ‘a roof-beam, a rafter, a roost, a
perch’ in the field-name Rostley (1840) in Owermoigne, Dorset,7 and Rossley
3
Parsons et al. 1997; Parsons and Styles 2000; Parsons 2004.
4
Blair, this volume, 186–210, and see also Blair 1994, 62–4; Blair 1995, 2, 20.
5 6
Ekwall 1931, 95–6. Mawer et al. 1929–30, 125.
7
Mills 1977, 143.
80 John Baker
Manor (Rosteleie, -ley(e) 1260) in Dowdeswell, Gloucestershire;8 with spōn

‘chippings or shingle’ in Spoonley (Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and Shrop-
shire) and Spoonlets in Kent;9 and perhaps with ME manteltre ‘big wooden
beam’ in Mounterley Wood (Maunterley 1480, Montreley 1651) in Brigstock,
Northamptonshire.10 A number of other woodland terms are found in com-
pound with terms denoting timber.11 In Yardhurst (Kent; de Yerdhurst 1240)12
and Timberhurst in Dorset (cf. Tymerhustestensnement (sic) 1352, Walter
Tymerhurste 1327),13 the second of which was a point in the bounds of Black-
moor Forest, OE hyrst ‘wooded hill’ is qualified by OE gerd and timber. Stock-
holt in Buckinghamshire (Stocholt 1229),14 Sparsholt in Berkshire,15 and
Throckenholt in Cambridgeshire (þrokonholt c.1150)16 may represent com-
pounds of OE stocc, spere ‘spear’, and *þroccen, perhaps ‘having or providing
beams’17 with holt ‘single-species wood’.18 More specialized timber require-
ments were perhaps met at Velhurst in Surrey (Felhurst 1241),19 a ‘wooded hill
where timber suitable for fellies was obtained’ (OE felg-hyrst). Borthwood
(Bordovrde 1086, Bordwode 1272–1307, Bordwod 1333) on the Isle of
Wight,20 and the lost Tymberwood in Chalk, Kent (Tumberwod 1216–72, de
Timb’wude 1232),21 are probably bord-wudu and timber-wudu, presumably
the tracts of woodland providing boards and timber. Timsbury (Temesbare,
Timesberie 1086, Timberbarewe 1200) in Somerset and Shebbear ((of ) Sceft
beara 1050–73) in Devon seem to be OE timber-bearu and sceaft-bearu,22 ‘the
small wood where timber/shafts are got’. It is nevertheless worth noting that
Shebbear was a hundred-name, and the possibility that the sceaft in question
was a post marking the meeting-place of the district should not be ruled out.23
In light of Blair’s analysis of the element bēam, the Bymber recorded 1601 in
8
Smith 1964a, 169.
9
Smith 1964b, 27; Gelling and Foxall 1990, 275–6. The Oxfordshire example is on spon leage in the
bounds of Witney (969 (12th century) Sawyer 1968 (= S), 771; Gelling 1997, 203), and is followed by
þonne on spon weg ‘then to spōn road’.
10
Gover et al. 1933, 160.
11
Hooke 2010, 126.
12
Cullen 1997, 110; Smith 1956a, 277.
13
Mills 1989, 274.
14
Mawer and Stenton 1925, 41; Ekwall 1931, 96.
15
Smith 1956b, 137; Gelling 1973–6, ii, 489; Watts 2004, 564.
16
Reaney 1943, 278–9.
17
Gover et al. 1938, 187; Smith 1956b, 214.
18
Sparsholt is thus ‘wood where (timber suitable for) spear shafts can be obtained’. An alternative
interpretation of the name is discussed by Gelling (1973–6, 489). Sparsholt in Hampshire probably
contains OE *spearr ‘a spar, a rafter’ (Watts 2004, 564).
19
Gover et al. 1934, 224; Smith 1956a, 168.
20
Kökeritz 1940, 53–4; Smith 1956b, 280.
21
Wallenberg 1934, 108.
22
Gover et al. 1931–2, 83, 107–8; Watts 2004, 618.
23
Anderson 1939a, 86–7. Many similar instances are listed by Gelling and Cole (2000, 220–61).
Okeford Fitzpaine, Dorset, and explained by Mills as OE bēam-bearu,24 pro-

vides an interesting possible parallel of a piece of woodland distinguished by a
famous tree or post.25
Timber terms are also found in compound with other topographical words,
not necessarily associated with woodland. Three instances of the compound
timber-cumb in Gloucestershire,26 for example, may well commemorate
valleys where timber was available, while Spuncombe (recorded thus in
1545), also in Gloucestershire, may go back to OE spōn-cumb, ‘valley
where chippings from timber-dressing or shingle tiles were made’. Tumber-
hill, a field-name in Stathern, Leicestershire (Tumberhil’ 1284 (e.15), Tum-
byrhil 1285 (e.14), 1302 (e.14), Timberhul’ 1292, Timbirhil(l) 1302, 1302
(e.15)),27 and Bord Hill in Thurlstone, West Yorkshire (Bordhill 1648),28
might well have been hills where timber or boards could be obtained.
In some cases more caution is required; the lost Stokehull in Warwick St
Mary, Warwickshire (Stochulla 12th century),29 might have been a hill where
logs were to be had, but might equally have been a hill marked by a tree
stump.30
In several instances, references to timber are compounded with the generic
OE welle ‘spring’. Brindiwell (Breydenwill, Breyndewell 1270, Bredenewille
1330) in Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon,31 and the Bredenewell recorded in the
thirteenth century in Laver, Essex,32 may both go back to OE breden ‘made of
planks’ and welle. The meaning of the compound is uncertain, but presumably
it refers to some kind of timber structure around the spring, perhaps to facilitate
access to and use of its waters.33 The sense present in the lost names Timberlake
(Tymberlacke 1316) in Bayton, Worcestershire,34 and Timberbec (1349) in
West Yorkshire, probably from OE timber with OE lacu ‘stream’ and ON
bekkr (ME bek) ‘beck’, is unclear.35
24
Mills 1989, 187.
25
Blair, this volume, 187.
26
Smith 1964a 72, 125; 1964b, 98.
27
Cox 2002, 267. Interestingly, the parish name Stathern is OE staca ‘stake’ and þyrne ‘thorn’, but it
is by no means certain that the first element is a reference to timber (Cox 2002, 260–1).
28
Smith 1961a, 341.
29
Gover et al. 1936, 263.
30
Staplehurst in Kent and Staplers on the Isle of Wight (Smith 1956a, 277; 1956b, 146), two instances
of the compound stapol-hyrst ‘wooded-slope marked by a stapol’, should be considered in the light of
John Blair’s discussion of stapol, this volume, 187–91. A wooden post might not have been a very
distinctive feature of a ‘wooded-slope’ unless it held a wider renown of some kind, related either to its
form or its supernatural resonances.
31
Gover et al. 1931–2, 414.
32
Reaney 1935, 594.
33
One might think of a well of board-construction, such as the one at Selja, Mora (Sweden), depicted
by Boëthius (1930, 142, fig. 1). I am grateful to John Blair for bringing this to my attention.
34
Mawer, Stenton, and Houghton 1927, 40.
35
Smith 1961e, 50.
82 John Baker
Timber Specifics qualifying References to Non-habitative

Man-made structures
Of particular interest are place-names where words for types of timber qualify
generics denoting man-made structures. In many cases, the structure is clearly
non-habitative: a bridge or a landing-place for example. Although such places
might become settlements, the structures they describe are used by humans but
not generally as dwellings. In other instances the generic denotes types of
structure, especially fences and enclosures, that could be habitative if they
describe barriers placed around settlements, but might more usually describe
structures used for non-habitative purposes, such as animal stalls or fences.
A final group is clearly habitative, denoting either individual or multiple dwell-
ings, and these are dealt with in the next section.
Several instances of OE hyð ‘landing-place on a river’ are qualified by
reference to timber. West and East Stockwith (Stochith’ 1226)—on the Notting-
hamshire and Lincolnshire sides of the Trent respectively—and the lost Stokhith
(1418) in Ely, Cambridgeshire, go back to OE stocc-hyð—presumably ‘landing-
place for, made of, or shored up with stocks’, or perhaps ‘landing-place with a
post (to which craft could be secured)’,36 although a post for tying up craft
might almost be a prerequisite of a landing-place and hardly worthy of special
note. Gelling suggests that OE *stybba, a weak form of the noun stybb ‘stump’,
may lie behind Stepney in Middlesex, hence ‘the landing-place made of stumps’,
rather than ‘Stybba’s landing-place’.37
Bridges, in particular, are quite often described by the type of timber appar-
ently used in their construction, and a number of them are noted by Gelling and
Cole.38 Harrison outlines three distinct types of archaeologically attested
timber-constructed river crossing of Anglo-Saxon date that might have been
described as brycg in place-names.39 These are girder bridges, consisting of
vertical timber piles supporting the bridge, and exemplified by the remains of a
crossing of the River Hull at Skerne (East Yorkshire); caisson-style bridges of
the type observed at Hemington (Nottinghamshire), where the bridge supports
are diamond-shaped timber box piers, filled with rubble; and timber causeways
similar to the possibly eighth-century example that linked Mersea Island (Essex)
to the mainland. After the twelfth century, there is no evidence for the continued
construction of the Hemington-type, with timber bridges tending to fall into
one of two designs, either having earth-fast posts or posts inserted into sole-
plates resting on the riverbed.40 In addition to these, some bridges may have
36
Ekwall 1936, 31; Gover et al. 1940, 39; Reaney 1943, 216; Gelling and Cole 2000, 88; Watts 2004,
577.
37
Gelling 1984, 77–8; Gelling and Cole 2000, 88; cf. Gover et al. 1942, 149; Watts 2004, 574.
38
Gelling and Cole 2000, 68–9.
39
Harrison 2004, 102–5.
40
Harrison 2004, 105–9.
Fig. 4.1. Beam bridge. Sinharaja Rain Forest (Sri Lanka).
consisted of a timber roadway lying on top of stone piers—sometimes the

remains of Roman bridges.41
Bridge vocabulary in place-names is rather varied, and it may not be possible
to identify an exact correlation between individual compounds and archaeo-
logically attested types of bridge. A fairly rudimentary bridging structure is
suggested by place-names of the Beam Bridge type (Fig. 4.1). Although bēam
may often denote a venerated tree or post, there is reason to suppose that this is
an exception. It is evidenced generally in minor place-names recorded in the
later medieval period, and Dagenham Beam Bridge is described as pontem voc.
Dagenham Beem in 1299.42 In this instance the bēam is clearly equated with the
41
Harrison 2004, 100–2, 106; cf. Brooks 1995.
42
Parsons et al. (1997, 63) list Dagenham Beam Bridge in Essex (pontem voc. Dagenham Beem
1299), Beam Bridge in Cheshire (le Beem 1272–1307, le Bembrugg 1302–6), and another Beam Bridge in
Essex (cf. Stephen de la Beme 1199–1216). Compare and contrast Blair, this volume, 187–8.
84 John Baker
bridge and does not simply define the latter; indeed, bēam here seems to be a
synonym for ‘bridge’. The editors of The Vocabulary of English Place-Names
suggest that the compound refers to a beam laid down as a simple bridge, and
draw a parallel between this and bēam-ford place-names.43 The latter com-
pound is recorded in Domesday and pre-Conquest contexts, and need not be
connected with instances of Beam Bridge. Indeed, strictly speaking Beam Bridge
place-names may not originally have been compounds of OE bēam-brycg, but
simplex occurrences of OE bēam or perhaps Middle English (ME) bēm in a
transferred meaning ‘bridge’. The examples set out in the Vocabulary of English
Place-Names are all first recorded in simplex form, and the earliest attestation
of the compound with brycg is fourteenth-century. OE brycg (ME brigge) may
therefore be a later explanatory affix.
Harrison notes that instances of OE þel-brycg ‘plank bridge’ (evidenced three
times in Devon in the modern form Thelbridge,44 alongside Elm Bridge in
Surrey45 and Elbridge in Sussex46) tend to be limited to lesser rivers, and
suggests that they may have been causeways rather than bridges. He associates
them with the causeway bridges of the type identified at Ravning Enge near
Jelling in Denmark, consisting of square oak posts supporting a ‘planked
carriageway’.47 If a þel-brycg was of a design inappropriate for use on major
rivers, it could nevertheless service roads of relative importance—one such
structure seems to have carried a herepæþ ‘army road’ across a headstream of
the River Creedy.48 With this in mind, securing of the crossing might have been
considered worthy of substantial investment regardless of the size of river.
Presumably planking would in one way or another characterize the horizontal
carriageway of many bridges and causeways, but it might have been a more
distinctive feature of some bridges than of others, and certainly the lozenge-
shaped bases of the Hemington bridge piers had plank walls.49 If part of
these was visible above water, it might have given rise to the description
‘plank-bridge’. Whatever the referent, OE bridene-brycg ‘bridge built of
boards’, found in charter bounds,50 is suggestive of a structure similar to that
of a þel-brycg.
43
Bamford in Derbyshire (Banford 1086, Baumford, -forth 1225; Cameron 1959, 39) and Lancashire
(Baunford 1282, de Bamford 1322; Ekwall 1922, 54; Mills 1986, 58–9; Smith 1956a, 21), beamford in
Somerset (882 (12th century) S 345).
44
Gover et al. 1931–2, 119, 395, 412.
45
Gover et al. 1934, 157.
46
Mawer et al. 1929–30, 91; the name is recorded in a forged charter of tenth-century date (S 230)
and a probably authentic charter dated to 988 (S 872).
47
Harrison 2004, 105.
48
The bounds of Sandford near Crediton (Devon) pass norþ on herepaþ oþ ðelbrycge (930 (10th/11th
century) S 405; Gover et al. 1931–2, 412).
49
Cooper 2003, 29 and fig. 2.
50
S 609; S 1598; Parsons and Styles 2000, 29–30.
Fig. 4.2. Causeway bridge on caissons, Paanajärvi village (Russian Karelia). By kind permis-
sion of John Blair.
It would be tempting to assume that OE stocc-brycg ‘stock or log bridge’ and

stoccene-brycg ‘bridge made of stocks or logs’ denote a different kind of bridge
construction. However, a caisson-style bridge of perhaps eleventh- or twelfth-
century date in Borgepollen, Norway, had boxed pier foundations and perhaps
a superstructure formed from unconverted timbers that may have given an
appearance of log construction.51 An apparent abundance of logs is certainly
a distinctive feature of the caissons of the bridge at Paanajärvi, in Russian
Karelia (Fig. 4.2). It is at least possible that the material used in the construction
of bridges provided a more distinctive characteristic for the purposes of naming
than differences in constructional technique. Nevertheless, stocc-brycg might
just as easily describe a girder bridge with stocks as uprights.
Place-names derived from OE stocc-brycg or stoccene-brycg are relatively
common across the country: in Devon and Dorset,52 Kent and Sussex,53 War-
wickshire and Derbyshire,54 Yorkshire and the north-west,55 and elsewhere.
Whatever the design, a stoccene-brycg was perhaps the most easily constructed
type of bridge—relatively simple to put in place to facilitate crossing of a body
of water—or represents the normal and most reliable form of bridge structure.
51
Cooper (2003, 29) describes them as ‘log cabin style’.
52
Gover et al. 1931–2, 281; Mills 1977, 359; Mills 1980, 78.
53
Mawer et al. 1929–30, 14, 62; Wallenberg 1931, 344.
54
Gover et al. 1936, 322; Cameron 1959, 312, 718.
55
Smith 1937, 247; Armstrong et al. 1950–2, 332, 354; Smith 1961f, 184; Smith 1967a, 185, 201.
86 John Baker
Many of the names are local, so there is no need to assume that the coining of
such names had wider implications of distinctiveness—that is to say, they need
not have been unusual in design, but were perhaps unique features in a local
context. Hurlbridge (Hurdlebrygge 1424) in Hatherleigh, Devon,56 seems to
have been a bridge or causeway constructed of hurdles (OE hyrdel), and this is
perhaps reminiscent of the girder bridges described by Harrison; however, this
design of bridge seems to have had a longer period of use and more examples
might be expected. Clearly this is an area in which further analysis of both
toponymic and archaeological data might help to interpret the place-names
more precisely.
Whether Woodbridge (Oddebruge 1042 1066 (12th century),57 Wudebrige
1086) belongs here is moot. Skeat58 treated the meaning of the compound as
‘obvious’, and did not therefore discuss it in greater detail, but Ekwall59 went
further and interpreted it as ‘wooden bridge’. Gelling60 was more circumspect,
treating this as a likely interpretation, but not ruling out a sense ‘bridge near the
wood’, and both Mills61 and Watts62 offer the two solutions, Watts certainly
preferring ‘the bridge by or leading to the wood’. At present it is difficult to
advance the discussion any further.
Since OE brycg could sometimes mean ‘causeway’,63 as in the compound
noun hrı̄sbrycg ‘brushwood causeway’, an element of caution is required. OE
stoccene-brycg, for example, might have described a ‘log causeway’, rather than
implying anything more structurally advanced. OE ford could also perhaps
refer to stretches of causeway crossing marshy land next to a river-crossing.64
It is conceivable therefore that place-names such as Stockford (1840) in Stud-
land, Dorset,65 and the lost name stoke wath (1589) in Burgh by Sands,
Cumberland,66 which are compounds of OE stocc with ford and ON vað
(ME wath) ‘ford’ respectively, could both have been stretches of track in marshy
terrain, made more easily usable by the laying down of timbers, although of
course they could also be crossings marked by posts. It has been suggested that
Bretford (Bretford 1100 1135) in Warwickshire and Bretforton (Bretfertona
709 (12th century): S 80, Bratfortune 1086) in Worcestershire contain compounds
of OE bred and ford,67 and Hough68 suggests several other ford names that may
56 57
Gover et al. 1931–2, 144. S 1051.
58
Skeat 1913, 11. Cameron 1996, 177 describes Woodbridge as ‘self-explanatory’.
59
Ekwall 1960, 530.
60
Gelling 1984, 65, 228, 325; Gelling and Cole 2000, 70, 258.
61 62
Mills 2003, 508. Watts 2004, 694.
63
Cameron 1996, 177–8; Gelling and Cole 2000, 68; Harrison 2004, 105.
64
Gelling and Cole 2000, 72.
65
Mills 1977, 51.
66
Armstrong et al. 1950–2, 129.
67
Mawer et al. 1927, 261–2; Gover et al. 1936, 157–8; Gelling 1984, 69; Gelling and Cole 2000, 73;
Watts 2004, 84.
68
Hough 1995.
Fig. 4.3. Timber causeway across swamp, Pisa National Park (eastern Finland). By kind
permission of John Blair.
contain *brid or *bryd, possible unrecorded side-forms of bred. Timber can be

laid underfoot to ease passage through otherwise awkward stretches (Fig. 4.3),
and this kind of arrangement is perhaps implied by names such as the lost
Stocwey (c.1280, Stokeweye 1455, Stokkewye, Stokkenewey 1483), a road
running through Duxford and Ickleton, Cambridgeshire,69 which is OE stocc-
or stoccena-weg. This and the lost Stockenestrete (c.1300) in Hungerford,
Berkshire,70 a compound of stoccen and strǣt, may have been roads made
passable by the laying of logs, although other interpretations are possible,
such as ‘road among the tree stumps’, or ‘road marked by stocks’. The earliest
form of the name Stardway in Codford, Wiltshire, Stanerdewey (1341),71 may
stand for Stauerdewey from OE *stæfer and weg ‘pole or stake way’. In this
instance, the route of the track may have been marked by poles (perhaps as a
guide for travellers), but might have been a causeway of similar construction to
the Mersea Island example, which originally consisted of thousands of oak
69 70
Reaney 1943, 25. Gelling 1973–6, 308.
71
Gover et al. 1939, 481.
88 John Baker
piles.72 It is clearly difficult to identify the precise use of timber in many of these
place-names, and it is possible to envisage several plausible scenarios. The
proximity of the spōn-weg to the spōn-lēah in the Witney charter suggests
that the ‘shingle road’ may have been the path giving access to the ‘shingle
clearing’.73
The compound stocc-(ge)hæg ‘log fence or enclosure’ occurs several times,
for example Great and Little Stockhay(s) (1846) in Dorset74 and Stockey
Bottom (Stecheye 1298, Stokhey(e) 1300) in Oxfordshire.75 Baulker (Balkhawe
1327 1377) in Farnsfield, Nottinghamshire was probably balk-haga ‘enclos-
ure made of or associated with the manufacture of baulks’,76 and a lost place-
name Tymberyerde (1487) in Forton, Staffordshire77 may come from OE timber-
geard ‘timber fence or enclosure’, and could presumably be an enclosure built of
timber, or used for working or storing timber. It is possible that these refer to
places where people lived, and therefore belong in the next section.
Timber Specifics with Words denoting Dwellings and Settlements

A number of settlement-names are qualified by specifics denoting timber of
some kind. It may be that tree-names as first elements in habitative compounds
(such as Alderton and Ashton) are indicative of the type of timber used in the
construction of the buildings, but such place-names might simply mean ‘the
farm or settlement by the alder or ash tree(s)’.78 Gelling tentatively suggests that
names of the Acton ‘oak farm, settlement, or estate’ type might have been given
to settlements with a specialized role in the processing and distribution of oak
timber.79 Ann Cole’s interpretation of Grafton place-names, as specialist settle-
ments that supplied coppiced wood as fuel to the Droitwich saltworks, is also
relevant here.80
One common place-name type—occurring at least seventeen times81—should
perhaps be left out of the present discussion, although some instances may be
relevant. Stockton and its variants Stoughton and Staughton often look for-
mally as if they might go back to OE stocc-tūn, perhaps ‘farm built of stocks or
logs’.82 However, in a number of instances the earliest forms83 or close associ-
ation with a place that could have been referred to as stoc84 point rather to OE
stoc ‘place’ as the first element. Stockton in Warwickshire85 is first recorded in
1272 as Stocton, but a 1206 form Stochemehull has been noted, which is OE
72 73
Harrison 2004, 104. See this chapter, 80 and n. 9.
74 75
Mills 1989, 136. Gelling 1953–4, 284.
76 77
Gover et al. 1940, 163. Oakden 1984, 152.
78 79
Gelling 1990, 3. Gelling and Foxall 1990, 1–4.
80 81
Cole 2011, 61. Gelling and Foxall 1990, 281–2.
82
e.g. Mawer and Stenton 1926, 20; Mawer et al. 1929–30, 54; Gover et al. 1939, 230.
83
e.g. Gover et al. 1934, 151; Smith 1961d, 181–2.
84
Oakden 1984, 30.
85
Gover et al. 1936, 146.
stoc(c)-hǣme-hyll ‘hill of the inhabitants of Stoc(c)’. Gover, Mawer, Stenton,

and Houghton take the first element to be Stocc, presumably a shortened form
of stocc-tūn, but it seems possible that it is actually simplex OE stoc ‘place’,
perhaps the original name of the settlement before tūn was added. Ekwall notes
that Stoke Canon in Devon (a simplex stoc place-name) was known alterna-
tively as Stoctun,86 and he is followed by Gelling and Foxall in taking OE stoc-
tūn to be the etymology in most, if not all cases of Stockton and its variants.87
Apart from the wudu-tūn names,88 a large number of other settlement-names
also have wudu as their first element. The usual meaning of wudu is ‘wood
(land)’, and although the sense ‘timber’ is probably sometimes present,89 in
most cases wudu settlement-names are likely to be associated with woodland
spatially or functionally. Names of the Woodcote type are generally interpreted
as ‘the cottage in or near a wood’,90 and proximity to woodland is likely to have
been the defining feature of the Woodhams of Surrey and Essex, which come
from OE wudu-hām,91 Woodborough (Udeburg, Udesburg 1086, Wudeburc
1168) in Nottinghamshire (OE wudu-burh),92 and Woodchester (Uuduceastir
716–45 (11th century))93 in Gloucestershire (OE wudu-cæster).94 On the other
hand, the frequently occurring compounds Woodhall and Woodhouse, from
wudu-hall (ME wōde-halle) and wudu-hūs (ME wōde-hous), may have been so
named because of their functional association with woodland.95 Gelling and
Foxall treat the two as equivalent compounds, the first found more predomin-
antly in eastern counties, the second (by implication) more frequently in the
west (and at least eight times in Shropshire alone). They suggest that they were
technical terms for the houses of people with specialized woodland roles.96
Gelling and Foxall were probably correct to argue that the reference here is
unlikely to be to building material, as implied by Smith,97 since most secular
buildings would have been of timber construction, and a term as general as
wudu is unlikely therefore to have had much semantic value in distinguishing
building materials.98
The element timber is, perhaps surprisingly, very rare in compound with
settlement names, as indeed it seems to be with place-names describing any
kind of man-made structure. Timsbury (Timbreberie 1086, Timbresbury 1236)
in Hampshire is one of very few examples, its first element probably describing
86 87
Ekwall 1936, 33–4. Gelling and Foxall 1990, 281–2.
88 89
See this chapter, n. 2. Smith 1956b, 279–80.
90
Gover et al. 1936, 191; Dodgson 1970b, 22; 1971, 118; Gelling and Foxall 1990, 321.
91
Gover et al. 1934, 112; Reaney 1935, 231–2; Watts 2004, 695.
92
Gover, Mawer, and Stenton 1940, 180.
93 94
S 103. Smith 1964a, 115.
95
Of course, proximity was no doubt a prerequisite of such specialized functions.
96
Gelling and Foxall 1990, 322–3. Smith (1956a, 226) thought that Woodhall might sometimes mean
‘a forest court house’.
97
Smith 1956a, 270.
98
See Shapland, this volume.
90 John Baker
the material of construction of a burh or ‘stronghold’.99 On the other hand,

settlement-names are much more likely to be compounded with elements
describing specific types of timber. Generally it is very difficult to know whether
the specific defines the material of construction or an important product with
which the settlement had a functional association, and in some cases the post
referred to may have been a landmark rather than an architectural feature or
functional product.
Judgement on this may come down to the type of timber and the type of
settlement described. Timber compounds with OE burh, for example, seem
more likely to define the style of timber enclosure than the type of timber
product or proximity to a post or pole.100 At least eight burh place-names
seem to be qualified by reference to timber, and although this is a very small
proportion of the large corpus of burh names, it is curious that such names
should have arisen at all, given that many active Anglo-Saxon strongholds
would have been surrounded by timber palisades. However, many places called
burh were prehistoric earthworks or Roman walled towns, perhaps reused from
time to time by the Anglo-Saxons, and Timsbury, for example, may have been
within a locality where most strongholds were of that type. Alternatively, the
type of timber used in construction of certain places called burh may have
differed from the norm and been noteworthy in consequence. Three such places
are defined by planks (OE bred(en)), namely Bredbury in Cheshire (Bretberie
1086, Bredburi(e) 1154–89 (17th century), c.1190),101 Bredenbury in Here-
fordshire (Brideneberie 1086)102 and Bradbury, Durham (Brydbyrig c.1040
(12th century));103 two by laths or beams (OE lætt) in Lathbury, Buckingham-
shire (Late(s)berie 1086)104 and Staffordshire (Lathbury 1367);105 and two by
rods or spars (OE gerd) in Yardbury, Devon (Yhurdebur 1279),106 and a lost
Yerdbury in Dorset (early-14th century).107
Even discounting possible instances of stocc-tūn, the element tūn is com-
pounded at least eighteen times with terms denoting timber products of some
kind. Predominant are the compounds stapol-tūn,108 with six examples,109 and
99
Coates 1993, 163. While recognizing the variety of site-types that can be the referent of place-
names in burh (e.g. Campbell 1979, 42–3; Blair 2005, 249–51, 269–70, 285–9; Draper 2008; Draper
2009), the present discussion follows Parsons and Styles (2000, 74) in using ‘stronghold’ as the preferred
definition of the term. Whatever the social function of sites with place-names in burh, it seems likely that
they shared the characteristic of being defensible, even if they were not always defended (Baker and
Brookes 2013, 95–99).
100 101
Baker 2012. Dodgson 1970a, 262.
102 103
Coplestone-Crow 1989, 41. Watts 2007, 170–1.
104 105
Mawer and Stenton 1925, 8. Horovitz 2005, sub Lathbury’s Hill.
106 107
Gover et al. 1931–2, 623. Mills 1989, 259.
108
Smith 1956b 146.
109
Stapleton in Cumberland (Armstrong et al. 1952–3, 112), Gloucestershire (Smith 1964c, 101),
Leicestershire, Somerset (Smith 1956b, 146, 194; Watts 2004, 572), North Yorkshire (Smith 1928, 283),
and West Yorkshire (Smith 1961b, 65). Some other instances of Stapleton are reflexes of OE stēpel-tūn
‘farm or settlement at the steep place’ (Watts 2004, 572).
*stæfer-tūn110 with five,111 both compounds meaning something like ‘pole

farm’. Blair (this volume) argues that stapol might have referred to a pole that
was in some way venerated, and in that case the stapol-tūnas should perhaps
be grouped alongside the bēam-tūnas. Shafton (Sceptun, -tone 1086, Scafton(a),
-tun 1155–70) in West Yorkshire112 and Rounton (Runtune 1086, Rungtune, -ton
1128–35) in North Yorkshire113 also make reference to poles of some descrip-
tion (OE sceaft ‘a shaft, a pole’ and hrung ‘a rung, a staff, a pole’ respectively),
and Pilton in Rutland114 may do so too (OE pı̄l ‘a shaft, a pile’ being one
possible explanation of the first element).115 Perhaps, as Blair suggests for
bēam-tūn, some of these were also settlements next to notable or venerated
poles; but in some cases the names could be functional (‘farm where poles or
similar were made’), or descriptive of architectural style (‘farm incorporating
distinctive poles in its structure’). If the term stapol did come to denote
(among other things) ‘a class of carved poles or platforms set up as compon-
ents of shrine ensembles’,116 it is not inconceivable that any carved upright
might be referred to in the same way, whether venerated or not. In that case, a
stapol-tūn might have been distinguished by the use of structural beams with
ornamental carvings. There are other tūn place-names in which reference is
made to timber products less likely to have been used as landmarks, and in
these cases either production or structural use seem most likely. The lost
Sperton (1540) in Gloucestershire,117 Ruston (Rostun(e) 1086, Ruston
1167) in North Yorkshire,118 Hurleston (Hurdleston 1278) in Cheshire,119
and Wrafton (Wratheton 1238) in Devon120 have OE *spearr ‘a spar, a rafter’,
hrōst ‘a roof-beam’, hyrdel ‘a hurdle’, and wraþu ‘a prop, a support’ (perhaps
used of the piles of timbers on which a building might be erected).121 Similarly,
Singleton (Singletun 1086, Synglentona 1094) in Lancashire122 contains OE
*scingol (ME shingel) ‘shingle, wooden roof-tile’. Interpretation of these
terms as denoting architectural features may, however, be more likely in the
case of individual edifices; a tūn might well have consisted of a cluster of
buildings.
110
Smith 1956b, 141.
111
Staverton in Northamptonshire (Gover et al. 1933, 28–9) and Wiltshire (Gover et al. 1939, 133);
Stareton in Warwickshire (Ritter 1922, 125–6; Gover et al. 1936, 184–5); a lost Stauertuna in Suffolk
(Gover et al. 1933, 28–9). Staverton (Staruenton 1086, Stawerton 1249, Stau-, Staverton(a) early-13th
century) in Gloucestershire (Smith 1964b, 84), might have *stæfren ‘made of poles’ as its first element,
rather than *stæfer (Smith 1956b, 141; Ekwall 1960, 440).
112 113
Smith 1961a, 272–3. Smith 1928, 217.
114
Watts 2004, 473.
115
But OE pyll ‘pool, tidal creek, small stream’ or ON pill ‘a willow’ are acceptable alternatives
(Ekwall 1960, 367; Cox 1994, 290; Gelling and Cole 2000, 28; Watts 2004, 473).
116 117
Blair, this volume, 189. Smith 1964b, 155.
118
Smith 1928, 100.
119 120
Dodgson 1971, 146–7. Gover et al. 1931–2, 45.
121 122
Smith 1956b, 278. Ekwall 1922, 154; Smith 1956b, 121; Watts 2004, s.n.
92 John Baker
Types of timber are used to define other kinds of settlement site. Hurworth
(Hurdevorde c.1190) in Durham,123 Scaftworth (Scafteorde 1086, Scaftword-
1202, Schaftard 1225 (14th century)) in Nottinghamshire,124 Failsworth (Fay-
leswrthe, Faileswrthe 1212, Felesworde 1226) in Lancashire,125 and Stockurth
(cf. Stokkeworthfeld 1425) in West Yorkshire126 are instances of OE worð
‘an enclosure’ qualified by *hurð ‘a hurdle, a wickerwork frame’, sceaft, *fēgels
‘a hurdle, a fence’, and stocc, while OE wı̄c ‘dependent settlement’ is qualified
by breden and sticca ‘a stick, a rod, a twig, a branch’ in the lost field-name
Brednewyke (1285) in Dodington, Gloucestershire,127 and Stickwick (Stekeweke
1524, Stikeweeke 1596) in Devon.128 Sparham (Sparham c.1060) in Norfolk129
combines OE *spearr with hām ‘settlement’ (or perhaps hamm ‘hemmed
in land’).
Small settlements or individual buildings could also be described by reference
to timber. Breadsell (OE bred-(ge)sell ‘group of buildings made of or producing
boards’,130 the lost names Staurecote (1086) in Shropshire (OE *stæfer-cot
‘pole cottage’)131 and Stokhus (1335) in Wiltshire (OE stocc-hūs ‘log
house’),132 and perhaps Burdale in Yorkshire (OE bred-hall or -halh ‘plank
hall or nook’)133 may all belong here. Balkerne Hill in Colchester, Essex, is
probably named from a timbered building (ME balk-ern),134 and Beard Mill in
Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, has been explained as ‘the mill constructed of
boards’ (a mutated side-form of OE bord with myln).135
Finally, there is a group of place-names in OE cirice, ON kirkja ‘church’ that
are compounded with references to timber.136 Here the reference is presumably
to construction material. Unlike secular buildings, churches were more often
constructed of stone, at least by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period and perhaps
earlier too, so that timber churches may have been more worthy of note.137 On
the other hand, Gelling takes OE cirice in place-names to denote a less signifi-
cant church, subordinate to a mynster,138 and according to Blair, churches with
descriptive names of this kind are seldom on record before 1100 and may have
123
Mawer 1920, 122; Smith 1956a, 270; Smith 1956b, 273.
124
Gover et al. 1940, 38; Watts 2004, 530.
125
Ekwall 1922, 36; Smith 1956a, 166; Mills 1986, 83; Watts 2004, 223.
126 127
Smith 1961a, 239. Smith 1964c, 48.
128
Gover et al. 1931–2, 468; Smith 1956b, 151.
129
Smith 1956b, 135; Ekwall 1960, 433; Watts 2004, 564.
130
Bemzells (bēam-(ge)sell) could be analogous—‘group of buildings made of or producing beams’—
but might belong with the other bēam place-names discussed by Blair, this volume, 186–210. See also
Ekwall 1936, 49 (who cites other similar instances); Smith 1956b, 117–18; Mawer et al. 1929–30, 480,
496 and cf. 340.
131 132
Gover et al. 1933, 29. Gover et al. 1939, 437.
133 134
Smith 1937, 132. Reaney 1935, 370.
135
Armstrong et al. 1950–2, iii, p. lxxii; Gelling 1953–4, i, pp. liii, 282.
136
In some of the examples that follow, -kirk forms may result from Scandinavian influence on names
in OE cirice rather than newly formed place-names in ON kirkja.
137
Shapland, this volume, 21–44.
138
Gelling 2009, 8.
been some of the humblest churches in the landscape.139 So a timber cirice was
perhaps less unusual than a timber mynster would have been. Berechurch
(Berdechirche 1216 1272, Bierdecherche, -chyrche 1277, (le) Be(e)rdecherch(e)
1379, 1400, Beyre 1468, Bere 1497, Berechurch(e) 1509–47) in Essex,
Bradkirk (de Bredekyrk 1235, de Bredekirke a.1242) in Lancashire, and
St Mary Bredin (sancte Marie de Bredene cherche c.1200) in Canterbury,
Kent, were probably built of planks;140 Stokenchurch (Stockenechurch
c.1200) in Buckinghamshire and the church of St Andrew, Holborn in Middle-
sex (to ðære ealde stoccene sancte Andreas cyricean 951 for ?959 (late-10th
century))141 of logs or stocks; and Felkirk (Felechirc(h)a, -e 1119–47, -kircha
1121–7, Felekirk(e), -kyrk(e), -a 1170–85) in West Yorkshire also of
planks (ON fjo˛l).142 Woodchurch in Kent and Cheshire, and Woodkirk in
West Yorkshire143 again raise the question of whether wudu here means ‘wood-
land’ or ‘timber’.144
Timber as a Generic
A small number of place-names contain words for timber as the generic rather
than as a qualifying element. The range of terms here is more limited, restricted
to those with clear timber connotations—where a term such as wudu, used as a
specific, might make reference to places associated with timber use or produc-
tion, as a generic it denotes a type of woodland and is therefore not relevant
here. In such cases the terms denoting timber seem generally to denote objects or
features made from or associated with timber, or places growing with timber.
Compound instances include Newtimber in Sussex,145 which is taken by Watts
to mean ‘new building’,146 and Quabrook (ate Quabbalke 1285) in Hartfield,
Sussex, which seems to contain ME quabbe (from OE *cwabba) ‘boggy place’
and ME balk, perhaps denoting a large piece of timber used to assist in crossing
the mire,147 although balk could here have its primary sense ‘ridge, bank’.148
Sockbridge (Socabret 1170–80) in Westmorland may provide a close semantic
parallel, OE soc (gen.pl. soca) ‘marshy spot’ with bred ‘board, plank’ in refer-
ence to a footbridge.149 The later assimilation of the second element to
(or substitution with) OE brycg (ME brigge), which is evidenced from the
139
Blair 2005, 387.
140
Reaney 1935, 372; Ekwall 1922, 153, 257; Cullen 1997, 569; Parsons and Styles 2000, 30;
Parsons 2004, 67.
141 142
S 670. Smith 1961a, 271.
143
Wallenberg 1931, 171; 1934, 364–5; Smith 1961b, 176; Dodgson 1972, 274.
144
Gelling 1984, 228; Cameron 1996, 127; Gelling and Cole 2000, 258; Parsons 2004, 68; Gelling
2009, 12. The apparent absence of the elements bēam and stapol in compound with cirice is worth noting
in light of Blair’s discussion, this volume, 186–210.
145
Mawer et al. 1929–30, 286; Smith 1956b, 180.
146 147
Watts 2004, 436. Mawer et al. 1929–30, 368.
148
Parsons et al. 1997, 41–3.
149
Ekwall 1960, 429; Smith 1967b, 207–8.
94 John Baker
twelfth century, might not have been coincidental. The exact meaning of
Holtspur in Buckinghamshire and Rusper in Sussex, which combine OE holt
‘single-species wood’ and ruh ‘rough’ with OE *spearr (ME sperre), is uncer-
tain.150 Quick Stavers (cwicu, *stæfer) in West Yorkshire probably means ‘live
stakes’, and may refer to a quickset hedge.151
If as first elements bēam and stapol might occasionally refer to structural
timber, this is unlikely to be the case when they occur as the second element of
a compound place-name, and Blair’s suggestion that they denote significant
trees or posts is convincing—the status of Whitstable as a hundred meeting-
place and the suggestive first element of Bladbean (both in Kent) may be indica-
tive.152 It is worth noting that where OE gerd occurs as a simplex name or as
second element, it may signify a ‘measure of land’ rather than a piece of
timber.153 Other simplex occurrences of references to timber may denote places
where timber grew and could be obtained. A field-name Les Lattez (1494) in
Lechlade, Gloucestershire,154 is therefore perhaps the place where laths (OE
lætt) were found.
Market Rasen ((æt) ræsnan 973 (13th century) S 792, Resne 1086, Market-
rasyn 1358) in Lincolnshire was originally a simplex name from OE ræsn
‘a plank’ (dat.pl. ræsnum ‘at the planks’), probably referring to a plank bridge
over the locally narrow stretch of the river Rasen, the name of which is a back-
formation.155 Theale, a hundred-name in Berkshire, and Theale in Somerset
both go back to OE þel (pl. þelu), and again the sense may be ‘plank bridge’.156
However, the Berkshire example at least may be comparable with Dill Hundred
in Sussex, whose name goes back to OE þille ‘a plank, a board, flooring’,
perhaps describing a platform or some other structure made of planks that
was used during meetings of the hundred.157
Discussion
Some regional variations in the distribution of these types of place-name have
been noted, and a fuller analysis may reveal others, but in general place-names
with specifics that denote timber are found in almost all parts of England.
Relatively few of the names discussed in this chapter were first recorded in or
before 1086, and many are local- or field-names. This is especially true of
compounds involving topographical elements qualified by timber terms, with
150
Mawer and Stenton 1925, 199; Mawer et al. 1929–30, 232–3; Smith 1956b, 135.
151
Smith 1961c, 148–9.
152
Wallenberg 1934, 431, 491, 493; Blair 1995, 2, 20; this volume, 194–5, especially Fig. 10.3;
Cullen 1997, 164, 290, 296–7.
153
Gover et al. 1931–2, 48, 356, 575; Reaney 1935, 386; Smith 1956a, 2000.
154
Smith 1964a, 44.
155
Ekwall 1960, 381; Smith 1956b, 79; Cameron 1992, 94–6; Watts 2004, 492.
156
Smith 1956b, 203; Gelling 1973–6, 198, 221–2; Watts 2004, 607.
157
Mawer et al. 1929–30, 435; Anderson 1939a, 205; 1939b, 96; Smith 1956b, 204.
the exception of some of the Yardley, Stockleigh, and Staveley names. This is
not entirely surprising, since such place-names probably reflect localized know-
ledge of where suitable types of timber could be obtained, often perhaps small
parcels of woodland within an otherwise intensively farmed landscape. Refer-
ences to structures and settlements made of or associated with timber are also
generally late, but there are a good number of instances that belong to the
eleventh century or earlier. Wooden bridges, in particular, are well evidenced in
pre-Conquest documents, but this may be partly due to the importance of river-
crossings as boundary markers. Settlement-names qualified by words for timber
are also more frequently recorded in or before the eleventh century. About a
third of the settlement-names discussed above fall into this category—and this
figure excludes the compounds stoc(c)-tūn, bēam-tūn, and stapol-tūn. This may
simply reflect a tendency for habitative names to denote settlements worth
recording in compilations such as the Domesday survey.
Given the large number of habitative place-names of any kind, the proportion
qualified by reference to timber is very small, perhaps because the vast majority
of settlement sites in the medieval period were characterized by predominantly
timber buildings. Where timber qualifiers are found with generics denoting
buildings or clusters of buildings, the general term timber is rare, while more
specific descriptions of types of timber are usual: *stæfer, stapol, *scingol, bred,
*spearr, and so on. This may be significant in attempting to understand the
implications of this class of names. A building or settlement might, for example,
be characterized by the unusual use of a particular type of beam or rafter in its
construction more easily than simply by construction in timber, which was
presumably normal. The alternative—that in addition to their normal subsist-
ence activities, Anglo-Saxon settlements might be specialized not just in timber
production, but in the manufacture and supply of specific types of timber—
seems less convincing, but not impossible. Whether such narrow specialization
is likely is questionable, but might be paralleled in Cole’s interpretation of
Grafton discussed above. Hooke has noted that charters could be very precise
about both the types of wood or timber required and its intended uses, but this
is in reference to woodland resources rather than specialized productive
centres.158 A patch of woodland might well be thought of as a good site for
obtaining particular types of timber, and the fact might well be recorded in
the minor local toponymy; but that level of specialization at a settlement—
especially one important enough to appear in the Domesday survey, like many
of those discussed here—might have important implications for our under-
standing of economies of scale and concentrations of craft and industry. Never-
theless, a site dedicated to the production of timber would have been distinctive
for that characteristic alone, regardless of the type of timber in which it
158
Hooke 2010, 146–7, 151.
96 John Baker
specialized. Perhaps the better interpretation of these names in many cases is

that the timber was a feature of their construction.
This certainly seems the most likely explanation of the burh and cirice names
qualified by timber terms. For instance, a stronghold with defences constructed
using planks might have been distinctive if most other timber palisades made
use of stocks; while any church constructed of timber would have differed from
those built in stone, perhaps a reason for the occurrence of the less specific
wudu-cirice as a compound (if wudu in these instances does refer to timber). On
the other hand, it is debatable whether a settlement such as a tūn could have
been distinguished by use of poles, rafters, or spars. It assumes that tūnas were
all of a type—perhaps consisting of a single building or a complex of structures
with shared characteristics—that made it possible to differentiate them on the
basis of their structural fabric. Some elements of the structure that are men-
tioned might not have been the most visible, perhaps hidden under thatch, and
would presumably have been common to most if not all timber buildings. For
these names to be distinctive as architectural descriptors, they must have
indicated buildings constructed in an unusual fashion, where rafters, posts, or
beams were set in a notably different manner from that employed in other
nearby structures, or were in some other way more visible and remark-
able159—but it is conceivable that a tūn settlement contained more than one
building and that variety in architectural style (even on a single site) was quite
likely.
It is also worth noting the apparent lack of a compound bred-tūn in place-
names. If bridges, churches, strongholds, and individual buildings and shelters
could be built of planks, it is strange that no tūn should be described in this way,
yet many tūn names are qualified by references to beams or poles of some kind.
At least one or two instances of bred-tūn might be expected if we were dealing
with the materials of construction. If instead we are dealing with the manufac-
ture of timber, then the absence of timber-tūn names remains problematic.
A third possibility—that these are tūnas marked by poles of some kind—brings
us back to the issue of stoc(c)-tūn. A compound stocc-tūn would not be unex-
pected alongside bēam-tūn, stapol-tūn, and *stæfer-tūn.160 Without a more
detailed analysis it is difficult to identify a clear division between the geograph-
ical distribution of these place-name types, which are all quite widely spread
across England, and it is difficult to imagine therefore that they are all equiva-
lent compounds.
159
See Gardiner, this volume, 45–77.
160
It is certainly worth noting that stock (OE stocc) may already have acquired the sense ‘an idol,
a sacred image’ by c.1000 (Oxford English Dictionary).
Conclusions
Clearly the importance of timber as a resource in medieval England is reflected
in place-names. Anglo-Saxon and later inhabitants were acutely aware of where
timber could be obtained, and which sites were best suited for particular types
of timber. Different kinds of timber would have been in constant demand by
builders of secular and ecclesiastical structures—even stone-built edifices
required a great deal of timber for everything from scaffolding to the carpentry
that supported their roofs. In an agrarian landscape, knowledge of where
people could avail themselves of specific types of timber would have been
important, and the place-name evidence suggests that a wide range of locations
were noted as potential sources.
Place-names also show frequent association of settlement-sites with specific
types of timber. In these instances, a number of the timber terms denote posts or
stakes of a type that may have served as markers in the landscape, perhaps even
as foci for sacral functions,161 and defined the associated settlement in this way;
but the majority may refer to more mundane, though no less interesting, uses of
wooden products. Whether these were specialized manufacturing sites, or sites
constructed in a particular way is of significance for our understanding of
Anglo-Saxon economic organization and perceptions of architectural design.
On the one hand, the relative absence of the general term timber from such
compounds is consistent with reference to construction materials, since the
prevalence of timber as a building material would remove the qualifying impact
of that term;162 on the other hand the very banality of the types of timber
denoted by first elements, especially in compound with OE tūn, might tell
against reference to building materials. On the whole, however, it seems more
acceptable to believe that a handful of buildings made such a remarkable use of
beams or rafters as to be highly distinctive than that manufacturing sites were
always too specialized for more general timber settlement names to occur.
Absolute confidence is impossible without supporting evidence, and further
analysis is required in endeavouring to understand such compounds. The
present discussion has concentrated on the data collected in the English Place-
Name Society’s county surveys, but a more systematic consideration of charter
bounds is likely to identify further examples.
There are other timber-related terms that may be evidenced in place-names,
including OE *þremm, *þræmm ‘a beam, a log’,163 OE cipp ‘a beam, a log’,164
ON flaki, fleki ‘a hurdle’,165 and some types of timber place-name that have not
been discussed here in detail. A number of place-names have qualifiers such as
161
See Blair, this volume, 186–210.
162
See Shapland, this volume, 21–44.
163
Smith 1956b, 212–13.
164
Smith 1956a, 94.
165
Smith 1961a, 117; Smith 1961g, 187; Smith 1967b, 43.
98 John Baker
ācen, *elmen and æscen, and in many cases these may be sites that were growing
with oak, elm, or ash trees. However, the possibility should perhaps be con-
sidered that some were so named because the timber of a particular type of
tree dominated the carpentry of their structure. This will depend in part on
the species of tree named—byxen ‘of boxwood’, for example, is unlikely to be
descriptive of the construction material of a load-bearing structure; but the lost
Elmynhaye, Elming(e)haye (1575)166 in Nympsfield, Gloucestershire, might
have been an enclosure consisting predominantly of elm timber. Whether the
choice of wood species could be obvious and distinctive enough to be preserved
in the name of a place must also be considered.
Place-names where timber construction seems to be signified by the late medi-
eval addition of an affix must also tell us something about expectations concern-
ing different architectural styles. Stoke Newington (Neutone 1086, Stokneweton
1274, Neweton Stocking, Stoken 1274) in Middlesex167 was apparently distin-
guished as the Newington made of stocks, perhaps in contrast to Newington
Barrow (now Highbury). It is tempting to wonder if the difference in building style
recorded in the name is detectable archaeologically, not just in the case of Stoke
Newington, but the many other structures defined toponymically by reference to
timber and discussed above. Sometimes these may have been structures that
employed innovative or peculiar construction techniques or materials, or places
where a type of timber had been used in such a way as to enhance a particular
aspect of a building’s physical appearance,168 perhaps creating the most arche-
typical example of a specific kind of timber building.169 Inclusion of certain types
of timber in particularly striking positions may have emphasized certain functions
or reinforced for ideological reasons the fact that this was a timber rather than a
stone building.170 In many cases, further work on the landscape, archaeology, and
history of sites bearing these names may well be productive in answering the
numerous open questions raised here. The importance of timber as a resource and
as an almost omnipresent element of the visible world certainly stands out.
Clearly, the medieval person’s subtle understanding of the environment, which
must have encompassed a thorough knowledge of where different types of timber
could be obtained, is likely also to have included an appreciation of the subtleties
of constructional techniques and architectural aesthetics.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank all those who have provided feedback on this chapter,
notably the editors and two anonymous reviewers. I am especially grateful to
166 167
Smith 1964b, 244. Gover et al. 1942, 159.
168 169
See Gardiner, this volume, 45–77. Cf. Hough 2007.
170
Shapland, this volume, 21–44.
Dr Jayne Carroll and Professor John Blair, both of whom gave detailed com-
ments on an earlier draft, and made invaluable suggestions for improving the
text. John Blair also provided two of the images used to illustrate it.
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Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A., and Stenton, F. M. (1940), The Place-Names of Notting-
hamshire (Cambridge: English Place-Name Society/Cambridge University Press).
Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A., and Stenton, F. M. (1942), The Place-Names of Middlesex
Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A., Stenton, F. M., and Bonner, A. (1934), The Place-Names of
Surrey (Cambridge: English Place-Name Society/Cambridge University Press).
Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A., and Stenton, F. M., with Houghton, F. T. S. (1936), The
Place-Names of Warwickshire (Cambridge: English Place-Name Society/Cambridge
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A. R. Rumble and A. D. Mills (eds), Names, Places and People: An Onomastic
Miscellany in Memory of John McNeal Dodgson (Stamford: Paul Watkins), 96–110.
Harrison, D. (2004), The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400–800
Hooke, D. (2010), Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape,
Anglo-Saxon Studies, 13 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press).
Horovitz, D. (2005), The Place-Names of Staffordshire (Stafford: Horovitz).
Hough, C. (1995), ‘The Place-Names Bridford, Britford, and Birdforth’, Nottingham
Medieval Studies, 39: 12–18.
Hough, C. (2007), ‘Commonplace Place-Names’, Nomina, 30: 101–20.
Kökeritz, H (1940), The Place-Names of the Isle of Wight (Uppsala: Appelberg).
Mawer, A. (1920), The Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham (Cambridge:
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Mawer, A., and Stenton, F. M. (1925), The Place-Names of Buckinghamshire (Cam-
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Mawer, A., and Stenton, F. M. (1926), The Place-Names of Bedfordshire and Hunting-
donshire (Cambridge: English Place-Name Society/Cambridge University Press).
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Place-Names of Worcestershire (Cambridge: English Place-Name Society/Cambridge
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Mills, A. D. (1977), The Place-Names of Dorset, Part I (Cambridge: English Place-
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Mills, A. D. (1989), The Place-Names of Dorset, Part III (Cambridge: English Place-
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102 John Baker
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(Nottingham: English Place-Name Society).
PA RT I I
PERCEPTIONS OF WOOD AND

WOODEN OBJECTS
5
The Wooden Drinking Vessels in the Sutton
Hoo Assemblage
Materials, Morphology, and Usage
Martin G. Comey
(Independent Scholar, London)
The ship-burial excavated in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk in 1939 has

rightly become one of the most famous Anglo-Saxon archaeological contexts in
the world. What the first excavator, local archaeologist Basil Brown, found
inside the mound was a seventh-century ritual deposit of unusually high status.
The site and the finds from Mound 1 have since been the subject of intense
scrutiny and an already considerable body of published literature continues to
grow.1 Even the rich finds from the princely burials excavated in 1883 at
Taplow, in Buckinghamshire and in 2003 at Prittlewell, in Essex cannot be
said to equal the splendour of the Sutton Hoo assemblage.2 The Taplow
assemblage contains the same sort of equipment included in Mound 1 but is
arguably less magnificent and, with the exception of the drinking vessels, there
is generally less of it. Until the recent discovery of the Staffordshire hoard,3 the
gold cloisonné sword fittings from Mound 1 formed the largest and most
significant assemblage of this material from Anglo-Saxon England, and the
exquisitely crafted, not to say superbly photogenic, cuirass, belt, purse, and
scabbard fittings have been endlessly reproduced in the literature of early
medieval archaeology and history. The finds from Sutton Hoo, in particular
the face-mask of the helmet, have attained iconic status; justifiably or not, they
have become metaphors for the entire Anglo-Saxon past.4
1
e.g. Phillips et al. 1940; Bruce-Mitford 1975, 1978, 1979, 1983; Carver 1992, 1993a, 1993b, 2005.
2
Stevens 1884; MoLAS 2004.
3
Leahy and Bland 2009.
4
e.g. James Campbell used the face-mask to illustrate the cover of The Anglo-Saxons in 1982.
108 Martin G. Comey
However, there is more to Sutton Hoo than sumptuous metalwork and war-
gear. The Anglo-Saxons at the time of Sutton Hoo were a wood-using people.
Wood was the pre-eminent structural raw material, used for everything from
the ‘mead halls’ of the great lords, such as that discovered at Yeavering,5 to the
linings of humble Grubenhäuser, like those excavated at West Stow and inter-
preted as weavers’ huts.6 Much of the equipment required for daily life was
fashioned from this versatile material, though it rarely survives in archaeo-
logical contexts. Perhaps surprisingly given the acidic sandy soil at Sutton
Hoo (pH 3–4), some organic material was preserved within the burial chamber,
including scraps of textiles, leather, and wood. In fact, the entire burial context
of Mound 1 can be considered as a wooden context: a timber-built burial
chamber, set amidships in a ship of wooden planks, covered by a large mound
of sand. It should come as no surprise that these people used wooden vessels for
drinking, and so, among the silverware and gold-and-garnet treasures included
in the funerary assemblage are eighteen wooden vessels associated with
feasting. These comprise one large tub of yew wood (Taxus baccata); three
yew buckets; six drinking flasks of field maple (Acer campestre); and eight small
cups of walnut (Juglans Regia). This small assemblage nevertheless displays
considerable diversity in terms of technology, materials, morphology, capacity,
and applied decoration, and this diversity must reflect status and usage. By
comparing the archaeological evidence with the available literary sources, it
might be possible to deduce the possible uses of these drinking vessels, perhaps
even to assign specific beverages to them, and also to apprehend something of
their social significance.
There is a long-lasting tradition in European prehistory of burying chieftains
in chambers within mounds, accompanied by the trappings of their elevated
position in society. In the Iron Age, these Fürstengräber also often contained
exotic objects imported from the Mediterranean region which are clearly asso-
ciated with the consumption of alcohol.7 Several large tumuli of Hallstatt
D date, including Vix in central France (c.500 BC), which contained a splendid
Greek krater, and Hochdorf, in Germany (c.550 BC), with an Etruscan cauldron,
have extensive assemblages of feasting equipment. The pagan Anglo-Saxon elite
of East Anglia chose to demonstrate their wealth and power in the same way,
and the tradition continued into the Viking Age at places like Jelling in eastern
Jutland,8 and at Oseberg and Gokstad in southern Norway with their attendant
ship-burials.9 The date of Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo—the early part of the seventh
century, probably sometime around the year 625—places this feature and its
contents in the same heroic era depicted in the epic poem and Old English
masterpiece Beowulf.10 The parallels between the material culture of Anglo-
Saxon England recovered by archaeology and the descriptions contained within
5 6 7
Hope-Taylor 1977. West 1985. Frankenstein and Rowlands 1978.
8 9 10
Roesdahl 1992. Nicolaysen 1882; Brgger and Shetelig 1928. Orchard 2003.
Wooden Drinking Vessels at Sutton Hoo 109
the poem are manifold: for instance, one well-known example related closely to
the subject of this volume, the shields of the Geat warriors, are described as
polished linden, and the great shield from Sutton Hoo has also been identified
as a lime species (either Tilia cordata or T. platyphyllos—both are native to
Britain), but with a leather cover. Another famous parallel is between the boar-
crested helmets described by the poet and two archaeological examples, one
recovered in 1848 from a barrow at Benty Grange Farm, Derbyshire,11 and
another, known as the Pioneer helmet, found at Wollaston, Northamptonshire,
in 1997.12 There are only four helmets known from Anglo-Saxon England, and
one of these is from Sutton Hoo. Whilst this helmet lacks a crest, the same boar
motif is reflected quite explicitly in the symbolism executed in cloisonné garnets
and millefiori glass on the gold shoulder-clasps from Mound 1.
In addition to the wooden vessels in Mound 1, there are silver drinking
vessels, a horn cup, several silver and bronze bowls, and two cauldrons: in
short, the apparatus required for feasting and the sort of largesse described so
clearly in Beowulf as part of the system of noble patronage practised by Anglo-
Saxon chieftains and kings. The vessel assemblage from Taplow is similarly
comprehensive, with silver- and bronze-mounted wooden cups and five, or
possibly six, silver-mounted drinking horns, a tub, buckets, and a cauldron.13
Interestingly, there are no ceramic or glass drinking vessels present in the Sutton
Hoo assemblage (there were four claw beakers at Taplow). However, the
present question is: What can these wooden containers tell us about attitudes
to wood among the elite of East Anglia in the seventh century? To answer this
question we may consider the evidence by looking at the physical attributes
of materials and morphology, as well as the documentary evidence available,
and attempt to link these to other, less tangible, considerations of Anglo-Saxon
perception.
Materials
A fundamental aspect of any wooden object is the species of tree or woody
shrub from which it originates. Identification of species is an important consid-
eration for understanding these wooden vessels and this is true of all archaeo-
logical wood, whether it is artefactual, structural, fuel wood, or natural wood
from site, regardless of the means of preservation. Wooden artefacts normally
decay in dry or damp conditions, and archaeological wood in Britain is usually
preserved by anaerobic waterlogging, where it is permanently immersed in
100 per cent moisture, to the exclusion of free oxygen. But Sutton Hoo is a
dry site.14 The large timbers of the ship were preserved only as a shadow in the
sand, delineated by a hardened crust and rows of iron nails. Nevertheless, it has
11 12
Pollington 1996, 141–6. Meadows 1997.
13 14
Webster 2001. Western 1969; Taylor 1981.
110 Martin G. Comey
proven possible to conduct species analysis of fragments of the wooden vessels

preserved by chance, and by using impressions of the microscopic anatomical
features of wood fossilized in the corrosion products on the surfaces of metal
fittings with which the wood was in contact.
The six turned maple flasks have been identified as Acer campestre, the only
one of the five European Acer species that is certainly native to Britain. This
species favours chalky and limestone soils and can grow to a medium-sized tree
up to about 18 metres high. It would not have been a common tree in fenny East
Anglia. Like hazel (Corylus avellana), field maple was commonly coppiced in
former times, but it is now most often found in hedgerows as a bushy shrub.
Maple trees yield a close-grained, honey-coloured wood with few knots. The
regular and sharp boundaries between the early- and late-growth cells in each
annual growth ring give a pleasing figure to the surfaces of objects made from
maple. The species is recognized as being well-suited to turnery, though very
little field maple is used by modern turners, who exploit more readily available
sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) and plane (various species of the genus Plata-
nus, mostly imported from North America), which have similar characteristics
in the wood.15 The skilfully turned flasks are furnished with metal fittings:
silver-gilt foil panels around the rim with impressed animal ornament, held in
place by ungilded moulded silver frames above vandykes, decorated and
mounted in the same way—each with a human mask at its tip.
The eight smaller drinking cups have been identified as being walnut burr-
wood. Walnut is not a species native to Britain. Its native range is south-eastern
European, but it was widely planted in Roman times and grows quite happily in
East Anglia. Nevertheless, it is a species that seems to require husbandry and it
has not become naturalized in the same way that the highly competitive syca-
more has.16 Many walnut trees were planted in Britain from the time of George
I onwards to provide timber for musket stocks (Brown Bess, the nickname for
the standard musket used by the British Army until 1838, is thought by some to
derive from its walnut stock). It is of special interest that the wood has been
identified as being burrwood. Burrwood is a term that is often used ambigu-
ously. Commonly, it refers to the figure present in the wood of almost all walnut
when carved or turned and polished, particularly so in wood from near the base
of the tree stem, where it merges with the roots. True burrwood, however,
comes from a specific anatomical feature that occurs only in a minority of
trees. Put simply, ‘burrwood’ is the translocating tissue or xylem of trees and
woody shrubs. The xylem has a hard cellular structure, though it is not actually
living tissue, and it is this that is useful to people as wood and timber.17 Phloem,
the living tissue of trees, exists in a narrow band between the xylem and the
15 16 17
Edlin 1949, 76–80. Rackham 1990, 4–5. Desch and Dinwoodie 1996, 9–55.
bark. Annual cycles of cellular division in the cambium, a layer at the outer limit
of the phloem, form the growth rings in the xylem that can be seen on wooden
objects.18 Burrs are formed in the cambium and they grow with the tree. They
result from stress in the tree as its efforts to grow new branches are frustrated,
for whatever reason. The usual result of repeated failure to bud is a rounded
outgrowth on the trunk or a branch that is filled with a mass of small knots from
dormant buds. It should be noted that burrs are not a peculiarity of walnut
trees; any species can develop them.
Walnut burrwood is much darker than the regular wood of the walnut tree,
which is light and creamy with a pleasant figure. Large numbers of knots in
close proximity cause a dense, swirling pattern completely different to the
normal growth of the tree (Fig. 5.1). The presence of a burr does not seem to
affect the health of the tree, which continues to grow and bear nuts. Some burrs
must be caused by browsing animals nibbling off the green shoots from near the
base of the trunk, and it is possible to provoke the growth of burrs deliberately.
Fig. 5.1. A walnut burrwood veneer: showing in detail the mass of small knots that form the
burr. The regular wood can be seen at the top of the picture.
18
Eaton and Hale 1993, 7–10, have a good description of this process.
112 Martin G. Comey
This might be an explanation for a traditional rhyming couplet that has sur-
vived in modern usage, but dates back to at least the sixteenth century:19
A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree
The more you beat ’em, the better they be.
Unacceptable as the former two are in modern society, there might be several
reasons to beat a walnut tree. To release the nuts at harvesting time is perhaps
the most obvious, but also it was important to promote a straight trunk and
produce good timber for muskets, or possibly to provoke burrs. Preventing the
growth of side branches sometimes provokes the growth of a burr, but if
producing burrs was a simple procedure that does no apparent harm to the
tree, then all trees would have been so modified. Burrwood is highly valued
today, and probably always was, so this would be a desirable result of beating
the tree trunk. It seems, however, that only some trees produce burrs, beaten or
not. If the identification of the walnut cups at Sutton Hoo as burrwood is
correct, then there are two noteworthy aspects to its selection. One is that it
took considerable skill on the part of the turner to produce such dainty vessels in
this highly variable material. The other differentiates these cups from the other
wood species used for vessel fabrication. The yew and maple wood can be said
to have been selected according to the criteria set by the woodworkers using
them; the walnut burrwood had to be sought out, or even produced deliberately.
The larger wooden vessels are also part of the feasting apparatus used in the
serving of food and drink, and potentially for the fermentation of alcoholic
drinks. The large tub has been reconstructed as having a capacity of about 100
litres.20 It has a rim diameter that is narrower than the base, which seems to be
the usual form for large tubs of early medieval date.21 It is furnished with
ornamental ironwork and bound with iron hoops. This was a heavy vessel
when full, and two iron loops attached to the upper binding hoop might have
been used to carry it on a pole. The three yew buckets are apparently cylindrical,
again bound with iron hoops and fitted with some ornamental ironmongery.
Bucket 1 was found inside the large tub and has a capacity of about 25 litres—or
about one quarter of the tub. The reconstruction of these vessels allows us to see
their basic morphology and approximate capacity. What such reconstructive
work cannot demonstrate is the original figure and tonal qualities of the wood
used. Yew is a softwood species native to Britain. In contrast to most of the
other softwood tree species (most of which are not native to Britain), yew does
not always grow a single large stem, such as Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), spruce
(Picea abies), fir (Abies alba), and larch (Larix decidua) do. Yew occasionally
grows a series of small stems that eventually merge into a single trunk. In
addition, yew often grows numerous small side branches. This growth habit
creates a twisting, knotty grain that can bestow a highly complex figure on the
19 20 21
Pettie 1581, 20. Evans 1994, 77. Comey 2010, 112.
cleft timber—particularly so in the tangential plane. In addition, there is a clear

difference in colour between the inner xylem, which is orange, and the outer
xylem, which is creamy (Fig. 5.2). This difference is particularly evident in the
transverse section; tangentially cleft boards also display this phenomenon, and
tangentially converted yew staves can show an orange middle and cream edges
that would have contrasted superbly with burnished iron fittings (Fig. 5.3). It is
not known whether the staves of the vessels at Sutton Hoo were tangential or
radial, but where large assemblages of coopered vessels have been preserved,
tangential conversion of yew is a repeated phenomenon. This has been observed
in places as diverse as Hiberno-Norse Dublin and early medieval Novgorod, in
north-western Russia.22
Fig. 5.2. Transverse section through a yew log: illustrating the contrast in the wood of this
species. The orange inner xylem is quite different in texture and hardness to the creamy outer
xylem (often referred to as ‘sap-wood’), which also contains more moisture.
Fig. 5.3. A tangentially cleft yew log: again, illustrating the contrast in the wood. This is
most probably how the roughed-out boards of yew looked before the Saxon coopers
fashioned them into the three buckets and the tub buried in Mound 1.
22
Comey 2002; 2010.
114 Martin G. Comey
Fig. 5.4. A tangential yew stave recovered from a souterrain at Larne, Co. Antrim (Water-
man 1971). Dated to c. AD 1000, this stave is 572 mm long and is a close analogue of the
staves that were used to make the large tub at Sutton Hoo. The stave is cut from a compara-
tively small log, creating a dramatic swirling figure on the surface of the wood. This
conversion renders the wood unstable and the detail (left) shows that the stave has come
apart, despite the excellent preservation of the wood by waterlogging. (Photograph
M. G. Comey, by kind permission of the Ulster Museum.)
Yew is not a species we would normally consider suitable for making vessels.
Many people think it is poisonous, which it is not. In pagan Anglo-Saxon times,
the attitude to this wood seems to have been different to the modern, gloomy
associations with churchyards and death. Yew-wood vessels have been
recovered from other Anglo-Saxon contexts, and among the minority of these
that have been identified for species yew is the most common.23 There are two
yew buckets from Taplow, provided with iron and copper-alloy binding hoops
and fittings and one of the two buckets in the Swallowcliffe Down barrow in
Wiltshire has been identified as yew.24 Not all coopered yew vessels from Anglo-
Saxon times come from high-status burials. Jean Cook’s corpus of Anglo-Saxon
buckets25 lists a handful from lowly burials with relatively few grave-goods.
Some of these are small stoups of less than a litre in capacity (e.g. no. 49), so it
seems clear that yew was deliberately selected by Anglo-Saxon coopers for
vessels of all sizes that were made from staves. If the staves of the large tub
23 24 25
Cook 2004, 31. Speake 1989. Cook 2004.
had survived, they may well have looked like a stave from a tub of similar
stature recovered from a golf course near Larne, in County Antrim (Fig. 5.4).26
Dated to around AD 1000, this stave was tangentially converted from a rela-
tively small piece of roundwood that probably yielded only two staves. The
knotty wood has numerous deflections in the grain that make it unstable, and
this sort of wood would not normally be considered good coopering material.
The overall effect of the figure on this stave is not dissimilar to the burrwood
figure sometimes found in walnut, except that it was a swirling mass of lighter
orange and cream hues. It seems to have been selected purely for its appearance.
Morphology
In addition to the six maple flasks and eight burrwood cups found at Sutton
Hoo, there are ten shallow silver bowls, two large drinking horns, a single horn
cup, and a single silver bowl of deeper form than the set of ten. So, it is apparent
that there are several sets of drinking vessels present. The small silver cup is
unadorned and does not suggest itself as a candidate for feasting. It is for
solitary drinking. The ten shallow silver bowls are obviously a set. Sourced
from the Mediterranean region, these bowls lack a foot ring and were very
unstable on a table. At about 21cm in diameter, these bowls are quite comfort-
able in the palm of the hand. They are decorated with an impressed cruciform
design featuring various central rosettes, the significance of which has been
discussed in detail by Michael Bintley.27 The reconstruction commissioned by
the British Museum of the maple flasks28 shows clearly the delicacy of the
turning and illustrates the difficulty faced by the turner in producing a bulbous
body with a long neck. The silver-gilt panels in the upper register carry the main
decorative motif (in this case two interlaced beasts with horse-like heads exe-
cuted in Anglo-Saxon Style II). The reconstructed shape of the vessels is based
on the curvature noted on some of the better-preserved vandykes. The walnut
flasks29 are a smaller version of the same technique of turning, and these too
presented a considerable challenge to the turner. Similar flasks to the Sutton
Hoo maple examples have been found in the seventh-century princely burial at
Prittlewell,30 and it seems clear that this class of vessel has associations with the
Anglo-Saxon social elite. But, in addition to the vessels present at these high-
status burials, the containers used in wider society must have displayed an
immense diversity, a diversity now mostly lost because the majority of the
materials used were organic. Turned, carved, and coopered wooden vessels
and platters, horn and leather vessels, and much rarer glass, metal, and ceramic
containers were part of what we might think of as a medieval vessel complex.
These various materials had relationships to the forms vessels could take and
26 27 28
Waterman 1971. Bintley 2011. Evans 1994, Fig. 52.
29 30
Evans 1994, Fig. 53. MoLAS 2004.
116 Martin G. Comey
their various uses, among other things, to prepare, store, serve, and consume
various foodstuffs. This of course poses the question: What were the wooden
drinking vessels in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo used for?
Usage
It seems highly likely that the vessels included in the Sutton Hoo assemblage had
specific uses which everyone recognized and understood. In the same way that
we would not expect to be offered champagne in a teacup at a banquet at the
Mansion House in London, it is reasonable to expect that the usage of vessels
for fine dining in East Anglia in the seventh century had rules, an etiquette that
was an essential part of the ritual of feasting. The late Professor Christine Fell
identified six Old English words that denote alcoholic beverages.31 These are:
win, meaning wine, the fermented juice of grapes; medu, meaning mead,
fermented honey and water (often with herbal adjuncts); ealu, meaning ale,
usually made from barley malt, but the other cereals grown by the Saxons could
also have been used; beor, meaning a highly alcoholic fermentation of fruit juice
and honey; swatan, which is glossed with cervesa in a later manuscript and must
be related to ale; and weorod, meaning a sweet drink of unknown content. The
enigmatic weorod may have been related to ale, mead, or beor, or might have
been something else, such as cider or perry. In the absence of further evidence,
we are left with four certain identities of drinks available to the people who
created the Sutton Hoo assemblage.
Superficially at least, based on the presumed alcoholic content of the identi-
fied beverages and the materials and capacities of the four sets of drinking
vessels apparently present in the assemblage, it is tempting to assume that the
silver bowls could have been used for wine, the large horns for drinking ale, the
flasks for drinking sweet mead, and the small burrwood cups for the potent
beor. This is a tidy and satisfying correlation, but it does not seem to be
supported by the distribution of the vessels within the burial chamber. The
large tub, with Bucket 1 inside it, was placed at the eastern end of the burial
chamber, with three copper-alloy cauldrons and a suspension chain. These
represent the vessels of production, cooking, and brewing for the feast. Bucket
2 is to the south of the chamber, separated from the main focus of the burial by a
spear. Bucket 3 is at the western end of the chamber, close by the silver bowls
and near to two copper-alloy bowls. The walnut cups were placed together near
the centre of the chamber inside a fluted silver dish, which was itself covered by
a larger silver dish (this is what protected the delicate cups when the roof of the
chamber collapsed). The maple flasks were placed to the east of the silver dishes,
at the centre of the chamber.
31
Fell 1975.
The silver bowls at the western end of the chamber are, as mentioned above, a
clear set. So too the burrwood cups. The drinking horns and the maple flasks are
sufficiently different in scale, materials, and decoration that they appear to be
two distinct sets. The metalwork and decoration indicate that the horns and
flasks were not made together as a set. They were placed together, however, and
the arrangement of the horns and flasks as reconstructed from the original
excavation photographs and records strongly suggests that they were intended
to be used together. The large horns seem to embrace all but one of the flasks,32
so that they might be seen as a single set of vessels for feasting (this, of course, is
a token set for use in the afterlife—a full set for feasting in the mead hall would
have required more vessels). So, this might actually be a set of eight vessels, with
two special vessels, perhaps reserved for the use of senior members of the battle-
host.
When we look at the burrwood cups, we find the same pattern. Two of them
have more ornate metal fittings than the others. These are pressed silver-gilt foil
panels with animal ornament, similar in form and application to the horns and
flasks. The others have simple ribbed fittings. This tends to support the percep-
tion of two sets of eight vessels. These horns may have been circulated around
an assembled company in much the same way as other drinking vessels. The
aurochs’ horns at Sutton Hoo have been reconstructed at nearly two litres in
capacity, and would have been eminently suitable for this purpose. A smaller
steer’s horn, for example, would have soon emptied, with potentially embar-
rassing consequences.
So it remains most plausible that the Mediterranean silverware was used for
consumption of wine, that most Mediterranean of drinks, and the burrwood
‘shot glasses’ were for consumption of the highly alcoholic, but slightly mys-
terious beor. It seems likely that the horns and maple flasks could be used for
both mead and ale. This group was placed with care, for it is arranged exactly in
the middle of the burial chamber, which also corresponds to the middle of the
ship.33 The survey of the sand-impression of the ship carried out by the Science
Museum in 1939 shows this point, above the rudimentary keel on Rib 13 in a
ship with twenty-six ribs, to be the exact centre, even though the ribs are spaced
differently fore and aft. This seems too precise a placement merely to be
happenstance, and these vessels clearly had some significance to the people
who chose to put them there. The ritual of the feast might have begun with
the horns, brimful of the rare and highly intoxicating honey-based mead, being
passed around from hand to hand. The very size of these horns served as a
potent symbol of the lord’s power and prestige, and his capacity to provide for
his retinue and so too for his wider people. When the mead was all gone, the
32
Evans 1994, fig. 49.
33
Based on the reconstruction of the vessel by Mercie Lack and Barbara Wagstaff, which is itself
based upon the 1939 Science Museum survey and excavation photographs.
118 Martin G. Comey
more readily available, less alcoholic, barley-based ale was consumed from
individual vessels, the maple flasks, while the seniors perhaps retained the
magnificent horns for themselves. The placement of this group might be sym-
bolic of the central role of the mead and ale ritual in the system of patronage so
clearly described in Beowulf. Exactly where the beor fits into the proceedings is
open to speculation, but the various uses of this word in Old English literature
would seem to suggest that beor drinking was a central activity within the
feasting ritual. Perhaps the placement of the smaller vessels inside the fluted
silver dish, clearly distinct from the central group though only slightly periph-
eral to it, reflects a subordinate but still significant role for the beor.
This is a different arrangement to the Prittlewell burial,34 where the central
space of the burial chamber was left empty, but the floor was covered with a mat
as if in readiness for the ritual, with the requisite drinking vessels placed handily
to one side. The matted space is immediately adjacent to the coffin. There seem
to be three, or possibly four sets of drinking vessels in this token feasting set, as
well as vessels for preparation and serving. These consist of two iron-bound
coopered buckets; a group of possibly four flasks, similar in size and construc-
tion to the maple flasks from Sutton Hoo; and two pairs of glass vessels, all
arranged in a line along one wall of the burial chamber. In addition, a large
coopered tub was placed against the opposite wall of the chamber. A flagon and
large bowls were suspended from iron hooks on the burial chamber walls.
A pair of drinking horns mounted with metal fittings similar to those from
Taplow and Sutton Hoo was placed in front of the wooden flasks at the middle
of the row of vessels.
As at Sutton Hoo, the horns and the wooden flasks seem to be associated, and
the two pairs of imported Kentish glass vessels were placed in a slightly periph-
eral position. Perhaps they represent the vessels for wine and beor. It seems
likely that these two exotic beverages were drunk from the more exotic vessels
in the Sutton Hoo assemblage: the imported silver bowls and the burrwood
cups. Perhaps the elite of Essex also reserved their most exotic vessels for these
drinks. The central elements of the vessel arrangement, the two drinking horns
backed by the flasks, faced the man’s sword across the empty space of the
matted area, both being potent symbols of the warrior aristocracy.
The large tub and three buckets at Sutton Hoo could easily have been
fashioned from oak (Quercus spp.). A species readily available and an excep-
tionally good wood for coopering, oak also has a pleasing ray figure when
converted radially. Instead, yew was selected, probably because of its often
spectacular figure in the tangential plane and its attractive tonal qualities.
These larger wooden vessels, just as much as the beautifully crafted drinking
vessels, were a part of the ritual of largesse, and were intended not merely
34
MoLAS 2004.
for use in the feast, but also to be seen in use and to be admired as noble by
the assembled retinue of a goldwine gumena (‘gold-friend of men’, Beowulf,
l. 1602).35
The presence of so many wooden drinking vessels, placed at the centre of such
a high-status context, must tell us something about the Anglo-Saxons’ percep-
tions of wood as a raw material, and also of their appreciation of skilled
artisans. Carpenters, carvers, turners, coopers, and numerous other woodwork-
ing specialists were essential producers in medieval society, providing much of
the equipment of everyday life to all levels of society. The various trades had
different requirements for raw materials, and so Anglo-Saxon woodland was a
carefully managed resource that provided a sustained supply of wood and
timber. It was not mere availability, however, that caused the presence of these
elegant wooden drinking vessels at Sutton Hoo. They were chosen.
The people who created this grave assemblage had acquired Merovingian
gold tremisses, and so they could also have obtained glass vessels from Frankia.
There are glass vessels from other high-status Anglo-Saxon burials, at Taplow
and Swallowcliffe Down, Cuddesdon in Oxfordshire, at Prittlewell and Broom-
field in Essex, and in the near-contemporary Mound 2 at Sutton Hoo.36 If the
East Anglian people who created Mound 1 did possess glass vessels, they chose
not to include them among the grave-goods. Instead, it seems, wood was not so
mundane a material that people who had ready access to precious metals and
exotic imports rejected its use in feasting. However, it was not just any wood
that was acceptable for use in the mead hall. These species have clearly been
carefully selected for specific reasons. Not least among these must be their
aesthetic qualities, but other factors may also have been considered important.
The complex, swirling patterns present in the walnut burrwood and the yew
staves might have held extra significance to people who delighted in ambiguity
and riddles about wooden objects;37 people who were intimately familiar with
the fluid effect produced on the blades of pattern-welded swords and the
sinuous interlace of much Anglo-Saxon ornament. Perhaps also these species
were selected for other, cosmological, reasons. There is some evidence that the
Anglo-Saxons found some trees venerable and it has been suggested that they
were familiar with the concept of a ‘World Tree’.38 It is, therefore, regrettable
that there is no Old English equivalent to the Old Irish Tree List published by
Fergus Kelly.39 We do not know what particular ritual or spiritual meaning may
have been attached to these tree species, if any, but trees in pagan or newly
Christian societies often tend to accrue to themselves significance beyond the
35
References to Beowulf from Fulk, Bjork, and Niles 2008.
36
MoLAS 2004; Welch 1992, 91–5.
37
See Neville and Koppinen, this volume, 122–43 and 158–74.
38
Bintley 2011; Tolley, Bintley, and Hooke, this volume, 177–85, 211–27, and 228–50.
39
Kelly 1976.
120 Martin G. Comey
commercial value of their timber or fruit.40 One thing seems clear: these
wooden objects were regarded as fit for use in the afterlife.
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41–52.
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(London: British Museum Press).
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its Context, Report of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of
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(London: British Museum Press), 99–106.
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ations, Series B, 10 (Dublin: National Museum of Ireland).
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Bound Stave-Built Vessels, Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph, 60
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40
See Bintley’s discussion of The Dream of the Rood in this volume, 147–50.
Fell, C. (1975), ‘Old English Beor’, Leeds Studies in English, 8: 76–95.

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Fight at Finnsburg, 4th edn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
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Press).
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tonshire’, Medieval Life, 8: 2–4.
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Essex (London: Museum of London Archaeology Service).
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E. S. Higgs (eds.), Science in Archaeology (London: Thames and Hudson), 178–87.
6
The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious
Insights into Wooden Artefacts
Jennifer Neville
(Royal Holloway, University of London)
One of the literary sources often used in discussions of wooden artefacts

surviving from Anglo-Saxon England is the Exeter Book Riddles, a collection
of approximately ninety-five texts of various lengths addressing a wide range of
topics, including ordinary, everyday objects not often mentioned in other
Anglo-Saxon texts. Indeed, one of the chief attractions of the Riddles for
many readers is precisely their ability to function as a ‘window’ onto such
neglected objects.1 The Riddles are thus a tempting source, especially for
archaeologists and historians looking for descriptions of wooden objects like
churns, rakes, buckets, and ploughs, for which we often lack identifiable
remains—or, perhaps more accurately, identified remains.2 The nature of the
Riddles, however, makes them a precarious source of insight into material
culture, and they need to be treated with more caution than is usually accorded
them; this need for care when using the Riddles to comment on material culture
is the main argument of this discussion. Although modern scholars are hungry
for texts that explain the uses and workings of objects found—and not yet
found—in the ground, the Exeter Book Riddles rarely offer the facts that
historians and archaeologists seek. Nevertheless, what they do offer, albeit
less tangible, is equally precious: insights into the Anglo-Saxons’ views of
worked wood.
The discussion that follows first outlines the issues that arise out of the
absence of solutions in the manuscript of the Exeter Book Riddles, and then
moves on to an overview of the wooden objects that modern scholars have
1
Tupper 1910, lxxxvi–lxxxvii; Kennedy 1943, 134; the back cover of Porter 1995; Niles 2006, 52–3.
2
Discussions at UCL’s 2009 conference on ‘Woodlands, Trees, and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World’
repeatedly stressed that it is not that there is no evidence of wood from the period, but rather that many
wooden remains languish unrecognized and unstudied, whether in museum collections or in the ground.
The Exeter Book Riddles 123
associated with these riddles. One of these wooden objects, the plough, which is
the subject of Riddle 21, has been used as a key piece of evidence in the debate
over Anglo-Saxon agricultural practices; my exploration of this scholarly dis-
cussion aims to demonstrate the dangers inherent in the common practice of
using the Exeter Book Riddles as evidence for material culture. Similarly, my
investigation of Riddle 53, which considers eight wooden objects possibly
described by the text, aims to show that such a text cannot be finally answered
by any precise identification of an object. Instead, this text inspires meditation
on the way in which human craftsmanship harnesses the agency of a previously
living creature to create an object that may be beautiful or useful but still retains
a potentially dangerous power.
The Nature of the Exeter Book Riddles

Genres create expectations that help us to interpret texts.3 We know, for
example, that lyrics may be elliptical regarding plot, while chronicles tend not
to offer much information about character development, and thus we read these
texts with appropriate expectations. Riddles are questions with answers.4 They
have a two-part, open-and-shut structure, to which important sociological
functions may become attached, including rites of initiation, commemoration
of the passing of the dead, and struggles for dominance and control.5
Yet the texts known as the Exeter Book Riddles are not questions with
answers but questions without answers: the manuscript provides no solutions.6
Modern readers fail to acknowledge the significance of this absence: every
modern edition or translation of the collection provides solutions, sometimes
as titles to the text,7 and very few scholarly works are written on the Exeter
Book Riddles that are not primarily concerned with new or refined solutions.8
That is, there is an unquestioned assumption among modern readers that there
should be solutions—that ultimately solutions are a necessary and inevitable
component of these texts, and that it is, perhaps, only an accident of manuscript
transmission that has left these texts without them. Yet the scribe who penned
3
Cf. Culler 1975, 147.
4
This is a general assumption; see, for example, the definition of ‘riddle’ in the Oxford English Diction-
ary: ‘a question or statement intentionally phrased to require ingenuity in ascertaining its answer or
meaning’. For discussion see, for example, Taylor 1949, 3; Maranda 1969; Pepicello and Green 1984, 88.
5
The field devoted to social aspects of riddles extends far beyond the scope of this article, but see, for
example, the brief list of social contexts for riddles in Kaivola-Bregenhøj 1996, 11.
6
Exeter, Dean and Chapter, MS 3501 (Muir 2006a). The riddles appear on folios 101r–115r,
122v–123r, and 124v–130v.
7
Marsden 2004, 312–16. The 1978 edition of Kevin Crossley-Holland’s translations of the riddles
provides solutions as illustrations before each text.
8
Frederick 2008, 49–50.
124 Jennifer Neville
the Exeter Book was well-trained and careful.9 As no preface or explanation

precedes the riddles in the manuscript, we possess no positive evidence
regarding what he or she10 actually intended, but we do have this important
negative evidence: we know that the compiler of the manuscript did not intend
solutions to be given, because they are not there. We also have additional
negative evidence in the fact that no Anglo-Saxon readers of the manuscript
saw fit to fill in what is for the modern reader a perceived absence by supplying
solutions in the form of marginal annotations.11
There appears, then, to be a fundamental difference between the Anglo-
Saxons’ expectations of these texts and our own, modern expectations of
riddles. Although the Exeter Book Riddles demand that we attempt to answer
them—often with a formula such as frige hwæt ic hatte ‘say what I am called’
(Riddle 16.10b)12—they provide no authority to validate any solution or to
terminate the process of interpretation: what might appear to be bucket might
equally be a pen, bell, mill, flail, devil, or plough.13 For a modern reader of
riddles, who expects a correct answer and thus an end to the process of
interpretation, or for an archaeologist looking for textual evidence to clarify
ambiguous wooden remains, this is a problem to be eliminated, but for the
Anglo-Saxon scribe and his or her original readers, this lack of termination
seems not to have required amendment. In such circumstances, explanations of
material culture drawn from the Exeter Book Riddles are based on very shaky
ground.
Temptations: What the Riddles Have to Offer

Despite such risks, it is difficult to resist the riddles as a source for information
regarding wooden artefacts simply because there are so many of them. Riddle
9
See the comments by Flower in Chambers et al. 1933, 83 and by Muir 2000, i, 35. The famous
comments in Sisam 1953, 29–44, 97–108 may create some doubt about the scribe, but, if Sisam’s charges
of mechanical copying are just, we can be certain that there were no solutions in the scribe’s exemplar,
too. See also the opposing discussion of scribal competence and care in Muir 2006b.
10
For discussion of the gender of scribes, see Brown 2001.
11
Six riddles have what may be runic hints added in margins or between texts, but hints are not
solutions, and there is doubt over the authenticity, and more importantly the meaning, of all of them:
indeed, these ‘hints’ have proven no less enigmatic than the riddles themselves. Regardless, even six
constitutes a small minority in what was probably a collection of one hundred. For discussion of these
runic hints, see Williamson 1977, 147–8, 151, 155–6, 167–8, 181–2, and 231–2. In contrast, Sympho-
sius’ influential late Classical Latin collection and Aldhelm’s Anglo-Latin collection of riddles often
circulated with integral, titular solutions; see, for example, the edition in Stork 1990. Tatwine’s Anglo-
Latin riddles appear with titular solutions in one manuscript and marginal solutions in another
(Whitman 1987, 8–9). For discussion of other systems of marginal, encoded, and abbreviated solutions,
as well as collections not furnished with solutions, see Orchard 2005, i, 285.
12
Citations from the Exeter Book Riddles are taken from Muir 2000, with frequent comparison with
Williamson 1977 as well as Krapp and Dobbie 1936, whose numbering of the riddles I retain. All
translations are my own.
13
See Riddle 4, which has spawned more than its fair share of solutions. For two recent arguments,
and for discussion of previous solutions, see Heyworth 2007and Cochran 2009, 301–9.
23, for example, is generally solved as boga ‘bow’;14 Riddle 30 refers to a beam
‘tree’ in various forms; Riddle 32 describes a wægen ‘wagon’ or ceap-scip
‘merchant ship’; Riddle 33, is ‘ice’, narrates its attack on the side of a wooden
ship; Riddle 34 documents the useful labour of the raca ‘rake’; Riddle 52
laments the enslavement of the two components of a þerscel ‘flail’; Riddle 54
tells a salacious tale about a cyrn ‘churn’; Riddle 56, the web-beam ‘loom’,
specifically mentions two of its wooden parts; Riddle 55, perhaps a scrin
‘reliquary’, describes its construction out of four types of wood; Riddle 58
documents the heroic actions of a *rad-rod ‘well-sweep’;15 Riddle 73 provides
the history of the boga ‘bow’ and the tree from which it was made; and Riddle
92 seems to rely on a pun on boc, which means both ‘beech tree’ and ‘book’.16
Two further riddles associated with wooden artefacts, Riddles 21 and 53, will
be discussed in more detail below. In fact, most of the riddles that are generally
accepted as referring to wooden artefacts are much less ambiguous than Riddle
4 and thus potentially more useful sources of facts. Nevertheless, the absence of
authoritative solutions should not be forgotten. The web-beam ‘loom’ in Riddle
56 may be a þerscel ‘flail’ or even a lathe;17 the þerscel ‘flail’ in Riddle 52 may be
twa stoppa ‘two buckets’, a geoc oxena ‘yoke of oxen’, or, less plausibly, a
besma ‘broom’. When we ‘solve’ a riddle to our own satisfaction and proceed to
draw conclusions about Anglo-Saxon material culture, we deny the texts the
fundamentally unfixed nature that the Anglo-Saxon manuscript maintains, and
also, incidentally, build castles upon sand.
Incautious Construction: A History of Riddle 21

A key example of such incautious construction is the use of Riddle 21 as
evidence for early Anglo-Saxon agricultural practices.18 No one debates that
the text describes a sulh ‘plough’; unlike Riddle 4, Riddle 21 has provoked little
uncertainty among its modern readers. Yet precisely what kind of cultivating
implement is presented here is not as clear as it seems:
14
In listing these texts with solutions I am complicit in the very scholarly manoeuvre that I reject;
however, very few readers of these texts recognize them by number alone, and so I reluctantly provide
these ‘titles’ for ease of reference.
15
Wherever possible I follow Niles’ injunction to provide responses to the riddles in Old English
(Niles 2006, 101–40); when the relevant term is not extant, I supply a plausible modern coinage, marked
with ‘*’. *Rad-rod ‘well-sweep’, for example, is coined by Niles (2006, 89–92).
16
For riddle solutions, their proponents, and their alternatives, see the list in Neville, forthcoming.
This list updates the previous, still very useful list in Fry 1981, as well as the notes in Muir 2000, ii,
655–63, 735–9.
17
I have been unable to find (and am not bold enough to coin) an Old English term for ‘lathe’. The
Latin term is turnus. As the Old English term for a turner’s workshop is þyrl-hus, the Old English term for
‘lathe’ may also have incorporated the root þyrel ‘hole, perforation’.
18
For different investigations into Riddle 21, see also Bintley and Koppinen, this volume, 144–74.
Neb is min niþerweard; neol ic fere

ond be grunde græfe, geonge swa me wisað
har holtes feond, ond hlaford min
woh færeð weard æt steorte,
wrigaþ on wonge, wegeð mec ond þyð,
saweþ on swæð min. Ic snyþige forð,
brungen of bearwe, bunden cræfte,
wegen on wægne hæbbe wundra fela;
me biþ gongendre grene on healfe
ond min swæð sweotol sweart on oþre.
Me þurh hrycg wrecen hongaþ under
an orþoncpil, oþer on heafde,
fæst ond forðweard. Fealleþ on sidan
þæt ic toþum tere, gif me teala þenaþ
hindeweardre, þæt biþ hlaford min. (Riddle 21)
My nose points downward. I travel deep and dig into the ground, going as the grey
enemy of the forest leads me, and my lord, the guard at my tail, travels bent over. He
presses, lifts, and urges me on the field, [then] sows in my track. I cut forward. Brought
from the grove, skilfully tied, carried on a wagon, I have many wonders. On one side the
track from my passing is green and on the other it is distinctly black. A single, skilfully
made spike, driven through my back, hangs under me; there is another, secure and
pointing forward, in my head. What I tear with my teeth falls to the side if he who is my
lord serves me well from behind.
In 1937, Bertram Colgrave offered a brief but thorough account of Riddle

21 and concluded that the text ‘provides a detailed and elaborate description
of the heavy type of plough’.19 He was—and is—among good company, as
almost every archaeologist and historian of agriculture participating in the
long-running debate over the nature of the Anglo-Saxons’ ploughing practices
has resorted to Riddle 21 as key evidence. Peter Fowler, writing in 2002,
continues to do so, although with a great deal more scepticism.20
The debate turns on what type of cultivating device the Anglo-Saxons actu-
ally used. Did they use an ard—a simple, less effective form of plough lacking a
coulter and mouldboard—or a true plough? The traditional view was that the
Anglo-Saxons brought the plough with them when they immigrated to Britain,
thus making them technologically advanced pioneers, independent of the cul-
ture of Rome. In contrast, until very recently archaeological evidence suggested
not only that ards were used throughout the period but also that ploughs seem
to have disappeared after the first half of the millennium (following the depart-
ure of the Roman legions) and only reappear in the tenth century.21 In 2011,
19
Colgrave 1937, 283.
20
Fowler 2002, 193–4. The discussion that follows here is heavily indebted to his overview of ards
and ploughs (Fowler 2002, 182–204), but is also informed by the detailed discussion in Hill 2000.
21
Both ards and ploughs were being used in the period following the conquest: Langdon 1986, 75–6.
however, a very substantial coulter, a key component of the heavy plough, was
discovered in Lyminge, Kent, in a seventh-century context.22 This exciting
discovery will undoubtedly lead scholars to re-examine previous arguments in
the light of this new information. Nevertheless, in terms of documentary
evidence, the situation has not changed. As Fowler starkly states, ‘not a single
document unambiguously describes either the common cultivating implement
or a specific example of one, so we do not know how the land was actually being
cultivated’.23
The key point here is ‘unambiguously’, since, of course, Riddle 21 itself
constitutes documentary evidence, as do the illustrations for January in Cotton
Julius A. vi and Cotton Tiberius B. v, as well as the illustration of Noah
ploughing on p. 54 of the Junius manuscript.24 A previous generation of
scholars, including the influential Passmore, seized upon all these as evidence
for the Anglo-Saxons’ early possession of the plough,25 but, as Fowler rightly
notes, the manuscript illustrations derive from the tenth and eleventh centuries,
more than 500 years after the Anglo-Saxons arrived from the continent: the
illustrations may in fact reveal the introduction of new technology in the tenth
century.26 Strictly speaking, as a text contained in the tenth-century Exeter
Book, Riddle 21 also derives from the tenth century, but the useful ambiguity
surrounding the dating of Old English poetic texts has lent it some weight as
evidence for an earlier period.27 Of course, being undatable is not convincing
evidence for an early provenance, but the riddles, unlike most Old English
poems, have one additional advantage for such a claim: the existence, in
the eighth century, of an outpouring of Anglo-Saxon riddle collections in
Latin: Aldhelm (d. 709), Boniface (c.675–754), Tatwine (d. 734), and Eusebius
(probably the same as Hwætberht, abbot of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow from
716), apparently following in the tradition of the late Classical writer usually
known as Symphosius, together produce 210 riddles, in addition to anonymous,
prose collections such as the pseudo-Bede Collectanea.28 If the Exeter Book
22
British Archaeology News 2011.
23
Fowler 2002, 184.
24
For the Julius and Tiberius manuscripts, see Temple 1976. For the Junius manuscript, see Muir
2004. Images of the latter are also available online from the Bodleian library: <http://image.ox.ac.uk/
show?collection=bodleian&manuscript=msjunius11>.
25
Passmore 1930, 3–6 and plate 2.
26
Fowler 2002, 187. Hill’s (2000) discussion focuses specifically on the year 1000 and so avoids the
issue of dating the introduction of the plough.
27
For the issue of dating poetry, see especially Amos 1980. Different views are expressed in Fulk
1992, 348–92. See also the recent comments about the debate in Frank 2007.
28
For Aldhelm’s riddles, see Ehwald 1919, 59–207. Tatwine’s, Eusebius’, and Boniface’s riddles are
conveniently presented together in Glorie 1968, 167–208, 211–71, 273–343. For Symphosius’ riddles,
see Glorie 1968, 620–723. For text, translation, and discussion of the Collectanea, see Bayless and
Lapidge 1998. Lapidge suggests that most of this text derives from the middle of the eighth century
(p. 12). For a recent overview of the relation between the Exeter Book Riddles and the Anglo-Latin
tradition, see Bitterli 2009, esp. 13–34.
Riddles constitute part of this eighth-century phenomenon, they are a uniquely

early documentary source, however ambiguous. The fact that the Exeter Book
Riddles currently exist in a tenth-century manuscript, however, raises the possi-
bility that the interest in and production of riddles continued throughout the
Anglo-Saxon period, and thus the Exeter Book Riddles cannot be securely
located in the eighth century.
More relevant to the current discussion is a different kind of problem, which
derives from scholarly method, driven by scholarly desire. Fowler notes that the
translation of Riddle 21 by Kevin Crossley-Holland unambiguously describes a
plough, while what he terms the ‘overtly literal’ translation of E. J. Morley
leaves considerable room for doubt; translations, that is, can distort our under-
standing of the original text.29 The point would have been more convincing if
Fowler had addressed the original Old English text itself, but the fact that he
does not do so reveals a disturbing circle: the expert on agricultural practices
relies upon translators to tell him what the original Old English text contains in
the hope of arriving at a firm conclusion about agricultural practices, while at
the same time translators and literary scholars rely upon experts in agricultural
practices to inform their translations and interpretations of the elliptical, meta-
phorical terms of the text in the hope of reflecting the physical reality of the time
accurately. Thus Crossley-Holland is able to take the ambiguous language of
the original text and bring it into sharp focus because of his knowledge of the
constituent parts of a plough, but, like many people living in a non-agricultural
society, he may have chosen that image simply because he does not know what
an ard is. That is, Crossley-Holland creates a clear picture out of the text’s
puzzling words by looking to what is known of Anglo-Saxon material culture,
while, at the same time, archaeologists and agricultural historians derive that
knowledge, at least in part, from translators’ versions of Riddle 21. Over time,
scholars retracing the path around this circle from text to object to text appear
to have arrived at the certainty and truth that they desire, but, in reality, the
word orþoncpil ‘skilfully made dart’ (12a), for example, which appears
nowhere else in the corpus of Old English writings, does not mean culter
‘coulter’, even if it does describe one. It means ‘mysterious object that you
must identify’, and, although the Anglo-Saxons may have been able to imagine
a clear picture to attach to it—as, indeed, some modern scholars can30—the text
itself does not present that clear a picture.
Looking at the original Old English text thus confirms Fowler’s analysis
of competing translations, for Riddle 21’s articulation of the cultivating
29
Fowler, 2002, 193–4; Fowler cites both translations. The Crossley-Holland translation is taken
from Crossley-Holland 1999, 240. The translation by E. J. Morley appears in Passmore 1930, 3–5.
30
See, for example, Hill (2000, 14), who argues that the literal, word by word translation of Riddle 21
provided by his colleague Wendy Collier for his discussion provides a clear description of the ploughs
illustrated in the Tiberius and Julius manuscripts.
implement’s constituent or associated parts—its neb ‘nose, beak’ (1a), steorte

‘tail’ (4b), wægne ‘wagon’ (8a), hrycg ‘ridge, back’ (11a), two orþoncpil ‘skil-
fully made dart[s]’ (12a), heafde ‘head’ (12b), and toþum ‘teeth’ (14a)—fails to
provide convincing evidence to distinguish it from either an ard or a plough.
Even the two orþoncpil ‘skilfully made dart[s]’ (12a), which are often taken as
specific references to the coulter and mouldboard of a plough, are not incompat-
ible with various incarnations of the ard.31 At the same time, however, the
description of the object’s swæð ‘path’ as grene on healfe | . . . sweart on oþre
‘green on one side [and] black on the other’ (9b, 10b) provides fairly conclusive
evidence that this is, in fact, a ‘turning’ plough as opposed to an ard, which is
symmetrical and throws up soil evenly on both sides.32 The important point is
that we can attempt to identify the parts listed here only after we have determined
what the object is. Riddle 21 does not describe a plough; rather, it disguises it.
Riddle 21 thus cannot inform us of the physical nature of agricultural
implements, but if we acknowledge the circular methodology that has been
exploited to allow it to do so, we can observe the essential disjunction between
the Exeter Book Riddles and modern readers’ expectations of them. Despite the
assertions of a century of criticism, the Riddles are not windows into the past:
we cannot see through them. Instead, texts like Riddle 21 demand that we bring
our knowledge and experience to the text and test them against its elliptical
description. Facts—about ards, ploughs, or other things—come from outside
the text.33 In addition, because these riddles are not, in fact, riddles in the
modern sense of questions and answers, there can be no definite termination
of that process of testing, and thus no hard evidence, no confirmation or
rejection of a hypothesis, to offer to archaeologists and historians. In the case
of Riddle 21, that process does not drag on interminably: we may rest once we
have arrived at ‘plough’, and devote our energies, perhaps, to the implications
of describing an ox as a har holtes feond ‘grey enemy of the forest’ (3a).34 Other
riddles, however, require greater exertion and reward it with much less
certainty.
31
See, for example, the diagram of an Italian sole-ard in White 1967, 126, which admirably illustrates
the two spikes apparently described by the riddle.
32
Hill 2000, 17; White 1967, 126–7.
33
For a detailed explanation of this process based on semiotics, see Koppinen 2009, esp. 67–73 and
111–219. See also the chapter by Koppinen in this volume, which demonstrates the process more briefly,
158–74.
34
It is interesting to note that, other than ‘solving’ the metaphor as ox, most scholars provide no
comment on such implications. See, for example, Williamson 1977, 200, who rejects as fanciful Cosijn’s
(1898, 129) earlier suggestion that the har holtes feond ‘grey enemy of the forest’ is the iron of the
ploughshare, implicitly related to an axe. That we should not too quickly accept this metaphor as
traditional is indicated by the fact that, while ‘ox’ is usually accepted as a solution for Riddles 12, 38,
and 72, and Cochran (2009) argues for another ox in Riddle 4, none of these riddles identify the ox as an
‘enemy of the forest’. For further discussion of this issue, see Bintley, this volume, 146–7.
Proliferating Possibilities: Riddle 5335

Riddle 53 is not normally seen as a particularly enigmatic riddle, but, as the
discussion below will demonstrate, the only fact of which we can be certain is
that the object in question is made of wood:
Ic seah on bearwe beam hlifian,
tanum torhtne. Þæt treow wæs on wynne,
wudu weaxende. Wæter hine ond eorþe
feddan fægre, oþþæt he frod dagum
on oþrum wearð aglachade
deope gedolgod, dumb in bendum,
wriþen ofer wunda, wonnum hyrstum
foran gefrætwed. Nu he fæcnum wæg36
þurh his heafdes mægen hildegieste
oþrum rymeð. Oft hy an yste strudon
hord ætgædre; hræd wæs ond unlæt
se æftera, gif se ærra fær
genamnan in nearowe neþan moste. (Riddle 53)
I saw a tree bright in its branches, towering up in a grove. That tree, the growing wood,
was joyful. Water and earth fed it beautifully, until, old in days, it was turned to a
different state, one of misery: (it was) deeply wounded, voiceless in bonds, its wounds
tied over, adorned in front with dark ornaments. Now through the power of its head it
opens a deceitful road for another battle-guest. Often they plundered the hoard together
in the tempest. The following one (literally, the ‘after’) was prompt and unwearied, if the
first (literally, the ‘earlier’) was permitted to risk danger in a narrow place for his
companion.
The transformation from tree to wooden object in the first six lines is traditional
and unambiguously presented.37 The presence of traditional heroic language in
the last five and a half lines is similarly unambiguous: although only hildegiest
‘battle-guest’ (9b) appears to be a specifically poetic word,38 mægen ‘power,
army’ (9a), strudon ‘plunder’ (10b), hord ‘hoard’ (11a), hræd ‘ready, prompt’
(11b), and neþan ‘venture, dare, risk’ (13b) together create a context of military
courage for glittering rewards, which is familiar in, and constituent of, Old
English poetry.39 This familiar, military context may encourage us to concur
35
The discussion of Riddle 53 that follows is based on the fuller analysis in Neville, forthcoming.
36
Most editors normalize wæg to weg, but Muir (2000, ii, 650) maintains the manuscript’s reading,
identifying it as a Northumbrian form.
37
A similar transformation takes place in The Dream of the Rood 29–33 and Riddle 73. For
discussion, see Whitman 1977, 2–5. For comparison with other riddles see Wilcox 1990, 398–9. See
also Bintley’s fuller discussion of the tree’s narrative in this volume, 144–57.
38
Not only is hildegiest a hapax legomenon, but its initial element, hild-, appears only in poetry. See
Clark Hall 1960, s.v. hild; Griffith 1991, 184.
39
Cf. Schaefer 1992, 526, 533. Many of the words in Griffith’s list of poetic words are focused on
military contexts (pp. 183–5). For discussion of the ‘aesthetics of the familiar’, see Tyler 2006, 2.
with most scholars’ interpretation of Riddle 53 as a wooden instrument of war:

a ramm ‘battering ram’. Testing our knowledge of a battering ram against the
text, however, raises a few problems. First, the Anglo-Saxons may not have used
battering rams oft ‘often’ (10b); indeed, they may not have used them at all.40
Second, we may doubt that an apparently singular man (se æftera ‘the following
one’ (12a)) could wield a ram on his own: a ram generally requires a team.
Third, the path of a battering ram, a central feature of one of the most open and
obvious of military assaults, does not constitute treacherous or inglorious
warfare: it is not fæcnum ‘deceitful, vile, worthless’ (8b).41
Battering ram thus fails the test of Riddle 53, and so we must attempt to
match a different combination of knowledge and experiences against the text.
Gar ‘spear’ fares better, as it is made of wood, was ubiquitous in Anglo-Saxon
warfare, and was easily handled by a single man. We might object, as Doane
does with regard to a similar phrase in Riddle 73, that the trees used to make
spears are not frod dagum ‘old in days’ (4b),42 but, once again, it is the fæcnum
wæg ‘deceitful way’ (8b) that proves the insurmountable barrier to this solu-
tion, for spears, like rams, are open, obvious, and respectably heroic.43 Another
alternative is to borrow Doane’s solution for Riddle 73, boga ‘bow’.44 This
solution, although not proposed elsewhere, possesses several advantages: for
example, bows are made out of the heartwood of an old tree, and the references
to bonds and tying link up satisfyingly with the stringing of a bow.45 An arrow’s
path may well be considered fæcnum ‘deceitful’ (8b),46 and the yste ‘tempest’
(10b) could indicate a hail of arrows through which a hoard is plundered,
whether that hoard is literal treasure (perhaps booty stripped from the slain)
or a metaphorical reference to the opposing army itself. However, it is more
difficult to construe other details in the latter part of the riddle as the firing of a
bow. What part of a bow is the heafdes ‘head’ (9a) that provides the power to
launch the arrow, the hildegieste ‘battle guest’ (9b)? If the arrow, as seems
plausible, is the hræd on unlæt ‘prompt and unwearied’ (11b) second member
of the team, in what sense does the bow fær | genamnan in nearowe neþan ‘risk
danger in a narrow place for its companion’ (12b–13)?
40
Fortification of settlements across Europe was rare: see Halsall 2003, 215–27. Some Anglo-Saxons,
however, knew about battering rams from textual sources; Aldhelm, for example, mentions them in
his Enigma 86 (Aries ‘ram’). See discussions in Keller 1906, 66–7; Williamson 1977, 297; Wilcox 1990, 398.
41
Cf. discussion in Whitman 1977, 1; Wilcox 1990, 399. See also the discussion below for other ways
of interpreting fæcnum.
42
Doane 1987, 256.
43
Possession of a spear was a sign of free status according to Anglo-Saxon laws (Swanton 1973, 3).
Cf., however, the discussion of the complex archaeological evidence for status in Härke 1997, 142–6.
44
Doane 1987, 254–7.
45
Cf. the description of the boga ‘bow’ in Riddle 23.
46
The Homeric idea of bows as effective but ‘decidedly unsporting’ may have been shared by the
Anglo-Saxons (Irving 1994, 206). Cf. also Manley (1985, 231).
There are similarly difficult problems with solving the riddle as a whole as
flan ‘arrow’. First, arrows are not made from trees that are frod dagum ‘old in
days’ (4b). The arrowhead could be the heafdes mægen ‘power of the head’ (9a)
that opens a fæcnum wæg ‘deceitful path’ (8b), perhaps through the air, or
perhaps into a victim’s body, but, if so, it is not clear who the hildegieste ‘battle-
guest’ (9b) for whom this path is opened might be. ‘Battle-guest’ seems an
unlikely designation for an arrow-shaft as opposed to an arrowhead, and it
seems similarly unlikely that an arrow-shaft would be described as an æftera
‘follower’ (12a) who is hræd on unlæt ‘prompt and unwearied’ (11b) if the
former, the arrowhead, ventures into a narrow place (the wound?). Other than
the problem of the type of wood involved, this interpretation of Riddle 53 as a
flan ‘arrow’ is possible, but the description of the shaft’s speed being contingent
upon the head’s venturing into the wound seems unnecessarily awkward.
Perhaps an archer could see it more clearly.
Or perhaps some other wooden implement lies hidden here. Perhaps the key to
this text still remains hidden in the ground (or uncatalogued in a museum’s
warehouse), awaiting a lucky archaeological discovery. With our incomplete
knowledge of Anglo-Saxon material culture, we might not recognize the object
described here even if we saw it: it is worth remembering that currently obscure
objects may once have been obvious.47 Yet there are other possibilities, too.
Perhaps we do not require additional knowledge but rather a different perspective.
Perhaps the combination of knowledge and experience that best fits this text
is not military but is instead religious. Whitman proposes that the solution of
Riddle 53 is a rod ‘cross’. This solution is attractive because of the indisputable
parallels between the first half of Riddle 53 and The Dream of the Rood: in both
poems a beautiful, towering tree, initially living joyfully in its natural place,
endures torture, mutilation, and transformation before taking up an active,
military role. Such parallels do not prove that both poems describe the crucifix-
ion,48 but Whitman also assembles additional supporting evidence, particularly
regarding the fæcnum wæg ‘deceitful path’ (8b) and the plundering of the hoard
(oft hy an yste strudon | hord ætgædere ‘often they plundered the hoard together
in the tempest’ (10b–11a)). An Anglo-Saxon audience, Whitman argues, would
recognize the ‘deceitful path’ as Christ’s ensnarement of Satan through the bait
of his apparent mortality, a deception which in turn allowed the harrowing of
hell, the first plundering of the devil’s hoard of souls.49 Although Whitman
47
Cf. Niles 2006, 111.
48
Wilcox (1990, 398–403) notes these same parallels but argues that the object in the riddle is merely
a criminal gallows, in contrast with the one transcended by the act of crucifixion in the Dream of the
Rood. Niles (2006, 147 n. 14) would retain the connection between cross and gallows in the riddle and
thus suggests the compound gealg-treow as a solution that calls up the ideas of both ‘gallows’ and ‘cross’.
49
Whitman (1977, 8–9) provides a number of examples for both these motifs. Cf. also Elene
903–10a, where the devil complains of his treasures, possessions, and followers being plundered after
the discovery of the true cross.
leaves open the question of whether the hildegieste | oþrum ‘other battle-guest’,
the æftera ‘follower’, whose path is opened by the cross, is Christ himself, a
more general miles Christi, or the Good Thief crucified alongside Christ,50 the
apparently repeated plundering of the hoard (oft ‘often’ (10b)) militates against
the first and last of these. Understanding this riddle as a depiction of Christ
undertaking the Harrowing of Hell itself is particularly problematic in the
context of the doubt allowed by the final two and a half lines:
. . . hræd wæs ond unlæt
genamnan in nearowe neþan moste. (Riddle 53, 11b–13)
The follower was prompt and unwearied, if the leader were permitted to risk danger in a
narrow place for his companion.
It seems unlikely that Christ’s victory over Satan was ever thought to be condi-
tional upon the cross being permitted to enter hell, especially since, strictly
speaking, the cross never did so. Construing Christ as a ‘follower’ of the cross
also seems highly unlikely in theological terms; certainly The Dream of the
Rood identifies Christ as a leader, not a follower. Wilcox thus rejects Whitman’s
solution on the basis of its failure to account for these two and a half lines,51 but
rod ‘cross’ fares better if we interpret the æftera ‘follower’ as a follower not only
of the cross but also of the wæg ‘way’ created by Christ’s initial deceit—that is,
Christianity itself. In this case, the æftera ‘follower’ is not Christ but the miles
Christi ‘soldier of Christ’, who may be active in pursuing a fæcnum wæg
‘treacherous way’ and making new raids on the devil’s hoard of souls, not in
hell itself but in nearowe ‘tight spots’ in the present world, wherever Christian-
ity, symbolized by the cross, neþan moste ‘is permitted to venture’. Andreas, the
story of Andrew’s evangelizing of the Mermedonians, supplies a full narrative
describing just such a brave warrior in just such a tight spot.52 The rod ‘cross’
solution thus makes sense out of Riddle 53 by interpreting the familiar heroic
idiom as a spiritual narrative.
Yet it is not necessary to resort to religious allegory to find other perspectives
and other convincing solutions. For example, the heroic language that sends us
looking for wooden weapons appears in a self-contained section of the text, the
last five and a half lines. Perhaps the unsatisfying nature of the military solutions
indicates that the battle described here conceals a wooden contraption that is
not a weapon at all; perhaps the ‘battle’ is a metaphor for something outside the
military sphere. Thus Wilcox proposes that Riddle 53 conceals not a weapon
but a gealga ‘gallows’: a tree that, having been cut down and bound with rope
(deope gedolgod, dumb in bendum ‘deeply wounded, voiceless in bonds’ (6)),
50
Whitman 1977, 6.
51
Wilcox 1990, 406 n. 33.
52
See, for example, Andreas 232–4, 950–6a, and 1307b–10.
uses the power of its head (heafdes mægen (9a)) to open up the wæg ‘way’ (8b)
to the narrowness of hell (nearowe (14a)) for the fæcnum ‘deceitful’ (8b) man
who had previously plundered the hoard (10b–11a); meanwhile, his accomplice
escapes the same fate by being hræd ond unlæt ‘prompt and not negligent’
(11b).53 This solution possesses significant advantages over ramm ‘battering
ram’ and gar ‘spear’, particularly in its explanation for the deceit indicated
by fæcnum ‘treacherous, deceitful’ (8b), which Wilcox interprets as standing
in apposition to the thief about to be hanged, the hildegieste ‘battle-guest’
(9b), rather than describing the wæg ‘way’ (8b). It also benefits from the
substantial surviving evidence for Anglo-Saxon gallows; we may doubt
the existence of battering rams in the period, but we cannot miss the many
appearances of the gallows in law codes, charters, literary texts, and manu-
script illustrations.54 The metaphorical description of death as a journey into
the narrowness of hell is also attractive, as is the interpretation of the final
two and a half lines as an example of wry ‘gallows humour’: a thief who
has observed his companion being hanged does not wait around idly for the
same fate.
Yet I have some problems with this interpretation. For example, the bonds
securing the tree in Riddle 53 might not be rope, as Wilcox assumes, and it is
unclear why a gallows would have wonnum hyrstum ‘dark ornaments’ (7b)
fixed to its front. More important, however, is the way in which Wilcox deals
with the relationship between the singular object described at the beginning of
the riddle and the plural actors mentioned near the end:
Nu he fæcnum wæg
þurh his heafdes mægen hildegieste
oþrum rymeð. Oft hy an yste strudon
hord ætgædre; hræd wæs ond unlæt
genamnan in nearowe neþan moste. (Riddle 53.8b–13)
Wilcox translates these lines as follows:

. . . Now it clears a way
for the wicked one, the battle-guest
through the power of its head. Often they had violently plundered
a hoard together; the second one
was quick and not negligent, if the first had to venture on a journey
from his companion into confinement.55
53
Wilcox 1990, 398–400.
54
Wilcox 1990, 401–2; Niles 2006, 73–4; Reynolds 2009, 158–9 and 272–3.
55
Wilcox 1990, 399, 401.
My translation differs in several details, three of which are significant:

Now through the power of its head it opens a deceitful road for another battle-guest.
Often they plundered the hoard together in the tempest. The follower was prompt and
unwearied, if the leader was permitted to risk danger in a narrow place for his companion.
The first significant difference lies in Wilcox’s omission of the word oþrum (10a)
from his discussion and translation. I understand the change from the singular
he ‘it’ (8b) to plural hy ‘they’ (10b) as the simple addition of an oþrum ‘other
one’ (10a) to the initial wooden object, with two actors henceforth working
together as they strudon | hord ætgædre ‘plundered the hoard together’
(10b–11a). Oþer generally refers to ‘one of two’ or ‘the second one’,56 and
the text appears to confirm this sense of two individuals by later labelling them
se ærra ‘the first one’ and se æftera ‘the following one’ (12). By omitting oþrum,
Wilcox excludes the initial wooden object from the pair of actors described in
the last three and a half lines and thus finds not two but three entities in this text:
the gallows itself, a thief who is hanged, and a second thief who escapes. Wilcox
admits that the second thief is an ‘as yet unclear accomplice’,57 but, if we
include oþrum in our analysis of the text, we can explain the change from
singular to plural without having to find more than the tree-object and one
accomplice in the plundering of the hoard, and without understanding the
plundering to have taken in a previous past (‘they had plundered’).58
The second significant difference lies in our interpretations of the final word
of the riddle, the modal verb moste (13b). In his discussion, Wilcox suggests
that ‘the former [thief] is made to venture on a journey’,59 but motan, although
it can convey compulsion, primarily indicates conditional ability—permission
or opportunity.60 That is, the text seems to indicate that the second actor’s
activity depends upon the first being permitted to venture ‘into danger’ or ‘on a
journey’.61 Granting a thief permission to be hanged or go to hell seems
56
See Clark Hall 1960, s.v. oþer; Toller 1898–1921, 1972, s.v. oþer (hereafter Bosworth–Toller);
Mitchell and Robinson 2007, s.v. oþer; Campbell 1983, }692.
57
Wilcox 1990, 400.
58
Although he does not discuss this particular case, Bruce Mitchell (1988, 159–67) argues that, in a
principal clause (as here), a simple past tense in a sequence of simple past tenses cannot have a pluperfect
meaning unless there is a grammatical or contextual hint (e.g. an adverb such as ær ‘before’).
59
Wilcox 1990, 400.
60
The idea of permission appears first in the lists of definitions provided in Clark Hall (1960) and
Bosworth–Toller; it is the only definition provided in Mitchell and Robinson (2007); cf. Mitchell 1985, i,
424–5. See also Shippey’s (2000, 46) argument for the distinction between permission and obligation in
Maldon: ‘one modal verb is after all [not] about as good as another’.
61
The difference between these two interpretations of fær depends on vowel-length: with a long
vowel, fær means ‘danger’; with a short vowel it means ‘journey’. The Exeter Book scribe places an
accent on fær. Williamson (1977, 298–9) argues that the scribe ‘is usually careful to [mark the long vowel
with an accent] when a confusion in meaning would occur without it’; Muir (2000, i, 27) notes the
contradictory evidence for and against the scribe’s accuracy but concludes that, since he or she ‘usually
plac[ed accents] on etymologically long vowels’, the reading here is fær, ‘danger’. In contrast, Wilcox
(1990, 407, n. 41) argues that the scribe’s inconsistency allows for it to be disregarded here.
incongruous. Such incongruity might create humour, which is consistent with

Wilcox’s reading of ‘comic cynicism’,62 but, along with the doubt raised by the
omission of oþrum, it might also create enough unease to disqualify gealga
‘gallows’ as an acceptable solution.
This second difference is also significant in another way. In fact there is no
grammatical reason why moste cannot be translated in exactly the way Wilcox
has done.63 He has chosen to read compulsion into moste because of the
enforced nature of an execution; once on the gallows, there is no question of
needing permission to go on the journey. That is, his solution, gealga ‘gallows’,
determines how the natural ambiguity of the modal verb should be resolved,
just as identifying the plough allows us to translate orþoncpil ‘skilfully made
dart’ as culter ‘coulter’ in Riddle 21: in both cases, the texts’ ambiguity can only
be resolved by the application of extra-textual information. The same applies to
a third difference in our translations: I read fæcnum as modifying wæg (8b),64
but, having chosen the solution gealga ‘gallows’, Wilcox logically identifies
the hildegieste ‘battle guest’ as a thief, who may appropriately be described as
fæcne ‘deceitful, treacherous’, unlike the path of a ramm ‘battering ram’, which
is nothing if not overt. If we do not accept Wilcox’s solution, or Whitman’s, we
need to account for the negative connotations of the fæcnum wæg ‘treacherous
way’ (8b) or fæcnum . . . hildegiest | oþrum ‘other treacherous battle-guest’
(8b–9b) in some other way.
It might be useful at this point to summarize what we know. The riddle
describes something worked out of wood, perhaps consisting of multiple pieces
joined together with some kind of bonds (whether these bonds are made of metal,
leather, or something else is not revealed). The object has a moving part that is
quickly followed by something else. The result of this action is the ‘destruction’ of
a collection of some valuable material (the hord ‘hoard’ (11a)) in the midst of
some kind of commotion (the yste ‘tempest’ (10b)). What is it?
It could be a flail. In the twenty-first century world of combine harvesters, few
modern readers will have seen a flail, but the jointed, wooden tool used to
separate the grain from the chaff probably was a well-known object in Anglo-
Saxon England.65 Let us scrutinize the riddle again with þerscel ‘flail’ in mind.
Most of the riddle, from lines 1 to 8a, tells us that the object is made out of
wood, which is subject to the tortures involved in the manufacturing process.
62
Wilcox 1990, 400. For further discussion of incongruity in humour, see Wilcox 2000, 4–5; Magennis
2000, 137–8, esp. n. 1.
63
Clark Hall 1960, s.v. *motan.
64
Whitman (1990, 1) argues that fæcnum must be taken with wæg, because ‘it is rare to find an
adjective and a noun separated to such an extent in this order; where similar separations occur the noun
is usually given first’. He provides no evidence to back up this claim, however. Krapp and Dobbie (1936),
Williamson (1977), and Muir (2000) do not comment on fæcnum.
65
See discussion of threshing in Hartley 1979, 184–7, who solves Riddle 4 as þerscel ‘flail’. I accept
Trautmann’s þerscel ‘flail’ as a solution for Riddle 52 (Trautmann 1895, 396–7). For discussion, see
Williamson 1977, 295–7.
Once cut into the correct size and shape, the handle of the flail, dumb in bendum
‘unspeaking in bonds’ (6b), is attached to the swingle or swipple, the swinging
part of the flail, with a cord, rope, or chain tied through the hole or ‘wound’ at
its end (wriþen ofer wunda (7a)). Nu ‘now’ that the two parts are connected, the
handle clears a fæcnum wæg ‘treacherous path’ (8b) for its accompanying
swingle, the hildegieste ‘battle-guest’ (9b), through the momentum created by
its swinging ‘head’ (heafdes mægen ‘power of its head’ (9a)). This is the first
problem with the flail solution: what is this ‘treacherous path’? I believe that it
could be the potentially dangerous momentum of the swingle, which in the
course of threshing passes close to the wielder’s head.66 A swinging swingle may
indeed be a hildegieste ‘enemy’ to a person wielding it unskilfully. If all goes
well, however, the two together may strudon | hord ætgædre ‘ravage the hoard
together’ (10b–11a)—that is, separate the ‘treasure’, the grain, from the chaff
with violent blows. The following swingle (se æftera) moves very quickly (hræd)
and without hesitation (unlæt) after the handle (se ærra). This description seems
very apt for a flail, but it is difficult to see how a flail might operate in nearowe ‘in
a narrow place’. Translating the last line and a half differently might help:
perhaps we should read gif se ærra fær | genamnan in nearowe neþan moste ‘if
the first was permitted to venture on a journey (while?) in the narrowness of its
companion’.67 That is, perhaps the riddle specifies that the great speed of the
swingle is dependent upon being tied to the narrow opening (nearowe) at the end
of its companion (genamnan, taken as genitive), the handle.
I am not ready to wager money on this solution, especially since it does not
explain what the wonnum hyrstum | foran ‘dark ornaments in front’ (7b–8a)
are, but the aptness of the conditional speed of se æftera is tempting. This
solution also provides one additional benefit: the use of the heroic idiom to
describe a flail anticipates the flail’s development into a weapon commonly used
from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Perhaps the flail was already recog-
nized as a potential weapon in the Anglo-Saxon period.
Or perhaps we need yet another perspective. I gained one from Carole
A. Morris’s description of her experience and knowledge of Anglo-Saxon wood-
turning.68 Her attempts to reproduce the cast-offs, waste, and finished products
found in the ground in York presented me with an image of a lathe that I could not
have imagined before and that can be tested against Riddle 53, too. As before,
lines 1–8a describe the creation of a wooden object, the painful transformation
from happy, living tree to wounded, bound implement of power. If the object in
question is a lathe, the wonnum hyrstum ‘dark ornaments’ (7b) may be the metal
centre points, the only parts of a lathe that could not be made of wood, which
serve as the pivots on which a block of wood is turned. The heafdes mægen
66
Cf. the anecdote in Needham 1965, 31–2.
67
Note that this translation requires us to ignore the Exeter Book scribe’s accent on fær.
68
See Morris 2000. The discussion that follows is heavily indebted to this work.
‘power of the head’ (9a) consequently refers to the mandrel, which acts as the
drive-shaft, directing the force from the foot-treadle to the block of wood
and holding the wooden block firmly in place during the turning process. The
hildegieste | oþrum ‘other battle-guest’ (9b–10a), the turner’s gouge, carves out
the core of the block to make a cup or bowl. The risk of cutting too far, of ruining
the unfinished vessel, might explain why this process is called a fæcnum wæg
‘treacherous way’ (8b). The immobilizing mandrel and sharp gouge together
remove the core of the block of wood, its heart or hord ‘hoard’ (11a), in an
yste ‘storm’ (10b), a shower of shavings and water,69 but the gouge, se æftera ‘the
following one’ (12b), can only be hræd . . . ond unlæt ‘prompt and unwearied’
(11b) if the mandrel, se ærra ‘the first one’ (12b), is fær | genamnan in nearowe
neþan moste ‘permitted to venture on a journey into [or risk danger in] a narrow
place for its companion’ (12b–13). That is, the gouge can only work effectively if
the mandrel is securely fixed into the core of the unfinished vessel.70
Without a visual demonstration of the process, this interpretation of the
riddle’s elliptical description may appear rather vague (unless the reader has
already observed a working reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon lathe, of course).
Nevertheless, although my own knowledge and experience is only second-hand,
I think that testing that knowledge and experience against the riddle suggests
that Riddle 53 can be interpreted as a lathe. The essential nature of Riddle 53,
however, remains: the manuscript presents no limit or point of termination
to the process of interpreting it, and so we can rest no more securely with
lathe as a solution as we can with þerscel ‘flail’ or rod ‘cross’. As with Riddle 4,
consequently, we cannot see through this riddle to discover facts about the
material culture of Anglo-Saxon England, other than the facts that pertain
equally well to battering rams, spears, bows, arrows, gallows, crosses, flails,
and lathes. Yet, as we shall see, those facts are not negligible, even if they are of a
different kind than is usually sought.
All that Wood Can Be

Although it may seem disappointing to leave Riddle 53 without a single,
authoritative solution, that disappointment derives from inappropriate expect-
ations. In fact, the failure to find a single ‘inner click’ ensures the success of the
text in inspiring an interpretive process that is not terminated too soon.71 Riddle
53, after all, has led us to ponder the Anglo-Saxons’ military capacity,
their religious beliefs, their legal system, their agricultural practices, and their
manufacturing tools. It may similarly have inspired Anglo-Saxon readers to
analyse the metaphors by which they narrated their physical and social worlds.
69
Carole A. Morris, personal communication (2011).
70
Morris (2000, 2128) notes that the mandrel can be fixed so tightly to the turned cup or bowl that it
can be difficult to remove.
71
For discussion of the ‘inner click’ as a criterion for riddle solving, see Niles 2006, 30–1.
Such analysis is only possible, however, if an audience either initially fails to

solve the riddle or fails to be satisfied even if it has arrived at an elegant solution.
Too often, I think, we have been satisfied with elegant solutions and thus left the
riddles’ enigmatic potential unexplored.
For Riddle 53, I would argue, is not really about a particular item of material
culture. As the plethora of solutions defended by a century of modern critics
demonstrates, it is not a text designed to inform us how the Anglo-Saxons waged
war, pursued Christianity, punished criminals, harvested grain, or made a
wooden bowl. Rather, Riddle 53 explores the transformation of an originally
living creature into another ‘living creature’—the transformation from tree to
wooden artefact, whatever that artefact may be. Many riddles instil ‘life’ into
inanimate objects through the rhetorical trope of prosopopoeia,72 but Riddle 53,
although not unique, differs from most in its emphasis on the pre-existing life of
the tree: it devotes over a quarter of itself to the life story of the living tree from
which the artefact in question is made.73 While other objects appear to gain life
from their employment in human contexts, this one was already alive, and
remains alive, despite the torture of the manufacturing process. In fact, the tree
that suffered wounds and imprisonment enjoys a fully active afterlife, complete
with the power to plunder—and perhaps even, if it is a weapon, with the power to
take vengeance for the violence that was inflicted upon it.
Conclusion
The Exeter Book Riddles offer tantalizing hints of a world built from and
fuelled by wood. Learning more about that world—from the experimental
reconstruction of a lathe, for example—can help us to read the Riddles in new
ways. Using the Riddles as a source of facts about material culture, however,
fails to acknowledge the essential nature of these texts: they are not windows
that allow us to peer into the past but rather interrogations of appearances,
displacements of the familiar, and radical distortions of the known. They force
their readers to see not the ordinary, day-to-day reality of Anglo-Saxon life but
rather the paradoxes lurking within it: the things that did not—and do not—
immediately meet the eye in the Anglo-Saxons’ everyday world. The insights to
be derived from such texts are thus of a precarious, subtle kind: they are not
likely to solve any debates about the use of wood in Anglo-Saxon England, but
they do open doors into the Anglo-Saxons’ views of the wooden artefacts with
which they lived their lives.
72
‘A figure of speech by which an inanimate or abstract thing is represented as a person, or as having
personal characteristics, especially the power to think or speak’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
73
There are only four other riddles in the collection that tell the story of the previously living creature
from which an implement is made: Riddles 60 (hreod ‘reed’), 73 (boga ‘bow’), 88 and 93 (both heortes
horn ‘stag-horn’). Riddles 14 (horn ‘horn’) and 26 (boc ‘book) make brief reference to the animals from
which they are made but do not provide narratives of their lives.
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7
Brungen of Bearwe: Ploughing Common
Furrows in Exeter Book Riddle 21,
The Dream of the Rood, and the Æcerbot
Charm
This chapter will argue that Exeter Book Riddle 21, The Dream of the Rood, and
the Æcerbot Charm, make use of a shared symbolic vocabulary derived from a
common ideology of regeneration. I will suggest that the nature and function of
these texts, when they are considered together, may reveal elements of religious
beliefs pre-dating the Anglo-Saxon conversion that subsequently became incultu-
rated into the Latin liturgy underpinning later Old English poetry. My discussion
focuses on each of these works in turn, beginning with an assessment of the
common features of Riddle 21 and The Dream of the Rood, in which I will show
how both are concerned with the production of physical or spiritual sustenance.
Additionally, the production of this sustenance takes place in each case with the
assistance of an object manufactured from timber, whose origin as a living tree is
seen to be of particular significance. I will go on to show that many of the same ideas
are preserved in the Æcerbot Charm (the ‘charm for unfruitful land’), a text that
outlines a composite Christian ritual preserving elements of folk-magic together
with accompanying Old English verse. As this text displays both Christian and pre-
Christian characteristics, it may indicate that the symbolic vocabulary found in
both Riddle 21 and The Dream of the Rood in fact predated the conversion, yet
later came to be more than comfortably integrated with the early English Christian
liturgy, and the perceived role of Christ and the cross in human spiritual history.
Riddling Texts
This is the second chapter in this book that is partly grounded in the text of an
Exeter Book Riddle, in addition to the two other works I am discussing, which
Ploughing Common Furrows 145
are decidedly enigmatic in themselves. Given the arguments that Jennifer Nev-
ille has already put forward about the due caution that should be exercised in
using the riddles as sources for Anglo-Saxon material culture, it will be useful to
make some initial points about the approach taken here to help situate the
reader. As Neville argues, founding our understanding of wooden objects from
the Anglo-Saxon world on details provided in works which are based on the idea
of making the commonplace strange and obfuscating their own characteristics is a
tricky business, running the risk of circular argument, or worse.1 This is not to say
that we do not (or should not) attempt to find solutions to the riddles, but rather
that we should be prepared for the likelihood that either such solutions will elude
us or that we shall be presented with the possibility of multiple solutions. Riddle
53, as Neville has shown, is an excellent example of a riddle that can be seen as
simultaneously resistant to and open to interpretation, in which it is difficult to
make all the pieces fit.2 The present study follows the traditional solution to Riddle
21 (‘plough’) that has already been noted, and it is worth pointing out that this
riddle is one of those that lends itself rather more readily to a simple solution.3 Yet
it does not need to be solved as ‘plough’ for this chapter to make the points it aims
to. The argument explores a complex of ideas associated with trees that have been
made to serve humans in order to assist in some regenerative action. In this sense it
is not paramount that Riddle 21 should necessarily describe a plough, as what is of
far greater interest is the overlap between the ideas contained in this poem and in
other works that describe identifiable objects, in which each text makes use of a
shared symbolic vocabulary. Koppinen attempts a similar process in the following
chapter in this volume, in solving Riddle 12 as ‘wood’. This is one way, to my
mind, in which we can more profitably and securely make use of the Exeter Book
Riddles to inform our understanding of Anglo-Saxon material culture, without
placing too much strain on single-solution interpretations as a basis for under-
standing what wooden things looked like, or how they were used. The riddles may
not necessarily tell us about one wooden object in particular, therefore, but when
considered in concert with one another, and other texts, they can tell us a great deal
about some of the ideas that surrounded them in early medieval England. As this
chapter aims to show, by attempting to plot some of the points of concordance
between them, we can perhaps begin to better understand some of the many
symbolic resonances that trees, timber, and wood held in Anglo-Saxon society in
ways that have hitherto been hidden from us.
The Beam Bound in Riddle 21

Exeter Book Riddle 21 (the so-called ‘plough’ riddle) and The Dream of the
Rood, share a number of features which may not be immediately apparent.
1
See also discussion by Neville and Koppinen in this volume, 122–43 and 158–74.
2 3
Neville, this volume, 138–9. Neville, this volume, 125–9.
146 Michael D. J. Bintley
Similar motifs, themes, and at times, narrative structure, display common

elements in several intriguing instances which invite closer scrutiny. Riddle 21
begins as follows:
Neb is min niþerweard; neol ic fere
and be grunde græfe, geonge swa me wisað
har holtes feond; and hlaford min,
woh færeð, weard æt steorte
wrigaþ on wonge, wegeð mec ond þyð,
saweþ on swæð min. Ic snyþige forð,
brungen of bearwe, bunden cræfte,
wegen on wægne; hæbbe wundra fela.
Me biþ gongendre grene on healfe,
ond min swæð sweotol sweart on oþre.
Me þurh hrycg wrecen hongaþ under
an orþoncpil, oþer on heafde
fæst ond forðweard. Fealleþ on sidan
þæt ic toþum tere, gif me teala þenaþ
hindeweardre þæt biþ hlaford min.4
My beak points downward, I travel low and dig through the ground; I go as the grey
enemy of the forest guides me; and my lord goes stooping, guards at my tail, as I move
across the plain, supports and urges me, sows in my track. I cut forth, brought from the
bower, cunningly bound, borne on a wagon; I have many wonders. As I pass, it is green
on one side, and in my wake black on the other. Through my back is driven, and hangs
beneath, a skilfully made point, another on my head is fast and forward-facing. That
falls at my sides which my teeth tear, if he serves me well, who as my lord steers me from
behind.
It seems clear that the tree brungen of bearwe, bunden cræfte, wegen on wægne
(‘brought from a grove, skilfully bound, carried upon a wagon’), is not a willing
participant in the action of this poem, as it describes how it has been forcibly
transformed into a plough and made complicit in the actions of the ploughman
and his oxen against its will.5 This is the tragic irony of this riddle; not only that
the tree should find itself enslaved in this way, but that it must also serve as an
4
Williamson 1977, 80.
5
The only other poetic instance of the phrase, brungen of bearwum (l. 2, ‘brought from a grove’), is in
Riddle 27, commonly solved as ‘mead’, where it apparently indicates one of the places from which mead
(or its ingredients) are fetched (Williamson 1977, 83–4; Bessinger 1978, 103). The loom of Riddle 56, if
this is indeed its solution, describes how it has been fæste gebunden (l. 6, ‘bound fast’) in a similar fashion
to the plough. Notable here is the loom’s assertion that it has been holt hweorfende (l. 3, ‘transformed
from the forest’), and is made of wudu (l. 5, ‘wood’; Williamson 1977, 101). Another wooden object in
Riddle 53, often unsatisfactorily solved as ‘battering ram’, has been crafted out of a beam from a bearwe
(l. 1, ‘tree’, ‘grove’), and is described as having been made dumb in bendum (l. 6, ‘mute in fetters’;
Williamson 1977, 99). These examples, though not exhaustive, appear to indicate that the authors of the
Exeter Book Riddles may have been drawing upon a shared complex of ideas, in which the cutting and
binding of timbers from the forest was a common theme. See further discussion of Riddle 53 by Neville,
this volume, 130–8.
aid to the har holtes feond (‘grey enemy of the forest’), cutting across the fields
to prepare for the sowing of seed. It has been suggested that the phrase har
holtes feond in Riddle 21 may refer to the axe used for clearing trees by the
ploughman, or even to the ploughshare.6 However, this seems unlikely when
one considers that the ploughshare itself is explicitly referred to when the
plough tells us that me þurh hrycg wrecen hongaþ under an orþonc pil (‘a well
made point is driven through my back and hangs beneath’).7 Similarly, the
ploughman himself is referred to as both the hlaford and weard of the plough.
It seems likely, as Williamson suggests, that the phrase har holtes feond should
actually indicate the oxen pulling the plough.8 This phrase is apparently
intended to emphasize the gravity of the plough’s condition. Metonymically,
the ox signifies the farming of arable land, a practice in constant conflict with
the ‘farming’ of woodland for branches and timbers, fruits, nuts, and game, and
as pasture for animals (especially swine).9 In this respect, har holtes feond may
also be intended to suggest the grazing of cattle upon the green shoots of
coppice stools, a process which can deplete woodland and contribute signifi-
cantly to deforestation.10 Certain defined areas of woodland appear to have
been set aside for cattle as a result of this, as is evident from the Old English
charter bounds.11 This conflict may also be alluded to in the plough’s descrip-
tion of the furrow it leaves behind as it cuts through the earth. On the one side,
the turned earth is black, but on the other it remains green and undisturbed. As
well as referring to the furrow in a strictly literal sense, this may also suggest the
juxtaposition of arable and woodland; the one as turned and fertile black earth
awaiting the sowing of seed, and the other as a forest of green trees, still
awaiting the bite of the woodsman’s axe.
The Captive Cross in The Dream of the Rood

What this story has in common with the narrative of The Dream of the Rood
may not be immediately obvious, as Riddle 21 is very much engaged with the
laborious secular preoccupations of daily life, whilst the Dream focuses upon
those events which lie at the heart of the Christian mysteries. Importantly, both
6
Hamer 1970, 103. See also notes by Neville on the Lyminge coulter discovered in 2011, this
volume, 126–7.
7
See further discussion of this and the history of Riddle 21 scholarship by Neville, this volume,
125–9.
8
9
Oxen may also be the subject of Riddle 12 and Riddle 72. The ox of Riddle 72 appears to enjoy its
task as little as the plough of Riddle 21, relating that it is bunden under beame (l. 13, ‘bound under a
beam’), which is itself presumably bunden cræfte (Williamson 1977, 107–8). The ox of Riddle 12
similarly describes how the swearte Wealas (l. 4, ‘dark slaves’), its keepers, me . . . fæste binde (l. 3,
‘bind me fast’; Williamson 1977, 74).
10
Rackham 1996, 8.
11
Bintley 2009, 176–7; For example chelfgraue (‘calf-grove’, Sawyer 1968 (= S), 485, Birch 1885–99
(= BCS), 775); calfan leahe (‘calf-leah’, S 786, BCS 1282); oxna leage (‘oxen-leah’, S 1369).
poems feature trees speaking as though they are human, describing their phys-
ical interactions with humans in some detail.
Þæt wæs geara iu ic þæt gyta geman,
þæt ic wæs aheawen holtes on ende,
astyred of stefne minum. Genaman me ðær strange feondas,
geworhton him þær to wæfersyne heton me heora wergas hebban.
Bæron me ðær beornas on eaxlum oð ðæt hie me on beorg asetton;
gefæstnodon me þær feondas genoge.12
That was a long time ago, yet I remember it, that I was hewn down at the edge of the
forest, stirred from my roots. Powerful enemies seized me there, transformed me there
into their spectacle, ordered me to lift up their criminals. Men bore me there on their
shoulders until that they set me up on that hill; enemies enough secured me there.
(Dream 28–33)
As in Riddle 21, a tree describes how it was cut down in the forest (at its edge in
this case), and carried away to serve as a tool of men, though it is upon their
shoulders in the Dream, rather than on a wagon. Once again, a sense of
apparent powerlessness at first appears implicit in the narrative; that the tree
had no choice but to submit to the blades and desires of its captors. This seems
to change, however, at the moment that Christ willingly climbs up onto it.
Notably, the cross is already standing in the Dream before both Christ and the
tree are pierced by deorcan næglum (‘dark nails’, 46). However, in a departure
from the treatment of the tree found in Riddle 21, the Dream tree here
announces its apparent ability to injure its captors—from which it holds back.
The tree says:
Þær ic þa ne dorste ofer Dryhtnes word
bugan oððe berstan, þa ic bifian geseah
eorðan sceatas. Ealle ic mihte
feondas gefyllan, hwæðre ic fæste stod.
Ongyrede hine þa geong hæleð þæt wæs God ælmihtig,
strang ond stiðmod. Gestah he on gealgan heanne,
modig on manigra gesyhðe, þa he wolde mancyn lysan.
Bifode ic þa me se beorn ymbclypte. Ne dorste ic hwæðre bugan to eorðan,
feallan to foldan sceatum, ac ic sceolde fæste standan.
Rod wæs ic aræred. Ahof ic ricne Cyning,
heofona Hlaford, hyldan me ne dorste.
There I did not dare against the Lord’s word bend or burst, when I saw the surfaces of
the earth tremble. I could have felled all of the enemies; however, I stood fast. He
prepared himself then, the young warrior—that was God almighty, strong and resolute.
He ascended onto the high gallows, brave in the sight of many, when he wished to save
mankind. I trembled when that man embraced me. I did not dare, however, to bend to
12
All references to the Dream from Swanton 1996.
the earth, fall to the surfaces of the ground, but I had to stand fast. As a rood I was
raised up. I bore up the noble king, the Lord of heaven, I did not dare to bend.
(Dream 36–43)
The Rood’s capacity for some kind of movement is implicit in these lines. Three
times we are told that it could have bent to the earth, yet it did not. It is
complicit in the action of the crucifixion here not because of the desires of its
captors, but because its role in these events has been divinely decreed. It is not
that it does not wish to halt the proceedings, but that it does not dare to.
There are direct parallels between these particular lines in The Dream of the
Rood and Riddle 21 that merit further attention. In both accounts it is directly
implied, if not specifically stated, that the speaker is (or was) a tree of the forest.
Before the voice of the tree is introduced in the Dream, the Dreamer describes
his vision of a syllicre treow [ . . . ] beama beorhtost (‘wondrous tree [ . . . ] the
brightest of beams’, 4–6), a sigebeam (‘victory tree’, 13), wuldres treow (‘glory
tree’, 14), wealdendes treow (the ‘ruler’s tree’, 17), and Hælendes treow (the
‘Saviour’s tree’, 25). After the tree has recounted its experiences during the
crucifixion, it is again identified by the Dreamer as a beame (‘beam’, 122),
sigebeam (‘victory tree’, 127), rode (‘rood’, 131), and gealgtreowe (‘gallow’s
tree’, 146). As the tree speaks (28–121), it identifies itself as a wuldres beam
(‘tree of glory’, 97) and holmwudu (‘tree of the hill (or sea-wood)’, 91),
recalling how it was aheawen holtes on ende, astyred of stefne minum (‘hewn
down at the holt’s end, stirred from my stem’, 29–30), before being erected as
the gealgan heanne (‘high gallows’, 40) and rod/rode (‘rood’, 44, 56, 119) upon
which hung the body of Christ.13 Though Riddle 21 provides fewer direct
references to the arboreal origins of the supposed plough, it seems equally
clear that the subject of the riddle, brungen of bearwe (‘brought from a
grove’, 7) and made complicit in the work of the har holtes feond (‘grey
enemy of the forest’, 3), has in some way been manufactured from a sizeable
piece of timber. At this point it is also important to reiterate that more than one
solution may be applicable to a number of the Exeter Book Riddles (if not all of
them), and that in any case they draw attention to themselves as riddles by
likening their attributes to those of other things. It seems prudent to remind the
reader that this should be borne in mind when considering the potential sym-
bolic resonances of Riddle 21 in particular.14
13
Susan Irvine has shown that the description of the rood as simply a forest tree serves to distance the
poem from other legends of the Holy Rood. This implies that the composer of the Dream was uninter-
ested in emphasizing the history of the Holy Rood despite the evidence of later sources (such as MS
Junius 11) which demonstrate Anglo-Saxon familiarity with typological links between the cross and the
tree of knowledge of good and evil. See Irvine 1997, 437–9; also Ó Carragáin 2005, 314. See also further
discussion of beam place-names by John Blair and John Baker, this volume, 186–210 and 78–103.
14
See discussion of this particular characteristic of Old English riddles associated with wood by
Jennifer Neville and Pirkko Koppinen, this volume, 138–9 and 165–71.
The timbers in both the Dream and Riddle 21, once carried away from their
woodlands, are subjected to a slavery of one kind or another. To define slavery
in this context is to say that both are prisoners, and both are made to perform
some sort of arduous or unpleasant task. Equally, each of the tasks they are
forced to perform in some way injures those whom they would (under normal
circumstances) be naturally inclined to protect. The Dream tree only resists the
impulse to protect Christ because it fears the wrath of God, whilst the plough
displays a similar awareness that it is serving in the cultivation of arable land
lying in opposition to the forest. Although this feature is far less dramatically
emphasized in Riddle 21 than in the Dream, this may well be because the riddle
is not a work that strives to make its effects felt in quite the same fashion.
Earthly and Heavenly Bread

To summarize the argument thus far is to say that both poems feature a tree
persona which describes being removed from its woodland place of origins, in
order to serve as a tool for its captors and persecutors. These common elements
are altogether fairly clear and unambiguous in these two poems. To go further,
I would suggest that there are also strong symbolic resonances between the tasks
in which the transformed timbers are forced to engage. The plough, as Riddle
21 makes plain, cuts furrows in the earth to prepare for the sowing of seed, as it
tells us that hlaford min, woh færeð, weard æt steorte wrigaþ on wonge, wegeð
mec ond þyð, saweþ on swæð min (‘my lord goes stooping, guards at my tail as
I move across the plain, supports and urges me, sows in my track’, 3–6). The
purpose of its manufacture has been to bring about the rejuvenation of the earth
and the growth of those life-giving crops which will ensure the survival of
human beings. However, as good Anglo-Saxon Christians would have known,
non in solo pane vivat homo, sed in omni verbo quod egreditur de ore Dei (‘man
does not live only by bread, but in every word that passes out of the mouth of
God’, Deuteronomy 8:3). It had been necessary for Jesus to remind Satan of this
in the desert, when Satan had suggested that he transform rocks into bread, to
be told that non in solo pane vivit homo, sed in omni verbo, quod procedit de
ore Dei (‘man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out
of the mouth of God’, Matthew 4:4).15 On this point it is worth noting the
distinction Jesus makes between past and present, between how people had
lived up to this point, and how they were to live in the future, sustained by the
word of God rather than physical food. Jesus, as the living word made flesh and
received during communion, was the embodiment of the living bread that
would provide this spiritual sustenance, enabling the salvation of human
souls.16 Elsewhere in the Gospel of John, Jesus explains to his disciples at the
15
See also Luke 4:4.
16
All references to the Latin Vulgate from Weber 1969; John 1:1: In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum
erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum (‘In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and
the Word was God’).
feeding of the five thousand how the manna consumed by the Israelites in the
desert prefigured the sacrifice of his own body following the Last Supper.17 Yet
it was not enough for this bread to be offered up in purely symbolic terms, as
this redemption could not be effected without the sacrifice offered for the sins of
all at Calvary. In this way the cross upon which Jesus suffered and died served
an integral role in the spiritual rejuvenation of humankind, the growth of the
Church, and the redemption of human souls.
One may, in this respect, draw some direct typological links between these
two poems; without the plough, there could be no earthly bread, and without
the cross, no spiritual bread or, as a consequence, eternal life. Although bread
does not appear in the Dream—and one would not expect it to, given that much
of the poem’s action concerns the crucifixion of Christ and its immediate
aftermath—the breaking of bread is indirectly connected with the Dream by
the Ruthwell Cross, the runic inscriptions of which have long been associated
with the Vercelli Book poem. Below the panel on the cross which depicts the
beasts worshipping Christ, is the ‘Paul and Anthony’ scene, which ‘represents a
moment in Jerome’s Life of St Paul, the First Hermit, when Anthony visited
him, and the two broke bread together’.18 The damaged Latin inscription
surrounding this panel has been reconstructed and translated as ‘Saint Paul
and Anthony, two hermits, broke bread in the desert’.19 The raven which, under
divine guidance, customarily brought half a loaf of bread to Paul in his desert
locale, had doubled its payload specially for the occasion of Anthony’s visit,
which occasioned the breaking of the bread between the two holy men. Fairly
straightforward connections can be drawn between this bread, the body of
Christ broken and offered at the last supper, Christ’s description of himself as
the bread of life, and the manna from heaven with which God had sustained the
Israelites during the exodus from Egypt. It seems plausible that this panel on the
Ruthwell Cross may be intended to evoke a theme which is also latent within
the runic lines borrowed from the Dream poem—that of Christ as the bread of
life, and the cross as the means by which He brought forth spiritual food.20
Éamonn Ó Carragáin, who offers the most complete and thorough assessment
of the significance and importance of this panel on the Ruthwell Cross, and its
connection with the fractio panis (‘breaking of bread’) that is central to the
celebration of the Eucharist in the Catholic mass, notes that the depiction of
Paul and Anthony here alludes not only to Jerome, but also to the ‘episode at
17 18
John 6:47–59. Orton et al. 2007, 183.
19
Orton et al. 2007, 183; O’Neill 2005, 54–5.
20
Although no explicit mention is made of the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1–23, Mark 4:1–20,
Luke 8:1–15), in which humankind is depicted as various types of earth upon which seed (the word of
God) is sown, the agricultural imagery of this episode, and its focus upon the theme of fruitful human
produce, may also have been evoked by allusions to bread and the fruitfulness of the earth. It provided
Ælfric with a poignant theme in his Dominica in Sexagesima homily that may have held special appeal
for the land-working classes of Anglo-Saxon England: see Godden 1979, 52–66. As Irvine (1997) has
also shown, ‘tasting’ and ‘burying’ death is certainly important elsewhere in the poem.
Emmaus after the Resurrection, when the two disciples to whom Christ had
appeared told “how they had known him in the breaking of the bread” (Luke
24:35)’.21
Regenerative Ritual in the Æcerbot Charm

One further Old English text which preserves similar features to those in Riddle
21 and the Dream is the first of the ‘metrical charms’, the work more commonly
known as the Æcerbot Charm.22 The survival of magical literature such as the
Æcerbot Charm stands testimony to the success that Christianity achieved
through the inculturation of native religion in Anglo-Saxon England. Jolly
notes that in rural communities that were accustomed to charms protecting
harvests and livestock against malevolent spirits, the Æcerbot Charm is exactly
the sort of blessing ritual that may have been the responsibility of a local
priest.23 By praying for a fruitful harvest, Hill argued, Anglo-Saxon celebrants
were asking for little more than the renewal of divine blessings.24 The stated
purpose of this work is to provide a remedy for unfruitful land, or for land that
has in some way been affected by harmful magic. The charm itself is a curious
ritual that blends elements of imitative magic with Christian liturgy. By night,
four turves are gathered from the corners of the specified land, which are then
dribbled with holy water in which have been steeped various agricultural
products of the land itself, both plant and animal, whilst—simultaneously—
Latin prayers are spoken. These turves are then borne to a church, where four
masses are sung over them before they are returned to their original positions,
now covering four rowan crosses engraved with the names of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. More Latin prayers are spoken, and prostrations are made
towards the east, before the celebrant recites an invocation in the vernacular to
God the father and Mary. More Latin prayers are spoken. Then a measure of
seeds (of an unspecified type) is given to the celebrant by almsmen, who repays
them with double the quantity. The celebrant then takes up the plough, and
bores stor and finol and gehalgode saþan and gehalgod sealt (‘frankincense and
fennel and hallowed salve and hallowed salt’) into its wood. The plough is then
covered with the aforementioned seed, and an invocation is made to the pre-
Christian goddess Erce, the eorþan modor (‘mother of the earth’), requesting
her aid in renewing the fertility of the earth. The plough is then used to open up
the first furrow of the earth, whereupon a further plea is made to Erce. Two
freshly baked loaves are then placed beneath the furrow, and further prayers are
offered in both Old English and Latin.
21
Ó Carragáin 2005, 148–64 (156).
22
All references to this text from Dobbie 1942, 116–18.
23 24
Jolly 1996, 9. Hill 1977, 220–1.
Several elements that have already appeared in my discussion may be imme-

diately apparent. Of the three texts we have considered, the Æcerbot Charm is
the only one to explicitly describe itself as a regenerative ritual. Its opening lines
tell us that:
Her ys seo bot, hu ðu meaht þine æceras betan gif hi nellaþ wel weaxan oþþe þær hwilc
ungedefe þing on gedon bið on dry oððe on lyblace.
Here is the remedy, how you may restore your fields if they will not grow well, or where
some untoward thing is done upon them by sorcerer or witchcraft.
It is clear that the actions performed over the four turves are intended to
extend the blessings of God over all the land which their four corners
encompass.25 Other actions undertaken by the celebrants of this ritual are
fairly straightforward examples of homeopathic magic. The donation of
unknown seed by the almsmen, for example, which is then recompensed by
a gift of double the amount, seems a curiously generous gesture. However, on
the basis that those who give shall receive similar blessing themselves, it
is quite understandable. A great deal is sacrificed in order that a great
deal more might be received in return. This is also the reason why bread is
buried beneath the first furrow cut by the plough, in order that the earth may
reward those who have offered a sacrifice of bread with the means to make
more. I will not propose reasons why the body of the plough—beam in this
context, sulh elsewhere—is bored with frankincense, fennel, salve, and salt,
as a discussion of the ritual possibilities of these is not the purpose of this
study, though I will suggest that they probably served some role in the ritual
sanctification of the plough before it was covered in seed. This seed may have
been intended to ‘charge’ the plough in some way with a special potency that
would then be passed on into the earth and encourage a fruitful harvest.
Notably, it is stipulated that one should take this uncuþ sæd æt ælmesman-
num (‘unknown seed from almsmen’), those most dependent upon the charity
of others for their daily bread. Quite why this seed must be of unknown
origin is not made clear, but then little is entirely explicit in the Æcerbot
Charm. From a Christian perspective, the donation of this seed by almsmen
would have served as a reminder of the importance of tending to those at all
levels of society. In a more specifically Anglo-Saxon context, it would also
have drawn attention to the duty of a hlaford (‘loaf-ward’) to help provide
25
The removal of these four turves from the four corners of the field is perhaps echoed in the Dream,
where the rood tells us that it saw the eorðan sceatas tremble (l. 37), and later dared not feallan to foldan
sceatum (l. 47). In the opening lines of the poem we are told that gimmas stodon fægere æt foldan
sceatum (l. 8). If, in each instance, sceat were to be translated as ‘corner’, then these lines together
indicate the position of the cross within a quadrilateral space defined by gems (perhaps at its corners), to
which the rood will not dare bend against the will of God. Equally, however, sceat may simply signify the
surface of the earth.
sustenance for all those over whom he exerted power.26 What is plain enough
is that the Æcerbot Charm is a complex, multi-layered, and multi-faceted
piece of magical literature, which seems likely to preserve a number of
traditions that had been part of pre-Christian native religion, yet which
were subordinated into a post-conversion liturgical framework that comfort-
ably realigned ancient ritual with contemporary Christian practice.
It is important to consider the contexts from which these three works have
emerged before drawing conclusions about their relationship with one another.
Lines stemming from an original form of The Dream of the Rood poem, which
seems likely to date to the late-seventh or eighth century, are found in their most
complete form in the late-tenth-century Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Cathedral
Library, MS CXVII), as well as in runic form on the Ruthwell Cross in Dumfries-
shire, and perhaps also on the twelfth-century Brussels Cross.27 The well-known
blend of Germanic and Christian motifs in this poem have in the past been taken
to indicate that the Dream is a work which represents relatively early interactions
between Anglo-Saxon heathenism and Christianity, even as it stands in its Vercelli
Book form. As we have seen, the Æcerbot Charm, which appears in the late-
tenth- or early-eleventh-century Heliand manuscript, British Library, MS Cotton
Caligula A.VII, is more clearly a work which incorporates both heathen and
Christian religious practices and verses.28 I would suggest that regardless of the
exact date at which this charm took its present form, it must therefore contain a
number of elements which pre-date the Anglo-Saxon conversion. The contexts of
Riddle 21 are more unsound, as there are few clues to be found in the late-tenth-
century Exeter Book (Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3501) of its origins or date of
composition.29 Though the ‘purpose’ of Riddle 21 is similarly unknown, there is
no doubt that it belongs to the riddling traditions of the Anglo-Saxon vernacular,
and seems likely to have been circulated orally before its inclusion in the Exeter
Book. Its religious themes, if not explicit, are perhaps implied—but then it is of
course a riddle, and in this sense intended as much to vex the world as to divert it.
Nevertheless, it does seem to tie together various other themes and ideas con-
cerned with regeneration that are also prominent in both the Dream and the
Æcerbot Charm. For this reason it seems plausible that even if Riddle 21 was
composed not long before the compilation of the Exeter Book, some of its ideas
may have belonged to traditions that were far older.
Conclusions
All three of these works—poem, charm, and riddle—make marked use of a
common symbolic vocabulary which may indicate that they were drawing upon
26
This use of this word twice in Riddle 21 (l. 3,15) to describe the ploughman is perfectly in keeping
with this tradition.
27 28 29
Swanton 1996, 1, 9. Dobbie 1942, p. cxxx. Muir 2000, 40.
common cultural property. Each is concerned in its own way with ideas of
regeneration; Riddle 21 with the preparation of the earth for the sowing of seed,
the Æcerbot Charm with the reanimation of unfruitful land, and the Dream,
albeit in far more complex terms, with the spiritual rejuvenation of a fair field
full of folk. Each is also concerned with the production of some form of
sustenance, whether physical or spiritual. In the case of Riddle 21 and the
charm, this food is more definitely physical sustenance. As the celebrant of the
charm implores the earth: beo þu growende on godes fæþme (‘grow pregnant in
the embrace of God, filled with food for mortals’ use’). Once again, in the case
of the Dream, evidence for this is distinctly indirect, as neither bread nor food of
any kind are to be found in the narrative of the poem. But then again, when
speaking in terms of the paschal celebration, one would not expect bread to
appear outside of the Last Supper. Without the sacrifice made upon the cross,
the bread offered at the Last Supper (effectively the first mass), could not have
taken upon itself the spiritual significance which transformed it into the Euchar-
ist, and permitted the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and life
everlasting. In this sense the action which takes place in the Dream is directly
related to the production of spiritual food.
One final shared feature of the three works to which I wish to draw attention
is the role of the tree in each—two plough-trees and one rood-tree. I argued
above that both the Dream and Riddle 21 feature a tree persona which describes
how it was either cut from or felled in its woodland home, in order to serve as a
tool for its captors and persecutors. Although this first-person voice does not
appear in the Æcerbot Charm, the plough which features so prominently in its
action is nevertheless clearly identified as a beam (‘tree’) when the charm
describes the manner in which it must be prepared for the cutting of the first
furrow. This is of course the same word that is used repeatedly of the cross in the
Dream and indeed throughout Old English poetry. If the plough in the charm
had a voice, it might well describe itself in terms similar to those found in Riddle
21. In summary, each of these works describes a process in which a tree of the
forest, transformed into a tool for the use of men, takes part in a regenerative
activity that helps to ensure the rejuvenation of the earth and the production of
sustenance, whether it be physical or spiritual. The method of presentation
employed in each suggests that they may draw upon a common store of ideas
present within the Anglo-Saxon cultural and poetic vocabulary, all of which
were centred upon this loosely unifying concept. As the Dream and the Æcerbot
Charm demonstrate, this idea was more than comfortably integrated with
Christian liturgy and the role of Christ and the cross in Christian spiritual
history. At the same time, the pre-Christian Germanic material that is promin-
ent in the charm, and elements of which have also been identified in the Dream,
may indicate that it had been established in Anglo-Saxon England before the
conversion. That Riddle 21, of more secular character than the other two
works, has similar features, may confirm their antiquity to some extent.
As I have argued, the regeneration of the earth for the production of food, in
both a literal, agricultural, and a metaphorical, spiritual sense, is a common
theme uniting the Dream, the Æcerbot Charm, and Riddle 21. A third, and
altogether more obscure shared feature, is the role of timber in each. As we have
already seen, one practical aspect described in this process is a tree of the forest,
cut down and transformed into a tool for the use of men, yet in each case still
recognizably a tree; two ploughs, and the cross of Christ. There is perhaps a
suggestion here of some retained agency of which wooden objects are possessed,
which extends beyond the prosopopoeia that gives voice to them in the riddles
and the Dream, and is validated by the silent plough in the Æcerbot Charm.
Significantly, therefore, we might give credence to the possibility that wooden
objects, and perhaps larger structures too, were seen to retain some of the tree’s
life and vitality long after they had been cut and transformed by human hands.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Jennifer Neville, Pirkko Koppinen, John Blair, Richard North,

Michael Shapland, and the anonymous readers for their comments on earlier
versions of this chapter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bessinger, J. B. (1978), A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press).
Birch, W. de G. (1885–99) (ed.), Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols and index (London).
Dobbie, E. V. K. (1942), The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic
Godden, M. (1979), Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. Text, Early English
Text Society, Supplementary Series , 5 (London: Oxford University Press).
Hamer, R. (1970), A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse (London: Faber).
Hill, T. D. (1977), ‘The Æcerbot Charm and its Christian User’, Anglo-Saxon England,
6: 213–21.
Irvine, S. (1997), ‘Adam or Christ? A Pronomial Pun in The Dream of the Rood’,
Review of English Studies, 48. 192: 433–7.
Jolly, K. L. (1996), Popular Religion in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Elf Charms in
Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press).
Muir, B. J. (2000), The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, i: Texts (Exeter:
University of Exeter Press).
North, R. (1997), Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, Cambridge Studies in
Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Ó Carragáin, É. (2005), Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English
Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London: British Library).
O’Neill, P. (2005), ‘A pillar curiously engraven; with some inscription upon it’: What is
the Ruthwell Cross?, BAR, British Series, 397 (Oxford: Archaeopress).
Orton, F., Wood, I., and Lees, C. A. (2007), Fragments of History: Rethinking the
Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
Phoenix).
(London).
Swanton, M. (1996), The Dream of the Rood (Exeter: University of Exeter Press).
Weber, R. (1969), Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Stuttgart: Württember-
gische Bibelanstalt).
8
Breaking the Mould: Solving the Old
English Riddle 12 as Wudu ‘Wood’
Pirkko Anneli Koppinen
(Royal Holloway, University of London)
Semiosis in everyday life is free: we cannot control what kind of images our
minds produce to interpret signs we encounter. In scholarly studies, however,
semiosis is limited due to the constrictions of the text and its context.1
Similarly, in our search for answers to the Old English riddles, we are
bound by the historical period, the conventions of the field, and its accepted
practices. This study breaks the conventions and established practices—the
mould—of solving the Old English Riddle 12 when it makes trees walk and
ravage the earth. Such a break is made possible by the knowledge gained from
the Anglo-Saxon wooden objects and woodworking technology that were
discussed in the ‘Woodlands, Trees, and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World’
conference. Those discussions provided me with many of the familiar images
with which I imagine the riddle creature in Riddle 12 first as a living tree and
then as a number of objects made from the wood acquired from trees. Such
knowledge of material culture is invaluable to everyone studying the signs in
the Exeter Book Riddles and seeking to gain an understanding of how Anglo-
Saxons viewed their world.
In terms of its semiotics, a riddle is a peculiar act of communication: the
message is deliberately scrambled or veiled in order to deceive the reader and
lead him or her astray. For the modern reader the Exeter Book Riddles create a
challenge different from that faced by the Anglo-Saxon audience as our know-
ledge of Anglo-Saxon culture is—necessarily—incomplete. The Exeter Book
Riddles that refer to domestic scenes and objects provide an exceptionally diffi-
cult challenge as they do not describe accurate methods of, for example, wood-
working or similar manufacturing processes. Readers are dependent to an extent
1
For the problems facing modern readers of Old English texts see, for example, Pasternack 1995,
esp. 1–33, 120.
Solving Riddle 12 as Wudu ‘Wood’ 159
on the knowledge provided by archaeologists, who work on reconstructing

Anglo-Saxon material objects and manufacturing techniques that can provide
us with familiar images with which to interpret the riddles.2 Such extra-linguistic
information is crucial to solving the different clues about material culture in the
riddles, although that information does not guarantee that the solutions are cor-
rect, as Neville and Bintley discuss in this volume.3 The primary purpose of this
study is to examine the semiotics of solving Old English riddles, which includes
focusing on the role of the extra-linguistic material in the meaning-making process.
In order to conduct such an investigation, I use semiosis, the process by which signs
become signs and acquire meaning, as a technique to examine the way modern
readers construct meaning in Riddle 12 with the use of familiar images.4
The accepted solution to Riddle 12 is an ‘Ox’ or its ‘leather, hide, or skin’.5
New readings of this riddle emerge from time to time, but this solution has not
been challenged, although many Old English riddles can be and have been
solved in multiple ways.6 This study breaks the traditional mould7 and proposes
an alternative solution for Riddle 12, Wudu ‘Wood’, by using knowledge of
wood and woodworking to bridge the gap between the ambiguous text and its
solution. I will first outline the semiotic process by which Riddle 12 has been
solved as ‘Oxhide’, before mapping out the semiotic process with which we can
solve it as Wudu ‘Wood’, using material that has not been considered before in
reference to this riddle.
Conforming to Tradition: Riddle 12 as ‘Oxhide’

Riddle 12 presents a speaking object which declares its origins as a living being
before describing material objects (believed to be made of leather) in different
settings. I give the Old English text below with Hamer’s translation that leads to
the solution ‘Leather’:
Fotum ic fere, foldan slite,
grene wongas, þenden ic gæst bere.
Gif me feorh losað, fæste binde
2
Morris 2000, 2116–220. Arne Emil Christensen (1982, 338) points out that excavations do not
come with explanations and reconstructions should be used in conjunction with other research. Familiar
images are discussed below in more detail.
3
See Neville and Bintley, this volume, 122–43 and 144–57.
4
The numbering is from Krapp and Dobbie 1936, 186. I have elaborated this semiotic method
elsewhere in detail, see chapters 1 and 2 in Koppinen 2009.
5
Fry 1981, 23. Niles (2006, 142) gives his solution to Riddle 12 in Old English: ‘oxa ond oxan-hȳd’.
I follow his practice of giving Old English solutions to riddles. For a discussion of Riddle 12 and the
textual history of its solving process see, for example, Tupper 1910, 93–6 and Williamson 1977, 166–8.
6
See, for example, the list of different solutions in Fry 1981, 22–33. Neville and Bintley discuss the
danger of attaching singular meaning to the riddles elsewhere in this volume, 123–5 and 144–5.
7
It is notable that the ‘tradition’ to which I refer in this chapter is less than two hundred years old, if
we take Thorpe’s Codex Exoniensis in 1842 as its starting point, as Williamson (1977, 19) does in his
edition. Thorpe 1842, esp. 380–441, 470–2, 479–500.
160 Pirkko Anneli Koppinen
swearte Wealas, hwilum sellan men.

Hwilum ic deorum drincan selle
beorne of bosme, hwilum mec bryd triedeð
felawlonc fotum, hwilum feorran broht
wonfeax Wale wegeð ond þyð,
dol druncmennen deorcum nihtum,
wæteð in wætre, wyrmeð hwilum
fægre to fyre; me on fæðme sticaþ
hygegalan hond, hwyrfeð geneahhe,
swifeð me geond sweartne. Saga hwæt ic hatte,
þe ic lifgende lond reafige
ond æfter deaþe dryhtum þeowige. (Riddle 12)8
By foot I travel, and I tear the earth,
The grassy fields, as long as I have life.
But when my spirit leaves me I bind fast
The dark Welsh slaves or sometimes better men.
Sometimes I give a noble warrior
Drink from my breast; sometimes the haughty bride
Treads on me. Sometimes the dark-haired Welsh maid
Brought from afar carries and presses me,
A foolish drunken girl at dark of night
Wets me with water, sometimes pleasantly
Warms me beside the fire, sticks in my bosom
Her wanton hand, constantly turns me round,
Strokes me all night. Tell me what I am called,
That while I live may plunder all the land,
And after death give service to mankind.9
The text does not give fully contextualized clues; it only informs the solver that
it is alive at first but after its death it sometimes binds men; sometimes it deals
drink to men; sometimes it is trampled on by a high-born or proud woman; and
on another occasion it is handled by a woman of lower birth. These seemingly
unrelated clues must be taken together and matched with the reader’s know-
ledge of Anglo-Saxon culture in order to ascertain what the creature is called.
Yet, the paradox, ‘Living and dead’, is considered to be the main clue in Riddle
12.10 This paradox is also elaborated in another riddle solved as an ‘Ox’: gif
hio gedygeð, duna briceð; | gif he tobirsteð, bindeð cwice ‘if he survives, [he]
breaks hills; if he bursts apart, [he] binds the living’ (Riddle 38.6–7). Once this
paradox in Riddle 12 is deciphered, as Franz Dietrich first did in 1859, solving
the rest of the riddle clues is a matter of matching the objects referred to in the
8
The Old English riddle texts are taken from Krapp and Dobbie 1936. Further references to this
edition are given in parentheses after quotations in the text. All translations are my own.
9
Hamer 1970, 101.
10
Tupper 1910, 93. The rhetoric of this paradox is discussed by Marie Nelson (1974, 431–2).
riddle with material objects. Dietrich thus explains that the creature speaks of
the leather acquired from cattle and describes how we can arrive at the solution:
first the creature is alive as a ploughing ox (lines 1–2), then after death it
functions as a belt or strap (lines 3–4), then as a bottle or a hose (lines 5–6a),
then as a shoe (lines 6b–7a), and finally as a glove (lines 11b–13a).11 Dietrich
does not explicate in any detail the semiotic process by which he solved Riddle
12, but it is likely that he used his knowledge of leather goods and their
manufacture from an oxhide into belts, bottles, shoes, and gloves to arrive at
his solution.12 It is evident that Dietrich ignores the possible double entendre in
the sexually suggestive lines in the middle (7b–11a) that have preoccupied much
of the recent criticism.13 These ambiguous lines at the centre of the riddle,
which refer to the clandestine activities of a dark Welsh woman or female
servant, muddy the interpretative waters to such an extent that they offer little
help in solving the riddle. Dietrich’s approach to solving the riddle is a prag-
matic one; therefore it is also adopted in this study, because the first six and the
last two lines provide the most useful clues for arriving at a solution.
The ‘Oxhide’ or ‘Leather’ solution is accepted by all editors of the Exeter
Book Riddles after Dietrich, except for Craig Williamson, who suggests that the
solution is an ‘Ox’. His solution is based on the first two lines, which depict ‘a
beast of burden’, which when alive serves men and after death is made into
useful objects for men’s use.14 The semiotic process by which Williamson
arrives at this solution does not differ from that of Dietrich, or, indeed, that of
any other solver.
A Riddle as Semiosis
The premise for my investigation into the semiotics of riddles comes from the
pragmatic semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, whose triadic sign concept
provides a useful model for unpacking the semiotics of riddles.15 If we consider
riddles to be signs, the Peircean model works thus: the riddle text stands for an
idea, the semiotic object that is unknown to us, and the solution is a more
developed interpretation of the idea than what the words on the manuscript
page stand for.16 However, there is a gap17 between the riddle text and the
11
Dietrich 1859, 463.
12
That is the common practice; see, for example, the discussion of the process of making a leather-
bottle in Rulon-Miller 2000, 119–22.
13
The sexual content of these lines is examined in detail in, for example, Tanke 1994; Smith 2000;
Rulon-Miller 2000; Higley 2003. The ambiguous term wealas in Riddle 12 is discussed most recently in
Robson 2008.
14
15
Peirce 1992–8, ii, 291. Semiotics have been used before to investigate riddles: see for example
Tigges 1991. The discussion in this section is given a fuller treatment in Koppinen 2009, 58–79,
111–219. For the use of semiotics in archaeological studies see, for example, Hodder 1987.
16
Peirce 1984– , ii, 208.
17
Koppinen 2009, 66.
solution, which needs to be bridged with ‘familiar images’.18 The reader—

through his or her recourse to extra-textual material—is thus an essential part
in the interpretation of signs.19 That is, to interpret the riddle and imagine what
it stands for and interpret the resultant representation further, we need to
interpret the sign with extra-textual or extra-linguistic material.20 The riddle
text gives us clues, but our knowledge and experience of the Anglo-Saxon
culture—the textual and extra-linguistic material or experience we bring into
the text—are the means by which we interpret and solve the riddles. The same
principle applies to the interpretation of archaeological finds (which are also
signs), as Christensen notes: ‘when we make “models” in archaeology, they are
governed by our imagination and experiences’.21
The process of solving a riddle, then, is semiosis, the process by which signs
become other signs. Johansen explains that in Peircean semiotics, ‘to signify
anything, signs [for example, riddles and individual clues] have, or imply,
iconic, indexical, and symbolic aspects’.22 He notes further that
according to Peirce his distinction between iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs is the
most fundamental [ . . . ]. By this division, [Peirce] tries to answer the question that is
central to any semiotics: how does a sign succeed in representing its object? His answer
is that the relation between sign and object is one either of similarity [iconic sign], of
contiguity [indexical sign], of convention, or of habit [symbolic sign]; or rather, in the
concrete use of signs, a combination of all four.23
Iconic signs (for example, images, diagrams, and metaphors) are based on
similarity and, according to Peirce, ‘serve to convey ideas of the things they
represent simply by imitating them’.24 Thus an illustration of a boat on the
Bayeux Tapestry can represent a real, wooden boat, the semiotic object.25 Peirce
explains further that many words, although words are first and foremost
symbolic, can also be iconic in that they can call to mind an image of the things
they represent;26 for example, the word bōc brings to mind a book or a picture
of a book or another image, such as a beech tree, as bōc can mean both.27
18
Peirce 1992–8, ii, 307.
19
I follow Eco’s notion of the reading process here; Eco 1984, 3–22.
20
The term ‘extra-textual’ (in contrast to ‘intra-textual’) in this study is considered to be any material
that is not part of the given text.
21
Christensen 1982, 336.
22
Johansen 2002, 29; Peirce 1992–8, ii, 5–10. Indexicality in Old English poetry is discussed in detail
in Overing 1990, 33–67.
23
Johansen 2002, 29.
24
Peirce 1992–8, ii, 5.
25
See, for example, the scenes in which King Harold sails across the channel in Wilson 1985, plate 46
and commentary on pp. 174–5.
26
Peirce 1992–8, ii, 307.
27
Cameron et al. 1986– (henceforth the DOE), s.v. bōc1, n. f., book and bōc2, n. f., beech tree. Oliver
Rackham (1980, 319) notes that, for example, in place-name evidence the Old English ‘bōc and bēce
‘beech tree’ are easily confused with other place-name evidence, such as bōc ‘book, title-deed’. See also
Philologists have taught us that the symbol bōc stands for a book or tree, but for
the modern reader, the iconic mode—in the form of an idea of an Anglo-Saxon
book covered with wood that the poet may have had in his mind—is only
reached through an extra-textual resource (for example, in the form of manu-
scripts, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels), and even then the reader usually
encounters representations (photos, drawings) of such images only, not the
‘real’ things.28 In contrast, indexical signs—reagents (for example, traces and
symptoms) and designations (for example, a pointing finger)—are based on
contiguity. For example, as Johansen notes, a photo is a reagent, ‘because, as the
word itself indicates, a reagent is an object that becomes a sign by the virtue of
being really influenced by the object it represents’.29 ‘A designation’, on the
other hand, ‘locates and identifies the object in time and space within a given
universe: the physical universe or some possible world or fictional universe of
discourse’.30 It can thus be a signpost that guides the reader in a certain
direction like, for example, adverbs of place and time or a conjunctive in a
sentence. In the interpretation process the iconic sign, the visual image provided
by archaeology (for example, in the form of reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon
object), and the symbolic, the linguistic sign that can be also iconic and index-
ical, merge into one inseparable concept.
Although the icon and the concept of the bōc I described earlier exist outside
that text, the word on the manuscript page is multi-modal in that it has the
power to evoke all of the above meanings, and more, in the reader’s mind—as
long as they have learned to make the connections between them. Each linguis-
tic sign stands for a semiotic object, which remains hidden. Similarly, a riddle
text stands for an idea, the real identity—or possibly multiple identities—of the
riddle creature, which remains concealed. Thus the semiotic object of a sign is
equivalent to the solution the Anglo-Saxon riddler initially had in his or her
mind and to which we now have no access. The interpretations of individual
clues usually provide a more developed image of the riddle-object than what the
solution to the riddle is. In terms of the riddles, a semiotic object of, for
example, Riddle 12 may be ‘Ox’ or its ‘Hide’, but the text (linguistic sign)
presents a much more developed image of the ‘Oxhide’ (interpretation) than
what the solution (semiotic object) is. Furthermore, there may have been
multiple semiotic objects in the mind of the poet who first composed the riddle.
Familiar Images
The image of the ‘Oxhide’ in the riddle—or any other solution we arrive at, such
as Wudu ‘Wood’ in this chapter—is ‘mediated by a third idea’ that the reader sees
28
Peirce 1992–8, ii, 303. For a full discussion of the Lindisfarne Gospels, see Brown 2003.
29
Johansen 2002, 37–8.
30
Johansen 2002, 35; for ‘traces’ and ‘symptoms’, see Johansen 2002, 35–7.
as parallel first to the individual clues and then to the riddle as a whole.31 In
terms of semiotics the riddle and its individual clues are iconic signs which for
Peirce are ‘supposed to excite in the mind of the receiver familiar images’. He
notes further that this image ‘will likewise be a sign—a sign by resemblance, or,
as we can say, an icon—of the similar image in the mind of the deliverer’.32 The
asymmetry between modern readers and the Anglo-Saxons, however, is accen-
tuated by the lack of shared culture. Awareness of this lack is especially
important for the modern reader, but, as Marie Nelson notes, ‘the riddles
[also] enabled or compelled members of Anglo-Saxon audiences to draw upon
several areas of knowledge to find their solutions’ and to bridge the gap between
the riddle-text and the solution.33 Moreover, the riddle genre produces further
asymmetry: there is a gap in the riddle between the text and the solution because
the unknown object hides behind the veil of the semiotic gap. The gap exists
because of the riddler’s deliberate deception, that is, the riddle creature’s dis-
guise, our inadequate knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon world, gaps caused by
scribal practices, and any physical gaps in the text, caused by damage to the
manuscript.34
It is important to note that in order to evoke ‘familiar images’, and to solve
riddles and interpret signs in poetry, we need both intra- and extra-textual
material, the former provided by the text and the latter by, for example,
archaeology. Nöth points out that ‘icons are [ . . . ] necessary to create new
ideas, since the only way of conveying ideas is by means of “complexus of
[ . . . ] icons”. We can only create new ideas by transforming existing images.’35
In this study, the topics represented in Exeter Book Riddles are considered as
icons which, in turn, are interpreted with the aid of ‘familiar images’.
In the case of Riddle 12, the familiar images have traditionally come from the
Anglo-Saxon agricultural world in the form of a ploughing ox, the hide of
which could be made into leather objects, such as shoes or bottles.36 Apart
from material culture, the familiar images for solving Riddle 12 also include
textual evidence, such as Latin riddles and other Exeter Book riddles, which
have been used as an archaeological dig to support the ‘Leather’ and ‘Ox’
solutions. For example, the first two lines in Riddle 12 have been matched
with Riddle 21, which Dietrich solves as ‘Plough’, as well as with Riddle 38,
lines 6–7, and Riddle 72, lines 12–15, both of which have been solved as ‘Ox’;
all depict a scene which seems to refer to an ox ploughing the earth.37 Latin
31 32 33
Nöth 2000, 21. Peirce 1992–8, ii, 307. My emphasis. Nelson 1974, 421.
34
A hot brand placed on the back of the Exeter Book left scars that make some of the texts, such as
Riddle 71, illegible. See Muir 2000, ii, 2.
35
Nöth 2000, 26. This process is also central to producing archaeological reconstructions; for the
reproduction of, for example, an Anglo-Saxon lathe, see the section on ‘Experimental Work’ in Morris
2000, 2112–22.
36
For a ploughing scene, see Wilson 1985, plate 10 and commentary on p. 177. For detailed
discussions of Riddle 21, see Neville and Bintley, this volume, 125–9 and 145–7.
37
riddles, such as Aldhelm 83, Iuvencus, and Eusebius 37, De Vitulo, also provide
familiar images with which to solve Riddle 12 as ‘Oxhide’.38 Unlike the Exeter
Book Riddles, the Latin riddles provide an answer to each riddle, thus creating a
different challenge for their reader, but provide a fertile, though unreliable,
hunting ground for the solvers of the Old English riddles in the Exeter Book.39
The ‘Oxhide’ solution is already discussed elsewhere in such detail that I will not
labour over it here, but I will refer to these matches below when I explicate how
the riddle can be solved as Wudu ‘Wood’.
Breaking the Mould: Solving Riddle 12 as Wudu ‘Wood’

The reader’s task is to solve the riddle, as Riddle 12 urges: Saga hwæt ic hatte
‘Say what I am called’ (13b). In order to do so, the reader has to gather suitable
extra-textual material which, taken together with the text, leads to a satisfac-
tory solution—a process which produces more developed interpretations of the
object. This study uses knowledge of wood, woodlands, and woodworking to
analyse and solve Riddle 12 as Wudu ‘Wood’.40 References to wood are not
absent from the Exeter Book Riddles: for example, Riddle 53 describes an
anthropomorphized tree that is manufactured into a man-made object and is
traditionally solved as ‘battering ram’.41 In the context of Riddle 12 the term
wudu ‘wood’ is particularly appropriate as in Old English poetry it can denote
both the living tree and the material derived from the tree, as with the subject
matter of the riddle:42 for example, in The Dream of the Rood, a poem that
describes the journey of a tree into a man-made object, the cross is called wudu
selesta ‘the best of trees’ (27b), which is also a treow ‘tree’ (4b, 14b, 17a, and
25b) and gealgtreowe ‘gallows tree’ (146a).43 In riddles, wudu represents a wide
semantic range: it is used to denote wood as a material, an object made of wood,
a tree, wood, or forest, a ship, and also as an element in compounds.44
38
Allen and Calder 1976, 123. See also Stork 1990, 207. For a discussion of these riddles and the
connection to the Latin riddles, see Williamson 1977, 166–7; Borysławski 2004, 41–76; Bitterli 2009.
39
For a discussion of the relationship between Riddle 12 and its suggested Latin parallels, see Bitterli
2009, 26–34.
40
I am heavily indebted to Morris’s (2000) and Rackham’s (1980) discussions on Anglo-Saxon trees
and woodlands.
41
For a detailed discussion of Riddle 53, see for example Wilcox 1990 and Neville elsewhere in this
volume, 130–8.
42
Clark Hall 1960, s.v. wudu ‘wood, forest, grove, tree, Cross, Rood, timber, ship [only in poetry],
and spear-shaft’.
43
Swanton 1996, 95, 100. For the relationship between the Old English riddles and The Dream of the
Rood, see for example Orton 1980. For one reading of the tree in the Dream see Bintley, this volume,
147–52.
44
See s.v. wudu in Riddle 1.8b (forest), Riddle 3.24b (ship), Riddle 10.5a (wood), Riddle 40.48b
(wood), Riddle 53.3a (tree), Riddle 55.16b (tree), Riddle 56.2b and 5b (wooden object), Riddle 81.7b
(forest), Riddle 88.19b (wood), Riddle 93.25a (wood); and in compounds in Riddle 55.3a, wudutreow
(forest tree), Riddle 88.13a, wudubeama (forest tree) and Riddle 40.106b bocwuda (beech-wood). Wudu
could also mean ‘a loom’: see the discussion of Riddle 55 in Niles 2006, 64–5.
The first lines of the riddle are tricky in terms of solving the riddle as Wudu
‘Wood’, as they clearly seem to refer to a walking animal or human being:
Fotum ic fere ‘I travel with my feet’ (1a). The ‘Oxhide’ solution depends on a
literal reading of this half-line—the hide starts its life as a living ox. Yet, the
Wudu ‘Wood’ solution is not as far-fetched as it may seem as first (considering
that the creature starts its life as a living being that goes on foot). If we consider
the action to be metaphorical walking, the line can be interpreted in multiple
ways; for example, the ‘feet’ of a tree can ‘travel’ away from the originating tree:
when coppiced, a tree produces new shoots which can then be layered by
‘bending down coppice poles and pegging them to the ground to take root’ to
produce underwood.45 However, a more appropriate familiar image for fotum
‘feet’ (dative plural), is the root system of a tree, which can be interpreted as its
metaphorical feet: the roots that grow and travel (fere) in and on the ground.
The use of fōt in metaphorical sense is found elsewhere in the riddles, such as in
Riddle 36 (Ship?), which tells us that the creature hæfde feowere fet under
wombe ‘had four feet under [its] belly’ (3).46 These ‘feet’ are ‘the oars in the
water’, which the ship uses to move.47 In Riddle 93, on the other hand, the
creature (Inkhorn?) has anne fot ‘one foot’ (27), its base on which it stands.
Neither a ship nor an inkhorn have literal feet in the same sense as, for example,
animals or humans have, but they are described as having feet as part of their
anthropomorphic disguise—the same can also apply to a tree.
The next two half-lines, foldan slite grene wongas ‘tear the ground, green
fields’ (Riddle 12.1b–2a), can therefore be understood as the shoots of a
coppiced tree taking root or the roots of a tree splitting the ground as they
grow in and on the surface, instead of the plough the ox pulls and of which there
is no reference in the riddle. Furthermore, many trees, such as the beeches in the
Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park in London, have shallow roots that grow
on ground level and are visible to the naked eye.48 Tansley explains that the
roots of beech can ‘spread horizontally in the shallow soil’;49 that is, the tree’s
feet travel across the ground. Thus, although the phrase grene wongas (2a)
literally means ‘green fields’, it can be understood as the earth underneath the
tree in the spirit of the Old English riddles, which attempt to lead the reader
astray.
The subsequent eleven and a half lines explain what the creature does in its
metamorphosed form after losing its life. The conjunction Gif in line 3a
45
Rackham 1990, 15.
46
The DOE, s.v. fōt, n. m., 1.a.iii.b. and also 4. ‘transferred, applied to something resembling a foot
in function or position: anes fotes segl “sail having one foot”, glossing supparum “small sail on the fore-
mast, topsail” ’.
47
48
Author’s own observation, October 2010. See also the description of the roots of beech tree in
Tansley 1953, i, 367.
49
Tansley, i, 367.
introduces the second half of the paradox, on which the riddle’s solution rests:
‘Living, I break the soil; dead, I bind men’. Gif is traditionally is taken to mean
‘when’ in order to accommodate the answer ‘Ox’ provided by the Latin riddles,
such as Aldhelm 83, Iuvencus, which describes how the ‘Bullock’ breaks clods
of earth into pieces and after death binds men.50 If the solution is considered to
be an Ox, the paradox does not work for the last two lines, which are parallel to
the first two lines: þe ic lifgende lond reafige | ond æfter deaþe dryhtum þeowige
‘I, who [when] alive ravage the earth, and after death serve men’ (Riddle 12.14–
15). Oxen serve men both alive at the fields when they are pulling ploughs and
dead when their hides are used for making leather goods and their meat is used
for food. It is important to note, however, that the creature clearly states that it
comes to the service of men only after it loses its life. This point is overlooked by
solvers of Riddle 12 who use the Latin ‘Ox’ riddles as their familiar images
to interpret the living creature in the riddle as an ‘Ox’ or its ‘Hide’.51 The
Wudu ‘Wood’ solution does not have the same problem: although trees can live
hundreds of years due to coppicing and pollarding, wood, on the other hand,
only serves men as non-living material. Acquired either from a tree that is
felled or the part of the tree from which it is cut, it is no longer part of the
living tree.52 This interpretation takes both these conditions into consideration
as it refers to both the tree that tears the earth and the material from which
man makes objects (hence the solution cannot be ‘a tree’). Once the central
paradox of the riddle is thus solved, the rest of the clues can be matched with
familiar images of Anglo-Saxon objects made of wood or material retrieved
from trees.
The first clue to the creature’s function in the servitude of men after it loses its
life explains that at times its function is to bind firmly swearte Wealas, hwi-
lum sellan men ‘dark Welshmen, sometimes better men’ (Riddle 12.3b–4).
Traditionally binde ‘[I] bind’ (Riddle 12.3a) is considered to refer to binding
men with a leather rope made from ox-hide.53 However, leather was not the
only material used in Anglo-Saxon ropes. As Rackham notes, the lime tree was
used in Anglo-Saxon England as ‘a fibre plant’. He explains that ‘The phloem,
called blast, has been used from ancient times for making low-grade string and
cordage. . . . The Anglo-Saxon word linde refers to the tree and bæst to its use as
fibre.’54 The image of a bast rope is familiar in Anglo-Saxon literature, as we
can see in the Old English Heptateuch, which has a reference to binding a man
with lime ropes: hig ða hine gebundon mid twam bæstenum rapum and hine
gelæddon to þam folce ‘then they bound him with two bast ropes and led him to
50 51
Stork 1990, 207. Bitterli 2009, 32.
52
Rackham 1990, 5–10, 24. For a discussion of the production of wooden objects in Anglo-
Saxon England see Comey, this volume, 107–21.
53 54
Tupper 1910, 94. Rackham 1980, 239.
that people’ (Judges 15:13).55 What the binding of men in Riddle 12 refers to is
unknown, but it could refer to imprisonment, as in Judges, or to slavery, as the
creature binds both better men and wealas, which as a common noun can mean
both ‘foreigner’, or ‘slave’.56
The next clue explains that Hwilum ic deorum drincan selle | beorne of bosme
‘sometimes I give drink to the dear ones, to men from my bosom’ (Riddle
12.5–6a). The drinking vessel, the bosom from which the creature serves
drink, is usually considered to be made of leather, but it could also be made of
wood. Wooden vessels were ubiquitous in Anglo-Saxon England, as Morris
explains: ‘Any Anglo-Scandinavian or medieval household, whatever its place
in the social order, would have had a large range of wooden vessels and utensils
for storing, preparing, presenting and consuming food and drink, and for many
other domestic purposes.’57 Wooden bottles and cups, such as those found in
the princely burials of Taplow and Sutton Hoo, provide a familiar image with
which to interpret the clue; for example, Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo contained
several wooden drinking vessels, such as maplewood bottles and burr-wood
cups.58 It is impossible to tell what kind of vessel deals the drink to men in the
riddle, but certainly it can be made of wood.
The riddle then shifts to a scene in which a woman treads on the creature:
hwilum mec bryd triedeð | felawlonc fotum ‘sometimes a bride, a very proud or
wanton one walks on me’ (Riddle 12.6b–7a).59 The object, on which the
woman treads with her feet, has been interpreted as an Anglo-Saxon leather
shoe or a rug.60 However, an Anglo-Saxon high-born woman could have trod
on numerous things, many of them made of wood, the choice material for many
everyday objects and also buildings: one such example is a boat with its wooden
boards that can be trampled on.61 Beowulf makes an explicit reference to a ship
made of wood: on their way to kill Grendel Beowulf and his men travel on
wudu ‘wood’ (216a and 298a), a boat which elsewhere in the poem is referred
to as a sundwudu ‘water-wood’ (208a) and sæwudu ‘sea-wood’ (226a).62 There
are no women on the boat with Beowulf, but a familiar image of a woman on a
boat comes from Elene, in which a brimwudu ‘sea-wood’ (244b) carries the
empress—a noble woman—over the water in her search for the true cross.63
55 56 57
Marsden 2008, 190. Muir 2000, 617. Morris 2000, 2116.
58
Evans 1986, 64–9. Martin G. Comey discusses the use and production of domestic objects and
drinking vessels in detail elsewhere in this volume, including the burrwood cups found in the Sutton Hoo
burial: 107–21.
59
There is a shift in class, too, as the compound felawlonc means ‘very stately’; cf. fela II adv. ‘very
much, many’; wlanc ‘stately, splendid, lofty, magnificent, rich’: Clark Hall 1960, s.vv.
60
Dietrich 1859, 463; Tupper 1910, 94–5.
61
See, for example, a description of the Graveney boat in Oddy and van Geersdaele 1972, 30–8. For
the description of Viking ships and their construction and use see, for example, Bruun 1997.
62
Fulk et al. 2008, 9ff. Further references to this edition are given in parentheses after quotations in
the text.
63
Gradon 1977, 36.
Another familiar, although very rare and thus highly improbable, image derives
from the ninth-century Viking ship funeral at Oseberg in Norway, in which the
remains of a noble woman were deposited.64 It is logical to conjecture that the
boat she was buried in, which was built of oak,65 belonged to her and she must
have then trod on the wooden boards on its deck—at least she travelled on her
last journey in the wooden ship. Yet, there are other, more plausible wooden
structures than boat burials that Anglo-Saxon women’s feet touched. For
example, Owen-Crocker notes that an Anglo-Saxon woman using a loom
‘might climb on a [wooden] bench to reach the top, which was where the
weaving started’.66 Another familiar image from Beowulf tells us that the
floorboards of Heorot are called healwudu ‘hall-wood’ (1317b), on which
Wealhtheow walks dealing drink to the comitatus (612b–14 and 1162b–3a).
Other Anglo-Saxon structures would have been built from wood, such as oak,
so it is impossible to find an exact analogue for the image in the riddle, but for
our purposes it is enough to note that knowledge of wooden structures provides
familiar images with which to solve the clue and match it with the rest of the
clues in the riddle.
It is relatively simple to find parallel images to the clues up to line 7a, but lines
7b to 13a that refer to the actions of the wonfeax wale are ambiguous and
suggestive of double entendre:67
. . . hwilum feorran beorht
wonfeax Wale wegeð ond þyð
dol druncmennen deorcum nihtum
wæteð in wætre; wyrmeð hwilum
fægre to fyre, me on fæðme sticaþ
hygegalan hond, hwyrfeð geneahhe,
swifeð me geond sweartne. (Riddle 12.7b–13a)
Sometimes a dark-haired (?)Welshwoman or servant, the foolish drunken maid, moves
and presses in the dark nights, wets in water, warms sometimes pleasantly by the fire.
[She] sticks into my bosom a wanton hand, turns often, sweeps me through the darkness.
This clue poses many questions for the solver: who is this wonfeax wale, who,
whilst drunk, seems to be working at night with water? The text provides no
grammatical objects for the verbs wegeð, þyð, and wæteð, as the riddle does not
explain on whom these actions are performed or what their nature is.68 What is
64
Davidson, 1950, 172. Jesch 1991, 31–4. For the interpretation of ships in funerals, see, for
example, Adams 2001, 294–5.
65
Durham 2002, 16. See also the discussion of oak as the material for the ship in Riddle 74 in Niles
2006, 34–6.
66
Owen-Crocker 2004, 288. The common structures might have included wooden stairs, as John
Blair has pointed out (pers. comm.).
67
Tanke (1994, 32–8) suggests that the wale is masturbating in the scene: see the discussion on
‘Slavery and Sexuality’ in ‘Wonfeax Wale’. See also Rulon-Miller 2000, 102–26.
68
Higley 2003, 39.
clear, however, is that the servant or Welshwoman (wale can mean both) is
doing something with her hands to the object of the riddle. Nina Rulon-Miller
identifies an ‘Anglo-Saxon leather-working technology’ in lines 7b to 13a in the
riddle by using a familiar image of ‘a process called “cuir bouilli”, a leather-
hardening technique which’, according to her, ‘the wonfeax wale seems to be
following almost to the letter’.69 Rulon-Miller’s explanation is a plausible and
attractive one, but not the only one. Niles points out that:
While these lines . . . encourage much guesswork on the bawdy side and their innocent
meaning too is not very clear, [he suspects] that their innocent sense is that a not wholly
reliable serving woman first spends some times drinking from a leather tankard, then
later washes it out and dries it.70
With the Wudu ‘Wood’ solution in mind we can construe with Niles that the
object the wonfeax wale handles in lines 7b to 11a is something as unexciting as
a wooden utensil, cup, cask, or bottle, which she is washing up when she wegeð
ond þyð it, and wæteð in wætre in deorcum nihtum (at nights) after each
evening meal or drink (perhaps after the latter, especially as she is druncmennen
‘a drunken maid’), then dries the utensils by the fire fægre (pleasantly)—not so
close that the wood catches fire. The exact species from which the utensil could
have been made is difficult to ascertain from the fragmented clue, but it may be
alder, as Morris explains that ‘alder is resistant to splitting once it is shaped and
seasoned, and it is durable in wet conditions, ideal for vessels which would hold
liquid, both food and drink, [and] dairy products’.71 The wale in the riddle may
be preparing food in a cauldron made of metal in lines 11b to 13b when she
sticks it, the riddle-creature as a wooden spoon, perhaps made of yew,72 with
her hand into the bosom (on fæðme) of the cauldron and sweeps (swifeð)
through the blackness of the cauldron.73 The final two lines return to the
paradox of the living and dead, with which the riddle started:
Saga hwæt ic hatte,
þe ic lifgende lond reafige
ond æfter deaþe dryhtum þeowige. (Riddle 12.13b–15)
69
Rulon-Miller 2000, 119, and pp. 119–22 for the description of the ‘cuir bouilli’-process. The
solutions to lines 7b–13a in Riddle 12 have been listed in Tanke 1994, 41 n. 30.
70
Niles 2006, 124 n. 49.
71
Morris (2000, 2196) notes further that other species for turning, for example, cups and bowls, were
‘field maple, ash, birch, beech, and hazel, although many others were used in small quantities’; see
pp. 2262–312 for images and descriptions of wooden utensils. See also detailed discussion of wooden
vessels by Comey in this volume, 107–21.
72
Apart from yew, Anglo-Saxon spoons were made from, for example, ‘maple, hazel, fruitwood, . . . and
oak’ (Morris 2000, 2268); the item could be also a spatula (Morris 2000, 2269–70).
73
A familiar—and famous—image of an Anglo-Saxon metal cauldron comes from the ship burial at
Sutton Hoo Mound 1, which contained several cauldrons, one of them extremely large, see Evans 1986,
77–81.
Say what I am called, I, who [while] living, lay waste the land and after death serve men.
The last lines also offer some additional and crucial information about the
paradox. The verb (ge)reafian can mean ‘to lay waste, destroy, seize, take with
violence, seize’.74 all meanings that fit at least one particular tree, the beech tree,
which is known for being an invading tree that kills shrubs and other trees.75 As
with the first line, the roots also ravage the land when they split the earth. The
object that serves men in its many forms in Riddle 12 may not be made of
one species of tree, but wooden objects made from different kinds of trees, such
as beech (Riddle 12.1–2 and 14–15), lime (3b), maple (5b–6a), oak (6b–7a), alder
(7b–11a), and yew (11b–13a), certainly were at the service of Anglo-Saxons and
could be represented in Riddle 12.
Conclusion
In terms of its semiotics, a riddle text is a sign that stands for an idea, the real
identity of the riddle creature, which remains concealed. Furthermore, individ-
ual clues in the riddle are signs which require interpretation so that the whole
riddle can be solved. The solver has to imagine what particular object or idea
each clue in the riddle denotes and then put these images together to form a
whole that can then be interpreted further. Much of this process depends on
visual conjecture, which requires matching the image with something that the
solver is already familiar with. In order to offer an alternative solution to
‘Oxhide’, I have concentrated on the surface reading in this study and left
most of the suggested double entendre untouched. Instead, I have focused on
the solving process and the semiotics of riddles, in the unpacking of which
extra-linguistic material, such as the knowledge of woodworking, plays an
important part.
Indeed, the familiar images from archaeology and reconstructions of Anglo-
Saxon wooden objects are important because the producers and original Anglo-
Saxon audiences are unlike us: their different experience of the physical world
separates them from us as much as their language and other cultural codes do.
Except for carpenters or other such craftsmen of today, most of us have limited
experience of the process by which wood acquired from trees was turned into
material objects. The Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, were much closer to the
arboreal landscape than most people today are. Furthermore, much of their
world, in the form of buildings and everyday objects, was constructed from
wood. Yet, despite our fragmented knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon world, we
can glean from the poetry how the material world preoccupied the Anglo-Saxon
poets. More importantly, the wider significance of unpacking the semiotics of
74
Clark Hall 1960, s.v. reafian, v.
75
Watt 1924, 183. Rackham (1980, 321–3) notes that in Grovely Forest, Wiltshire, ‘the beeches
injure the underwood’ and kill the hedge beneath.
riddles that deal with the arboreal landscape and the use of wood as material for
objects, such as Riddle 53 and, as I have argued, also Riddle 12, is that it reveals
how material culture and its origins in the landscape are part of the Anglo-
Saxon psyche and encoded in their poetry. In other words, the poems show how
the arboreal landscape supplied the Anglo-Saxon poets with familiar images
with which they encoded the journey of a tree in the woods into a functional
object in the society. We can do the same by using our own familiar images to
interpret the arboreal landscape in Riddle 12.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Jennifer Neville, Kristen Kreider, Myfanwy Ashley, and the

anonymous readers, who read this chapter in its draft form and made excellent
suggestions for its improvement. All errors, however, are my own.
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PA RT I I I
TREES AND WOODLAND

IN ANGLO-SAXON BELIEF
9
What is a ‘World Tree’, and Should
We Expect to Find One Growing in
Anglo-Saxon England?
Clive Tolley
(Independent Scholar, Chester)
The term ‘world tree’ is well established within studies of comparative myth-
ology and religion,1 and is often used without any great discussion about what
is actually meant by the term. Within the Germanic field, the prime example of a
world tree usually cited is Yggdrasill, the great tree of Norse myth described in
various sources, which may date to around the year 1000 but contain traditions
which are clearly, at least in part, much older.2 Norse and continental Saxon
traditions are likely to be of most direct relevance to the question of world trees
in Anglo-Saxon England, insofar as we believe in a commonality between
various Germanic traditions, stemming from an erstwhile geographic, linguis-
tic, and cultural contiguity between the pre-settlement Angles/Saxons and other
Germanic peoples, and from later continuous contacts. Any Anglo-Saxon
notions could, of course, have been affected by native British traditions—and
notable trees may certainly be discerned in Welsh and Irish sources—but I will
not be considering these here. I will also not actually be considering the Anglo-
Saxon evidence for the notion of the world tree, but rather I will attempt to
cover some of the more general aspects of the world tree to set a backdrop for
the discussion of the topic within more specifically English contexts.3
To return first to the wider question: what is a world tree? The term has arisen
as a sort of shorthand for a group of related tree concepts derived from
comparison of traditions covering large parts of the globe, especially (but by
no means exclusively) northern Eurasia and down into India. A world tree may
1
The classic study remains that of Holmberg 1922–3.
2
Grı́mnismál is edited in Dronke 2011, 113–24, and Vo˛luspá in Dronke 1997, 7–24.
3
A good deal of the presentation offered here is distilled from Tolley 2009, esp. ch. 13, where full
references to sources and further studies will be found.
178 Clive Tolley
be defined, as a starting point, as a tree which has cosmic significance, acting as

a support to the world, either physically or as a giver of life: the world tree is
therefore by definition mythic in that it belongs to the world of imagination, but
it may be signified in the form of actual trees which are taken to represent or be
microcosms of their mythic ideal. Eliade lists the following main categories of
cosmically significant trees:4
1. There is a pattern of stone–tree–altar which constitutes a microcosm of the
world in most ancient religions (Australia, China, Indo-China, India,
Phoenicia, the Aegean).
2. The tree is an image of the cosmos (India, Mesopotamia).
3. The tree is a site of cosmic theophany (India, Mesopotamia, the Aegean).
4. The tree is a symbol of life, inexhaustible fertility, absolute reality, con-
nected with the symbolism of water identified as the fount of immortality.
5. The tree is the centre of the world and a supporting prop of the universe
(Altaians, Scandinavians).
6. Mystical bonds exist between the tree and humans (it gives birth to people, is
a repository of the souls of ancestors, is used in wedding and initiation rites).
7. The tree is a symbol of the resurrection of vegetation, and of spring (as
used in May processions).
All traditions of world trees combine several of these aspects, and others could
indeed be added to the list: it is important to realize that even within one
cultural tradition such as the ancient Norse, there was a range of quite varied
world-tree images.
Moreover, the image of the sustainer of the cosmos is not realized solely as a
tree: the tree is part of a wider group of images, each of which signifies a cosmic
support with its own particular emphasis. Such images include the mountain
and mill, but most pertinent here is the pillar or pole, which conceptually may
be viewed as a simplified tree where the element of direct structural support,
rather than life-giving qualities, is emphasized.5
The notion of a pillar holding up the sky is fairly widespread.6 In the Indian
Rg Veda heaven and earth are separated by such a pillar,7 and a similar concept
˙
was found among the Norsemen’s neighbours, the Sámi, where the pillar or post
was believed to culminate in a nail, the North Star, about which the firmament
turned. A cult pillar, representing the world pillar, was widespread across
4
Eliade 1996, 266–7.
5
On Anglo-Saxon ritual posts, see Blair and Bintley, this volume, 186–210, and 211–27.
6
Tolley 2009, i, ch. 10; texts relating to the Sámi pillar are found in Reuterskiöld 1910, 77 (Henrik
Forbus); Reuterskiöld 1910, 94 (Jens Kildal); Leem 1767, 437–8. The Khanty example is from Karja-
lainen 1975, 127–8.
7
Ŗg Veda viii.41.10, in Griffith 1896.
What is a ‘World Tree’? 179
northern Eurasia, being given names such as ‘never-failing pillar’; such repre-
sentations were often topped with eagles, representing the high god in heaven.
The pillar also tended to be closely associated with a divinity: for example, the
Khanty made offerings at the cult pillar to their ‘iron-pillar father’ so that he
would watch over them and secure progeny for them.
Within the Germanic world, the best example of the world pillar is the Saxon
Irminsul, which was destroyed in the late eighth century by Charlemagne; it was
described, some time after its destruction, as being admired ‘quasi sustinens
omnia’, as if sustaining everything—whether solely in a physical sense, or also
in terms of the life of the cosmos, is unclear. Be that as it may, the worship of the
pillar was connected to victory, and therefore lordship, as is reflected in its
name, ‘the mighty pillar’.8 In addition, there are some hints that pillars dedi-
cated to Þórr existed within the Norse world, notably in the form of the ‘high-
seat pillars’, o˛ndvegissúlur, which constitute a variant of the more general house
pillar, which readily stands as a microcosm for a world pillar; the main example
of o˛ndvegissúlur with a clear Þórr connection places them, in an antiquarian
saga context in Eyrbyggja saga, into a temple,9 but the purpose of the pillars in
the house was to mark out the seat of the lord of the house (húsbóndi). Þórr is
himself depicted as a prince in an obscure word, himinsjóli, possibly meaning
‘heaven pillar’, in a late-tenth-century skaldic poem, Þórsdrápa,10 and he is also
described, in Vo˛luspá, as véurr of Miðgarðr, the sacred defender of the world of
men against the giants. One of the strange aspects of the Eyrbyggja saga
description of the pillars dedicated to Þórr is that there were reginnaglar, divine
nails, in the top:11 it is possible that the nail represents the North Star, in which
the world pillar was believed to terminate, for example among the Sámi (who,
indeed, appear to have borrowed some of their traditions from the Norsemen).
Such a concept is found elsewhere, however, and it is perhaps not solely a north
Scandinavian feature. Certainly, many of the traditions of Þórr are extremely
ancient, with close parallels in Indian myth, particularly with the god Indra,
implying a proto-Indo-European origin.12 This at least raises the possibility that
the pillar as a sign of princely world support is of great antiquity, and hence
could perhaps have been brought to England at the time of the colonization
(and perhaps reinforced by later Scandinavian contacts)—though I emphasize
this remains merely a possibility, and that any such traditions would not have
been precisely identical to those found later in Norse sources.
8
Tolley 2009, i, 276–9: the Irminsul is described in particular by Rudolf of Fulda, De Miraculis
Sancti Alexandri 3, in Pertz 1829, 676 and Widukind of Corvey, Res Gestae Saxonicae I.12, in Hirsch
and Lohmann 1935, 20–1. See also Hooke, this volume, 239.
9
Eyrbyggja saga 4, in Einarr Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthı́as Þorðarson 1935, 7–8.
10
Finnur Jónsson 1912, 139–44.
11
Eyrbyggja saga 4, in Einarr Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthı́as Þorðarson 1935, 8.
12
Þórr’s connection with pillars is discussed in Tolley 2009, 279–88.
180 Clive Tolley
The image of the world tree tends, over all, to be found primarily in some-
what more southerly regions than the pillar (though both images are found in
some areas), which accords with the far greater preponderance of trees in the
taiga and wooded steppe regions over what is found on the tundra. The Norse
examples of world trees, above all Yggdrasill, appear to be essentially fairly
classic images of the tree as sustainer of the structure and life of the cosmos, and
the first assumption might be that Scandinavia, and perhaps the Germanic
cultural area in general, forms a western outlier of a contiguous world-tree
area stretching into Siberia and India. This does not appear to be the case. The
nearest neighbours to the Norsemen, the Sámi and Finns, did not possess classic
world-tree images; the Sámi sometimes talked of a tree, but it was essentially a
variant of their prime image, the pillar; the Finns certainly knew of a massive
cosmic oak—but it was death-giving rather than life-giving, blocking out the
sun and moon, and had to be felled. Similarly, the image of the tree existed
among peoples such as the Mordvins, who would have been in contact with the
Viking Rus on their journeys to Garðarı́ki (Russia) and Constantinople, but
again it is nowhere near as developed as among the Norse, and does not have a
very marked emphasis on cosmic aspects of the imagery.13 It is only when we
cross the Urals, and enter among peoples whose spiritual life was centred on
shamanism, that we find highly developed imageries of the world tree compar-
able with those of Scandinavia—and it is precisely because of shamanism that
the imagery was so developed, since a representative world tree, set up for
example in the middle of the shaman’s tent, served as a passageway between
worlds for the shaman, as well as fulfilling other ritual functions such as acting
as a perch for the shaman’s helping spirits. In some traditions, the representative
of the world tree played a major part also in the shaman’s initiation, providing
the material from which to make his drum-frame: his drum, be it noted, forming
an alternative image for his means of transport to the spirit realms, and there-
fore symbolically identical with the tree. It would act as a way into the realm of
death below its roots, where the shaman initiate would be physically remade.14
Does this general similarity, in terms of the extent of development of the
imagery of the tree, between Scandinavia and the shamanic societies of Siberia
imply that pagan Norsemen practised shamanism? By no means. The image of
the cosmos, divided into an upper heavenly realm, a middle world for men, and
a lower realm of the dead—or more complex variants of this arrangement—is
conceptually distinct from the notion of a human practitioner who travels
between the levels of the cosmos, and one need not imply the other: but in
Siberia, where both ideas coexisted, it was natural that they should become
13
For the Finnish and Mordvin examples, see Tolley 2009, i, 309–12 and ii, 31–5.
14
Tolley 2009, i, 305–8. The Ewenki had a particularly developed shamanic tree imagery; the
importance of the tree in shamanic initiation is evident for example in the detailed personal accounts
given by Nganasan shamans (see Tolley 2009, ii, 36–52, for translations of the texts concerned).
intimately associated, and that shamanism should bring about a refinement and
strengthening of the image of the cosmic tree. It would take us too far beyond
the topic in hand to discuss the other fragmentary evidence for something
resembling shamanism in the Germanic world,15 but essentially the evidence,
while showing that there were people who engaged in a direct frenzied contact
with the spirit world, does not indicate that there was anything like as
developed a system of such spiritual contact as occurs in clearly shamanic
cultures, conducted as a central facet of and for the benefit of society. In
particular, the Norse tree appears to have connections with shamanic world
trees in only a few aspects, and even there only questionably so. Particular
points to note are that we lack evidence of ritual associated with a representa-
tive world tree which would constitute passage between worlds—the great
exception being Óðinn’s death on the world tree, recounted in Hávamál.16
But death is not the same as a shaman’s repeated passage along the tree: rather,
it takes us into the sacerdotal world of sacrifice, which is characteristic of Indo-
European tradition, but notably underdeveloped within shamanic societies.17
The association of trees and sacrifice in the Germanic world can be traced in
literary sources back to Tacitus’ description in Germania of the offerings made
in the grove of the Semnones.18 There is every reason to believe it goes back
considerably further, for the Germanic traditions may be linked with Indian
ones concerning trees and sacrifice. Behind names such as Yggdrasill lie com-
plex notions of sacrifice: the name appears to mean ‘Óðinn steed’, the tree being
conceived as a horse upon which the god ‘rides’, as on the gallows, in death, but
also as being identical in some way with the god himself; we may compare how
in Indian myth Prajapati made himself fit for sacrifice (a self-sacrifice compar-
able with Óðinn’s) by becoming a horse, and how Agni spent a year as a horse in a
tree, which itself is imagined as a large, leafless horse. The horse sacrifice in Indian
tradition was associated with an affirmation of lordship: the sacrifice in both Norse
and Indian sources was clearly directed at securing power (even if, in Norse,
the element of kingship is not emphasized in this Óðinnic myth).19 The origin
of the world tree in Norse may thus be more Indo-European than Siberian.
It is a matter of speculation what the ‘origin’ of the world-tree image may
have been—and in any case it is likely to have arisen independently in different
parts of the world. But if the Norse version is in essence an Indo-European
cultural heritage, shared with the Indian, then it would presumably have
originated on the steppe and forested steppe, where the proto-Indo-Europeans
are believed to have dwelled. Even if shamanism was not practised by these
15
This is the topic, in all its aspects, of Tolley 2009.
16
Hávamál, st. 138, in Dronke 2011, 30.
17
Tolley 2009, i, 358–62 for Óðinn’s self-sacrifice.
18
Tacitus, Germania 39, in Winterbottom 1975, 57; Tolley 2009, i, 352 and ii, 101. See also Hooke,
this volume, 229.
19
The association of the sacrificial horse with kingship is discussed in Tolley 2009, i, 358–62.
182 Clive Tolley
peoples, it was a characteristic of nearby societies, whither the image of the tree
may well have spread and been adapted to a more specifically shamanic pur-
pose, whereas among the Indo-Europeans it became ever more linked to notions
of sacrifice, whilst retaining the structural element as sustainer of the cosmos.
The implications for Anglo-Saxon England are that the image is likely to have
existed in some form, if we take it to derive from longstanding tradition not
confined just to Scandinavia, but also that it would have been associated with
sacrifice in some way, and with lordship. We would be on shakier ground in
suggesting that it may have retained any clear connection with horses, though
this remains a possibility. I would not look for any specifically shamanic aspect
to it.
The Norse images of the world tree are, of course, complex; there is, unfor-
tunately, not the time to do more than summarize a few points here.20 I would
not suggest that it would be reasonable to suppose the Anglo-Saxons had even
comparable notions to all aspects of the Norse traditions—and it must be
emphasized that the Norse sources show a great deal of variability even within
this one tradition, a reflection of the fact that our sources are very largely poetic,
and illustrate long traditions of poetic manipulation, which would certainly
differ from any found in England; nonetheless, it may be worth picking out
some of the more important features of the Norse tradition, in addition to those
already mentioned, as starting points to see whether they match anything that
can be adduced by way of evidence from England.
1. It is not the case that all sacred trees are world trees; thus Læráðr in Norse
shares some characteristics with Yggdrasill, but is not clearly cosmic in
nature. Trees also merge with groves (in Norse, lundr can mean either).
2. The tree was sometimes viewed as growing on a mountain; it generally has
(life/knowledge/fate-bestowing) springs or waters nearby. It was not
necessarily viewed as a lone tree, but may rather have been conceived as
growing in a grove.
3. The tree has various animals associated with it, with an array of significa-
tions, from lordship to life-sustenance to death (the dragon at its foot), and
possibly constellations and/or compass directions.
4. The tree suffers hardships: this notion is developed in Vo˛luspá into the
image of the tree as reflecting in its state the fate of the cosmos (e.g. it
falters as the world perishes).
5. The tree is closely associated with mankind, who may even have been
imagined as being formed from it. Fate is doled out to mankind by the
female denizens of the tree. It may have been viewed as guaranteeing
progeny (seen in the barnstokkr, the child trunk, in Vo˛lsunga saga).
20
Tolley 2009, i, 313–20, and ii, 91–106, for a fuller presentation of the Norse world trees.
6. The tree is associated with knowledge (runes) and inspiration, in particu-

lar through the springs at its foot.
7. The tree is associated with death, in particular through Óðinn’s sacrifice on
it, but also through the dragon at its roots. The world of the dead lies below
it. It may also be associated with rebirth in the new world (the last human
couple take shelter in a holt, a coppice). Judging by Tacitus’ account of the
Semnones, ancient tradition may have viewed the origin of the world and
man as having taken place through a sacrifice in a grove.21
8. The tree acts as a guardian; this image is built upon the guardian tree,
examples of which are found on many Scandinavian farms in later centur-
ies (and are doubtless of ancient origin). The world tree therefore func-
tions on a macrocosmic level, acting as guardian to the whole world. The
guardian tree is typically semi-personified, and is viewed as wreaking
vengeance on anyone who wrongs it or the farm it is guarding. In Norse
tradition, it appears that the god Heimdallr was, in part, such a personified
guardian tree, who for example acts in a spirited manner to retrieve the sea-
kidney from the thief Loki—an obscure myth recounted in Húsdrápa, which
seems to suggest that Heimdallr is safeguarding the symbol of fecundity, of
the world, and of mankind, from the destructive grasp of Loki.22
I would like to conclude with a caveat. I have been treating the world tree as an
essentially non-Christian motif, as something characteristic of preserved pagan
tradition, yet this is to narrow the field too far: the world tree can equally well
serve as a Christian symbol, and it was indeed developed in an intricately
allegorical manner on many occasions in purely Christian contexts.23 A later
English example is the tree of charity in Langland’s Piers Plowman,24 but the
motif antedates this by a long way. Already in the second-century Shepherd of
Hermas—a text well known in the Latin West—we find a great willow, shading
those who come in the name of the Lord, which stands for the Church or the
Law of God, stretching over the whole world.25 The Cross too, of course, has
been imagined as a tree, in particular the tree of life, from early Christian times.
The fact that the world-tree image is adaptable to the extent of being effectively
oblivious to religious differences poses a problem: its presence does not, in itself,
demonstrate any underlying pagan tradition. In Iceland, a use was found for
ancient poems preserved from pagan tradition, so we have an inherited context
of pre-Christian origin within which to place the images of the tree. But England
21
Tacitus, Germania 39, in Winterbottom 1975, 57.
22
Finnur Jónsson 1912, 128–30; Tolley 2009, i, 393–403, on the interpretation of Húsdrápa, st. 2,
where this myth is recounted.
23
See discussion by Bintley and Hooke, this volume, 211–50.
24
Pearsall 1994, passus xviii, xix.
25
Parable VIII.i, in Lake 1913, 188–93. See also discussion by Blair, Bintley, and Hooke, this volume,
191, 219–20, and 241–2.
184 Clive Tolley
was not Iceland: it was Christianized well before the rise of antiquarianism,
which helped preserve the Norse heritage, and, at least among those who wrote
anything down, there was a clear desire to link England’s culture with Rome,
and little yearning after pagan traditions, even as a vehicle for the new faith. It is
true that we may find a more varied approach when we, so to speak, read
between the lines (as I have previously suggested may be the case with Bede’s
account of Oswald’s raising of the cross at Heavenfield),26 or when we look at
sources outside the literary (or parchment) tradition, such as the Franks Casket
and perhaps the Ruthwell Cross, where there does seem to be a desire to recast
traditional Germanic motifs into a Christian mould, yet even here the Christian
message seems to me so overwhelming that it would be foolhardy to ignore the
question of what specifically Christian motifs may lie behind the imagery: as a
matter of methodology, Christian imagery, including that of the tree, should be
recognized as the first port of call for interpretation, and pagan imagery seen
primarily as something that may illuminate how relative newcomers to Chris-
tianity may have approached the new teaching in symbolic terms.
I hope that this brief presentation of some of the features of the world tree, as
found both in Norse tradition and more widely, will prompt some ideas and
help to define the investigation which others may wish to undertake into the
evidence for such traditions in Anglo-Saxon England.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dronke, U. (1997) (ed. and trans.), The Poetic Edda, ii: Mythological Poems (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
Dronke, U. (2011) (ed. and trans.), The Poetic Edda, iii: Mythological Poems II
Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthı́as Þorðarson (1935) (eds.), Eyrbyggja saga, Eirı́ks
saga rauða, Íslenzk fornrit, 4 (Reykjavı́k: Hið ı́slenzka fornritafélag).
Eliade, M. (1996), Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (London:
Sheed and Ward).
Evans, D. A. H. (1986) (ed.), Hávamál (London: Viking Society for Northern Research).
Finnur Jónsson (1912), Den Norsk–Islandske Skjaldedigtning, vol. BI (Copenhagen:
Gyldendal).
Griffith, R. T. H. (1896) (trans.), Ŗg Veda: The Hymns of the Rig Veda (Benares:
E. J. Lazarus).
Hirsch, P., and Lohmann, H.-E. (1935) (eds.), Die Sachsengeschichte des Widukind von
Korvei (Widukindi Monachi Corbeiensis Rerum Gestarum Saxonicarum Libri III),
5th edn, Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Usum Scholarum Separatim Editi,
60 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung).
Holmberg, U. (1922–3), Der Baum des Lebens (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia).
26
Tolley 1995.
Karjalainen, K. F. (1975), Südostjakische Textsammlungen, ed. Édith Vértes, i,

Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia, 157 (Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen
Seura).
Lake, K. (1913) (ed. and trans.), The Apostolic Fathers, ii, Loeb Classical Library,
25 (London: Heinemann).
Leem, K. (1767), Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper (Copenhagen).
Pearsall, D. (1994), Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the C-Text (Exeter:
Exeter University Press).
Pertz, G. H. (1829) (ed.), Rudolf of Fulda, ‘Translatio Sancti Alexandri’, in G. H. Pertz
(ed.), [Scriptores Rerum Sangallensium. Annales, Chronica et Historiae Aevi Caro-
lini], Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores (in Folio), 2 (Hanover: Hahn),
673–81.
Reuterskiöld, E. H. C. (1910), Källskrifter till Lapparnas mytologi, Bidrag till vår
odlings häfder utgivna af Nordiska Museet, 10 (Stockholm: I. Haeggströms Bok-
tryckeri a.b).
A. A. MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians: The Interplay Between Christian
Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Groningen:
Winterbottom, M. (1975) (ed.) De Origine et Situ Germanorum, in M. Winterbottom
and R. M. Ogilvie (eds.), Cornelii Taciti Opera Minora (Oxford: Clarendon Press),
35–62.
10
Holy Beams: Anglo-Saxon Cult Sites and
the Place-Name Element Bēam
John Blair
(The Queen’s College, Oxford)
The religious and ritual dimension to trees in the Anglo-Saxon world is

attracting lively interest, evident both in the contributions to this volume and
in other recent publications.1 But localizing holy trees, as physical objects and
points in the landscape, is a challenge. The trees themselves, of course, never
survive (though we might know more about them if archaeologists viewed root-
pits as potentially significant features rather than mere disturbances).2 Place-
names may take us further, especially when contextualized through topography
and archaeology. This contribution is framed around a single place-name
element, and a single place where it can be contextualized especially richly.
The original and basic meaning of OE bēam is ‘tree’, and in many minor
place-names and charter-boundary elements (hol-bēam, hnut-bēam and so on)
it clearly means just that. It is agreed that this primary sense was obsolete by the
eleventh century, and that it is hard to distinguish it from the secondary (and
continuing) sense ‘baulk of timber’. Place-name specialists have tended to
favour the simple and straightforward interpretations: trees as a natural feature,
beams forming stockades or spanning streams.3 While not doubting these
common-sense explanations in some cases, I wish to emphasize other usages,
in contexts where a bēam looks like something more than just a tree or a beam.
Another element, stapol (‘post or pillar’), will be introduced as a counterpoint:
there are some intimations that a dead stapol had, as a landmark or ritual focus,
similar connotations to a living bēam.
1
Tolley, Hooke, Bintley, this volume; Hooke 2010, 3–57; Semple 2010; Semple 2011.
2
However, two convincing cases of tree-pits surrounded by burials are at Sutton Hoo (Carver 2005,
331) and Ketton Quarry (Blair 2005, 381–2). Michael Bintley suggests to me that the tree/gallows at
Sutton Hoo could have had a ritual as well as a judicial role.
3
Smith 1956, i, 21; Parsons et al. 1997, 63. More receptive to ritual possibilities is Rumble 2006, 37–8.
Holy Beams 187
Bēam and Stapol in Charter-boundaries, Minor Place-names, and Literature

Della Hooke comments on the odd fact that whereas bēam rather than trēow is
common in literature, bēam is not especially common in place-names: ‘Many
tree features described by this term seem to have had a special importance
although the term could also be used for “beam” in the sense of timber.’4 Old
English texts show that as well as the basic senses of living tree and baulk
of timber, it could have figurative ones denoting special, pillar-like entities
(e.g. fȳrenne bēam, ‘pillar of fire’). In literary contexts it sometimes means the
Cross, which in ‘The Dream of the Rood’ is described as ‘the victory-beam’ and
‘brightest of beams’ (se sigebēam, bēama beorthost).5
Surviving late Anglo-Saxon charter-boundaries provide twenty-eight occur-
rences of bēam. Twenty-one of these are certainly or probably individual trees,
some associated with personal names: there is nothing to show either that they
were ‘special’ trees or that they were not.6 Of the rest, three might potentially be
constructional: a ‘bēam-way’, a ‘bēam-ford’ and a ‘bēam-weir’.7 On the other
hand a ‘sill-beam’ (syl bēame) in the modern sense sounds an unlikely feature in
the landscape and must surely be interpreted as ‘column-bēam’.8 A ‘crucifix-
bēam’ (crı̄stelmǣlbēam) was presumably a tree, pillar, or post carved into the
form of a crucifix, or with a crucifix attached to it; in either case it was obviously
ritual.9 Cases such as this heighten the sense that bēam tended to be used rather
than trēow to mark out a special tree from among the thousands of ordinary
trees in the landscape. The compounds bēam lēage and bēam brōc10 point in the
same direction: one wood-pasture could hardly be distinguished from others by
having a tree in it, nor a brook by running past one. Minor place-names
recorded in later sources show a similar pattern:11 a high proportion describing
specific trees species, but also a handful that are more suggestive, the most
promising of which are considered further below.
Turning for the moment to stapol: this term is normally defined as a post or
pillar of wood or stone (as when the Old English Bede translates as stapolas the
4
Hooke 2009.
5
Toller 1898, and Toronto On-Line Old English Corpus, s.v.
6
Sawyer 1968 (= S), 283, 331, 362, 365, 412, 446 (but as shown below this assumes greater
significance in context), 496, 622, 513, 552, 754, 756, 766, 811, 820, 864, 916, 927, 950, 1031, 1602;
note also Brunesbeam in the list of pastures added to S 1180. I am very grateful to Joy Jenkyns for
providing a list from her database of charter-boundaries.
7
S 1556 (Withington, detached bounds); S 345 (Creech St Michael, ‘882’); S 359 (Hurstbourne,
900); Baker, this volume, 83–4 (giving more weight to the functional interpretation than I do here).
8
S 786 (Leigh, Worcs., 972); cf. Toller 1898, s.v. syl.
9
S 607 (Hawkridge, Berks., 956).
10
S 377 (Overton, Hants., 909); S 534 (Corfe, 948).
11
A trawl of the English Place-Name Society series yields (in addition to the cases discussed below) the
following: Cheshire: ‘the Long Beam’ (field-name 1633), Bamford; Devon: Holbeam, Quickbeam;
Gloucestershire: Nutbeam; Hertfordshire: Bamville (Bamfelde 1224), two Hornbeams; Leicestershire:
Beamarsh; Sussex: Bemzells (Bembselle 1296), Holbeanwood, Rumbeam (Rumbeme 1327); Yorkshire
WR: Brimham (Bernebeam 1135–40), Bimshaw.
188 John Blair
‘posts’ (stipites) on which King Edwine hung his drinking-bowls), or by

extension—and encouraged by ‘Beowulf ’ line 925, where King Hrothgar stands
on a stapol to make a speech—as a platform supported on posts.12 Stapol,
like bēam, has been seen in some contexts as a structural element facilitating
passage of a stream-crossing or boggy path: so perhaps a ‘bēam-ford’ is a ford
made more passable by laying a beam across it,13 and a ‘stapol-ford’ is a ford
improved by a causeway on a series of posts. Or perhaps not: an Appleford,
Ashford, or Hazelford were surely next to prominent trees, rather than distinct-
ive through being spanned by baulks of visibly distinct timber species, and the
same may be true of a Bamford or Stapleford. The estuary at Benfleet (Essex)—
bēam-flēot—could not have been spanned by a single bēam; nor could the
Derwent at Bamford (Derbs.) or the Nene at Bemwick (Cambs.). The contexts
of stapol also suggest that, like bēam, it was a term at least sometimes chosen to
mark out something special. Audrey Meaney has shown that it must at least
sometimes have meant a focal or landmark post, pillar, or platform, both
because of the suggestive character of compounds such as Thurstable (Essex),
‘Thunor’s stapol’, and because it occurs so often in the names of hundred
meeting-places.14 The intriguing fact that nearly all the villages called Staple-
ford adjoin Anglo-Saxon royal or urban centres15 might suggest that a recurrent
adjunct to such places was a stapol (for making announcements or speeches?) at
a river-crossing.
From Holy Tree to Carved Monument? Bēam and Stapol

in an Emerging Ritual Architecture
The place-name and charter-boundary material certainly admits the possibility
that simplex and singular bēam and stapol habitually refer to objects that were
notable because of their intrinsic significance, as landmarks, meeting-places,
or cult sites. The usages seem in fact so similar that one starts to wonder how
they differed from each other. One possible answer—supported by the recur-
rence of stapol but not bēam in the names of late Anglo-Saxon hundred
12
Smith 1956, ii, 146. I am again indebted to Joy Jenkins for data on stapol in charter-boundaries; the
term is numerous—much more so than bēam—and deserves further study.
13
Parsons et al. 1997, 63, support this view of bēam-ford with Middle English names in Essex and
Cheshire where the beme/beem is explicitly identified as a plank bridge. This is a fair point, but it should
be noted that these names are only recorded after 1200, when the original sense of the word had long
been obsolete and the modern one was well established. Contrast Baker, this volume, 83–4.
14
Meaney 1995, 35–6 and n. 121. The five cases of the Barstable/Barnstaple compound probably
have a generic meaning, for which ‘battle-axe stapol’ (by analogy with the hundred-name Gartree, ‘spear-
tree’) has been proposed by Arngart 1978. A case that deserves further study is Instaple (Devon),
probably ‘heathens’ stapol’, Gover et al. 1931, 133.
15
Stapleford and Marefield (Leics.) were jointly the issuing-sites of a Mercian royal charter in 691
(S 10); five other Staplefords adjoin Cambridge, Hertford, Newark, Nottingham, and Wilton; and the
Staplefords in Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, and Cheshire (in Tarvin) all—like the one Bamford (Derbs.)—
adjoin places with burh-tūn names, probably satellites of Mercian royal power centres or minsters in the
eighth to ninth centuries (Gelling 1989, 145–53, and research in progress by John Blair).
Holy Beams 189
meeting-places—is chronological: that stapol continued later in active use for

naming focal sites. Another is that a stapol was a more elaborate structure,
for instance an image-platform supported on posts rather than a single post.16
A third—entirely compatible with the other two—is that whereas a bēam could
be either living or dead, a stapol was always a cultural product.
Perhaps a tree venerated while living could still be venerated thereafter, either
as a dead tree (bēam), carved in situ into some artificial form (bēam but perhaps
stapol), cut down, carved as a pole and set up in a posthole (more stapol than
bēam), or inspiring a generic class of carved poles or platforms set up as
components of shrine ensembles (stapol)? While this line of thought is pure
speculation, it does suggest a way of aligning the onomastic data with probable
change over time, as theatres for ritual that had been purely natural were
developed, towards the end of the pagan period, by structures and monuments
carved and built in timber.
This last statement will be justified shortly by reference to Anglo-Saxon
archaeology, but first some cross-cultural context may give directions. That
we have not the slightest trace of shrine structures from the fifth and sixth
centuries (in sharp contrast to burial ritual in the same period) is deeply
frustrating but, in a negative way, informative: it suggests that the English
practised their religion in natural settings like those that survived late enough
on the northern and eastern fringes of Europe to be studied by anthropolo-
gists.17 The Mansi of the Uralic region, for instance, had sacral places in the
forests that were articulated by movable equipment such as logs, ropes, tables,
and hearths, and where the only structures were not shrines, but storehouses
(often in trees or on sawn-off tree-trunks) for images or other ritual parapher-
nalia. One observer noted ‘an old post darkened by time and foul weather.
A four metre long pole is tied to it with seven white cloths; its pointed upper end
is covered with a birchbark cap. Below the cap a “belt” is cut out depicting the
neck. The “head” made in this way creates an anthropomorphic figure in the
pole.’18 This tempting evocation of what the English might have called a bēam
or stapol has no direct or specific relevance, but does illustrate one kind of ritual
ensemble which, if it did exist, would certainly have left no traces.
For Anglo-Saxon England, there are some shreds of evidence that this neces-
sarily hypothetical phase of natural cult sites gave way, before conversion to
Christianity, to something more developed. A case can be made that a group of
square fenced or ditched enclosures, some of them superimposed on prehistoric
16
For an engraving of exactly such a structure in seventeenth-century Lapland, see Blair 2011, 755.
17
Semple 2010, 24–6, and Semple 2011, develop a similar argument for ‘sacred natural places’,
suggesting that they could have been marked by distinctive forms of vegetation and plant management.
For an argument that some Old English verse (notably Judgement Day II, reworking the Latin De Die
Iudicii) preserves echoes of holy groves and clearings in hedged enclosures, see Bintley 2010.
18
Blair 2011, 753–4, citing Gemuev et al. 2008, 53.
190 John Blair
barrows and some enclosing post-settings, represent pagan shrines.19 But if so,
they are very late in the pagan period, all constructed in or around the first years
of the seventh century. Like the princely barrow-burials, these were not the last
gasp of an old order but arose from an ostentatious, short-lived phase of
monumental display in the transformative decades c.590–630.20 The supreme
example of this articulation of ritual posts within a formal and monumental
setting is the early-seventh-century Northumbrian royal centre at Yeavering.21
This complex was initially framed around an axis between the ‘Western Ring-
Ditch’, a Neolithic stone circle replaced by a square fenced shrine with a central
post, and the ‘Eastern Ring-Ditch’, also redeveloped by the addition of a large
post-setting. Both these foci attracted burials; the insertion between them of
large timber halls modified the alignment but maintained the principle of
precise axiality, emphasized by the placement, on the axis of one of the halls,
of an abnormal burial containing a probable surveying-rod. At the western
extremity of the same axis, a colossal post (57 cm square) stood at one corner of
the probably cultic building D2, and must have been a dramatic landmark
indeed if it was as tall as its girth implies. If, as has recently been argued, the
Yeavering halls represent a culture in which formal domestic buildings them-
selves embodied sacrality, this sacrality must have been enhanced and validated
by their purposeful juxtaposition with already venerable post-settings.
The sophisticated surveying employed at Yeavering to link two pillar- or post-
like timber foci reworking older monuments, and the creation within this
setting of structures for royal residence and ceremonial, may offer some further
directions. The process of monumentalization, whereby a distinctive natural or
ancient landmark is replicated in artificial form, has been widespread in human
societies.22 In England at this time, its characteristic form may have been the
perpetuation of a living bēam as a carved stapol in an architectural setting. In
the 680s, the scholar Aldhelm rejoiced to see fine churches going up where
previously the ‘crude pillars (ermula cruda) of the . . . foul snake and stag were
worshipped with coarse stupidity in profane shrines’.23 Vernacular equivalents
of the classicizing ermula (‘little herms’) must potentially have included both
bēam and stapol, and the passage gives a unique, perhaps eyewitness, glimpse of
what the last monuments of English pagan cult had looked like.
It also shows that at least some of them gave way to monuments of Christian
devotion. The easy visual and psychological assimilation of the Cross to posts,
pillars, and even trees must have been a great asset to missionaries. Bede’s
brilliantly told story of King Oswald raising his timber cross in battle in 634
offers a glowing vision of the sacrae crucis vexillum, set up for the first time in
19 20
Blair 1995. Blair 2005, 51–7 for this argument.
21
Hope-Taylor 1977, esp. 244–5, 258–61. For more recent commentary, see Gittos 1999, and sources
cited there; Frodsham and O’Brien 2005; Walker 2010; and Blair 2011, 749–50.
22 23
Cf. Bradley 2000. Blair 2005, 185.
Holy Beams 191
Bernicia as a public monument, and may gain power from the physical
resemblance—but spiritual gulf—between the landmarks of the old and new
religions.24 And the old could so easily be transformed into the new, just by
adding a crossbar, an incised or painted cross, or a figure of the crucified Christ.
Elsewhere in this volume, Michael Bintley shows how Old English biblical
paraphrases identify various trees, pillars, and rods as precursors to the Cross,
encouraging the Anglo-Saxons to see their own former sacred trees as equiva-
lent precursors to the new faith.25 The widespread survival of trees—especially
ash-trees—in folk-cult practice through the Christian Anglo-Saxon period and
beyond26 could have been a vehicle for this mode of evangelization, perhaps
illustrated by the crı̄stelmǣl bēam in the Hawkridge charter-bounds of 956.27 In
some of the more folkloric saints’ lives, wondrous trees manifest God’s favour
and protection. For St Kenelm, a tree ‘so high that it reached up to the very
stars . . . , very beautiful and spreading, with widespread branches, filled from
bottom to top with all kinds of flowers . . . , [and which] blazed with countless
lights and lamps’, prefigured his own passage through martyrdom to triumph;
over the grave of the martyred St Freomund sprouted a miraculous tree where
no animal could approach or bird settle.28 Belchamp Otton (Essex) is the scene
of an intriguing miracle sequence: a tree grows where St Æthelberht pitched his
tent; it is made into a cross which is set up on the same site; a nobleman tries to
move it to his house, but it returns twice overnight and on the third attempt
strikes him blind.29 Can we recognize here the developmental sequence from
bēam to stapol, transposed to a Christian context?
Bēamas in the Landscape

Most of the bēam terms in charter-boundaries and minor place-names offer
little in the way of context: to be able to locate a specific bēam in a hedgerow, or
bēam-ford as a stream-crossing, tells us nothing in itself about the bēam.
Sometimes, however, compounds with bēam come through as more important
names, where the eponymous feature has evidently had a role in defining a
24
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica (= HE) iii.2, in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 216. This point is not
invalidated by Ian Wood’s very reasonable warnings against taking the story literally (Wood 2006).
25
See Bintley, this volume, 211–27.
26
Blair 2005, 476–7. Note especially the charter-bounds of Taunton (S 311), ‘ad quendam fraxinum
quem imperiti sacrum uocant’.
27
This chapter, n. 9.
28
Blair 2002, 481; Blair 1994, 75. As observed elsewhere in this volume, Kenelm’s tree is clearly
inspired by Nebuchadnezzar’s vision in Daniel 4:10–18; see Tolley, Bintley, and Hooke, this volume, 183,
219–20, 241–2.
29
Gerald of Wales, ‘Vita Regis et Martiris Æthelberti’, cc. 15–16 (ed. James 1917, 233–5); cf. Blair
2005, 476 n. for the ‘returning relic’ topos. It would be tempting to think that the first element in the
name Belchamp—balca, ‘ridge or bank’—is used here in its later sense of ‘baulk of wood’ and analogous
to ‘beam’, but this extended meaning seems only to occur in the Middle English period: Parsons et al.
1997, 41–2. I am grateful to Hilary Powell for drawing my attention to this example.
192 John Blair
settlement, and in these cases we may infer something of what it signified

(Fig. 10.1).
Bamford (Derbs.), a village at a road junction over the Derwent in the Peak
District, is helpful because of the character of the river at this point: fast-flowing in a
deeply incised gorge, nearly thirty metres across. While fordable across the shallow,
stony bottom, and capable of being traversed by Anglo-Saxon caisson-and-trestle
bridge technology, it is hard to imagine it spanned by a single bēam: that interpret-
ation, if admissible for paths over small streams, must surely be ruled out here.
Fig. 10.1. Selected place-names incorporating the element bēam.

Holy Beams 193
Benwick (bēam-wı̄c), in the Cambridgeshire fens between Peterborough and

Ely, implies a commercial, industrial, or processing site associated with a
bēam.30 It abuts a bend in the old course of the Nene and does have a bridge
(carrying a road from Ramsey to Whittlesea), but again the breadth of the river
is incompatible with a single beam. This would, so far as it goes, be an easily
reached location for ritual or assembly, in a region that was to have a particu-
larly dense landscape of Anglo-Saxon Christian cult.31
A location in the parish of Great Torrington (Devon) is recorded as la Beme in
1244.32 The name is perpetuated as Beam Mansion, a small country house in a
loop of the River Torridge amid thick woodland, but the cluster of adjacent
‘Beam’ names marked on maps between the 1760s and 1880s suggests that the
term had come to denote a zone on the east bank of the river (Fig. 10.2).33
Fig. 10.2. Great Torrington (Devon): bēam and stapol names beside the River Torridge.
(Composite map based on the sources listed in note 33.)
30
This interpretation of wı̄c was discussed at the ‘Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England’ workshops
held in 2009, notably in papers by Simon Draper and Sue Fitton.
31
Blair 2005, 150, 319.
32
Gover et al. 1931, 123.
33
Fig. 10.2 is a composite map based on Benjamin Donn, Map of Devon (1765); Ordnance Survey
1-inch surveyor’s draft (1804, British Library, Map Room, OSD 30); and Ordnance Survey 25-inch first
edition. The farm marked ‘Beam’ at Jope’s Bridge is shown only by Donn, not by the later maps.
194 John Blair
Immediately upstream from one of these, Furzebeam Hill, is the late-recorded

Staplevale (perhaps from stapol-feld?) where a court dealing with common
rights was held in 1834.34 While the exact location of the eponymous bēam is
unknown (most likely in the river-loop or on Furzebeam Hill?), the place-name
could preserve memories of a sacred zone, heavily wooded but accessible along
flowing water, next to a stapol meeting-place. The simplex form—not just any
bēam but the bēam—makes an interesting and apparently unique parallel for
‘the Beam’ at Bampton (Oxon.) discussed below.
Bemblowe (bēam-hlǣw), a lost furlong name in the open fields of Longney
(Glos.) beside the Severn,35 points more clearly to a ritual monument: a bēam
on a barrow. Unfortunately it is unlocated: it may or may not be coincidence
that Longney was the very place where, around 1070, St Wulfstan famously
objected to the great nut-tree (by implication a rival object of cult?) over-
shadowing Ælfsige of Faringdon’s manorial church.36
Ritually expressive in another way is Bladbean (‘blood-bēam’) in east Kent,
near the road leading northwards from the major early minster at Lyminge
towards Canterbury.37 It is located on undulating downland, with wide views,
at the heart of a tract of early common woodland (Fig. 10.3).38 The proposed
meaning—a tree with red leaves—hardly carries conviction: it seems unneces-
sary to avoid the obvious conclusion that this was a bēam associated with that
‘habit of slaughtering many cattle as sacrifices to demons’ which the Roman
missionaries in Kent reported to Pope Gregory.39 Especially striking in this
context is its juxtaposition with a farm called Grims Acre (Grimeshaker in
1275)—one of the small group of place-names that may embody Woden’s
pseudonym Grim.40
The range of hills rising northwards from Burton-on-Trent (Staffs.) includes
Beam Hill (first mentioned in the thirteenth century), Beacon Hill, and Hornin-
glow Cross, the last probably identifiable with a barrow called dottes hlæw
in 1008. The topography is clearly suitable for a ritual landmark, and the
proximity of Horninglow is of some interest: in the 1090s this was probably
34
Alexander and Hooper 1948, 81, 158. Stapol sites seem to be especially numerous in Devon, and
Torrington is within ten miles of both Barnstaple and Instaple (this chapter, n. 14).
35
The source is a manorial survey of the 1550s (TNA, E164/39 ff. 199–211; cf. Smith 1964, 186, where it
is dated for reasons unclear to 1575). It is a complication that the descriptions of open-field land and meadow
mention plots located at Bemblowe (once), Beameley (once), and Bemley (four times); it is therefore possible
that Bemblowe is an error. It is, however, clearly written, and not an obvious mistranscription of a -ley suffix:
perhaps a ‘bēam wood-pasture’ and a ‘bēam barrow’ adjoined each other?
36
William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani ii.17, in Winterbottom and Thomson 2002, 94–6; Blair
2005, 382.
37
Wallenberg 1934, 431; Rumble 2006, 37. It occurs as Blodbem(e) from 1226.
38
Everitt 1986, 282–4.
39
HE i.30, in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 106–8.
40
Wallenberg 1934, 433–4. (The Viking personal name Grimr is an alternative possibility, but not
especially likely in Kent.)
Holy Beams 195
Fig. 10.3. Elham (Kent): the environs of Bladbean and Grims Acre as shown on Andrew,
Dury, and Herbert’s Map of Kent (1769).
the scene of a lurid episode when the hearts of two revenants disinterred from a
nearby churchyard were burned, and a black crow was seen to fly up from the
flames.41
Benfleet (Essex), mentioned as Beamfleot in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for
894, was an estuary (flēot) associated with a bēam. Its juxtaposition with
Thundersley (‘Thunor’s wood-pasture’), 2 km to the north, is arguably coinci-
dental, but looks less so when compared with the charter-bounds of 939 for
Droxford (Hants.), where a ‘great bēam’ occurs in close proximity to a Thunres
41
Tringham 2003, 177; Blair, 2009, 558.
196 John Blair
lea near the village of Shedfield.42 These associations could point to a particular
type of cultic landscape comprising both a sacred zone—an area of semi-open
woodland dedicated to Thunor—and a sacred point—a tree or post.
With the four cases of Bampton/Bempton, ‘tūn associated with a bēam’,43 we
confront the comparatively late date of most compounds with tūn. As Barrie Cox
has shown, the appearance of this element a mere six times among the place-
names mentioned in texts before 730 suggests that its huge popularity developed
thereafter; furthermore, there are grounds for seeing even those six as relatively
recent formations, probably since 650.44 This is an unpromising basis for con-
necting such names with Anglo-Saxon pagan cult. On the other hand the literary
uses of bēam, and the rarity of the bēam-tūn compound, encourage us to look for
something rather more specialized than the commonplace meanings that have
been proposed.45 James Campbell has noted the likely equivalence of tūn with
Latin villa, sometimes used by Bede for important royal centres, and observes ‘the
odd fact that although villa and vicus are common words in the narrative sources
they are not so in the charters. . . . The shortage of references to villae and vici
suggests that, in charters, these are not words applied to the common run of
settlements but rather to royal vills which were not often given away.’46 The same
could be true of its vernacular equivalent tūn, for which, as Campbell says, ‘it
does look as if an important meaning, and an early meaning, was “royal vill”’.47
While clearly this does not allow us to assume that bēam-tūn compounds are
necessarily in this minority category, it does illustrate how they could have been
formed, in the early Christian period, for important centres adjoining bēam sites
that were still landmarks some generations after conversion.48 The instability of
pre-Viking royal villae49 would explain why they do not seem very important in
later sources (except, as we will see, the Oxfordshire Bampton). Two of the four
bēam-tūnas—Kirkbampton (Cumb.) and Bampton (Westm.)—are villages with
no obvious topographical peculiarities, though we may note this north-western
weighting of a rare compound, and also their oddly similar relationship to the
River Eden which flows a few miles to the east of both of them.
42
S 446; Grundy 1924, 77, ‘on þonæ greatan beam; of þam beamæ on þunres lea middae weardnæ’.
For ‘Thunor’s lēah’ place-names, see J. Hines 1997, 385, with comment by Bintley 2011, 6.
43
This excludes Bampton (Devon), where the first element is of different origin and refers to Roman baths.
44
Cox 1976, 12–66.
45
Parsons et al. 1997, 62, suggest that the Bamptons ‘could be farmsteads that are timber-built or that
are distinguished by trees’. But surely all Anglo-Saxon farmsteads were timber-built, and trees would not
have been a very rare distinction.
46
Campbell 1986, 110–11.
47
Campbell 1986, 115. Margaret Gelling observed to me (letter of March 1990), ‘Bēamtūn could be
classed with Tomtūn (later Tamworth) if you wanted to project the special importance of Bampton back
into the 7th century’.
48
It is perhaps relevant here that Bede twice refers to people remembering, for long afterwards, the
sites of pagan shrines abandoned in the early seventh century: HE ii.13 and ii.15, in Colgrave and
Mynors 1969, 186, 190.
49
Blair 2005, 275–9.
Holy Beams 197
Bempton (Yorks ER) is intriguing because of its proximity to another kind of

Christianized pagan monument (Fig. 10.4). Only six miles away is Rudston,
whose name (rōd-stān, ‘stone with a rood on it’)50 must refer to the huge
Neolithic menhir which still stands by the church. Like some more recent
Breton examples,51 this was presumably marked with a cross as a sign of
purification and Christian adoption: was a rōd-stān a stone version of a crı̄s-
telmǣl-bēam? One does wonder whether Bempton and Rudston were in some
sense complementary place-names, in a landscape of pagan cult also including
the cemetery at Sewerby, two miles south of Bempton.52 The possibility that this
region—which was rich in woodland and marsh53—could have functioned as
Deira’s ritual zone is heightened by the presence further west of the main Deiran
royal shrine at Goodmanham, still known in Bede’s day as a landmark ‘not far
eastwards from York, beyond the River Derwent’.54
The final and decisive case is the Oxfordshire Bampton, where—uniquely—
the bēam can be defined as a precise location distinct from its tūn, and the tūn
emerges in the tenth to eleventh centuries as an important royal centre. This has
Fig. 10.4. The location of Bempton in relation to other monuments in east Yorkshire.
50
Smith 1956, ii, 87, and Rumble 2006, 33, citing three other examples of the compound.
51 52
Cf. Grinsell 1986, 30–2, and Blair 2005, 227. Hirst 1985.
53 54
Hirst 1985, 1–7. HE ii.13, in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 186.
198 John Blair
been the subject of an intensive research project over more than two decades,
and the archaeological and topographical data assembled provide an unusually
rich background for what can now be convincingly identified as a complex of
linked cult foci through much of the Anglo-Saxon period.
A Case Study: Bampton in Oxfordshire

Bampton55 lies on the north bank of the upper Thames, near its early medi-
eval head of navigation, at an important confluence of road and water routes
including a salt-way from Droitwich. In Domesday Book it appears as the
second most valuable manor in Oxfordshire, and with the only market; but its
economic importance faded, and by the late middle ages it was little more
than a small market village overshadowed by Witney, Burford, and Faring-
don. Charters show that by the 950s it was the centre of a huge royal estate,
parts of which were then being divided up into bookland and land to support
royal servants. A royal diploma of 1069 preserves the information that King
Eadwig (reigning in Mercia 955–7) gave land there to ‘the holy man at
Bampton (Bemtune) and the community’:56 the first reference to a minster,
housing the relics of an otherwise unknown St Beornwald, which was to
retain a huge mother-parish and considerable local importance through the
middle ages.
Topography tells us something about the relationship between royal centre,
minster, and town (Fig. 10.5). The church lies in the south-west part of a large
oval enclosure, bounded by a four-metre-wide ditch which was apparently
backfilled in the early-twelfth century.57 Nearby is a large, characteristically
twelfth- or thirteenth-century triangular marketplace, which probably replaced
an earlier marketplace—formed around a lost approach-road from a Thames
crossing to the south—on the southern periphery of the church enclosure.
Further west, beyond the Shill Brook, lies Bampton Castle, the fourteenth-
century successor of the royal house. The message of this configuration is that
the town developed next to the minster complex, which was centrally sited in
relation to communications, whereas the royal house was set apart: in accord-
ance with a pattern which has now been widely observed, the minster probably
came first.58
That minster was established in an already much-occupied landscape.
The main church was built beside two (potentially more) Bronze Age barrows.
Southwards from this ecclesiastical zone, just across the Shill Brook, an appar-
ently substantial Romano-British site can be recognized from aerial photographs
55
For its history and archaeology, see Townley 1996; Blair 1998a; Baxter and Blair 2006; Blair 2010.
56 57
Bates 1998, 465 (No. 138). Blair 1988.
58
For a general argument along these lines, see Blair 2005, 330–41.
Holy Beams 199
Fig. 10.5. Bampton (Oxfordshire): the medieval town in relation to earlier ritual monuments.
and metal-detected coins and objects.59 The latter are of a quantity and quality
suggesting a shrine or villa—a conclusion supported by the discovery nearby
of a stone altar with a figure of the goddess Fortuna.60 Immediately east of
the Roman site, aerial photographs61 show what looks like a scatter of early
Anglo-Saxon sunken-featured buildings, to the south-east of which a coin of
c.690–700 was recently found. In 1989 another sunken-featured building,
with sixth- or seventh-century pottery, was excavated between the Brook and
the medieval marketplace.62
59
Finds include about 1,000 third- to fourth-century coins, several brooches, and a high-quality
copper-alloy mount from a piece of furniture in the form of a male head. This material, and the Anglo-
Saxon coin and brooch discussed below, were found by a detectorist with the pseudonym ‘Sophie’ whose
information is considered reliable (publication forthcoming).
60
Chambers 1989; Henig and Booth 2000, 126–8.
61
The clearest is an amateur colour photograph, probably of the 1980s, which was given to me be a
local resident; others are in the National Monuments Record Centre, Swindon. The coin, a porcupine
sceat of Series E, VICO variety, was found by metal-detectorist ‘Sophie’ at SP 316 027.
62
Durham 1989.
200 John Blair
stippled: above 72.45 m.

70.5-m. contour on
gravel terrace?
(schematized inference)
tist
n Bap
St Joh
l
hape
ery c
Dean
0 50 metres
Fig. 10.6. Bampton (Oxfordshire): the parish church and Deanery chapel in relation to the
underlying Bronze Age barrows.
Though the juxtaposition of Roman temple and Anglo-Saxon minster (pos-

sibly linked by a lost north–south route to the Thames) looks appealing, there is
no evidence that the Roman occupation left any visible trace into the seventh or
eighth century. A case can, on the other hand, be made that the Bronze Age
barrows survived to have an impact on early ecclesiastical planning (Fig. 10.6).
The smaller barrow lay immediately south of the nave of the late Anglo-Saxon
church; the other, a large disc barrow to the west, enclosed an eleventh-century
double chapel incorporated in the rectory (‘Deanery’) house. The disc barrow is
apparently respected by the boundary ditch of the main minster enclosure, and
is bisected by the central axis of the church. Excavation south of the church in
1996 found a sequence of three burials overlying the inner edge of the smaller
ring ditch; the earliest, radiocarbon-dated to the eighth or ninth century, had
been dug (to judge from the sloping grave-cut) at a time when the mound of the
barrow remained visible as an earthwork.63 This combination of spatial and
stratigraphical evidence strongly suggests that when the church(es) and grave-
yard were established, at a point no later than the ninth century, it was within
the physical framework provided by the surviving barrows.
The west–east linear disposition of the barrows, church, and Deanery chapel
seems to have been a component, at least by the late middle ages, of a much
longer ritual alignment. Westwards, beyond the Shill Brook and Castle, the
Lady Well has folkloric evidence for cures, and a Victorian observation of an
63
Blair 1998b.
Holy Beams 201
ancient masonry structure.64 East of the church and town, a reference in 1403
to the ‘chaplain of the chantry of Cattestrete [now Queen Street] in Bampton’,
and the fieldname ‘Spittle [i.e. Hospital] Croft’ on a map of 1789,65 point to
small late-medieval religious establishments. A tantalizing hint of much older
ritual activity is a mid-sixth-century cruciform brooch, found in mud dredged
from the Brook between the Lady Well and Deanery (Fig. 10.7).66 While this
could have been washed out of a cemetery, there is growing evidence that the
cultic deposition of artefacts in water was an Anglo-Saxon as well as a prehis-
toric practice.67
All this amounts to a persuasive case for a long-term and multi-focal ritual
complex. In the absence of further evidence, one might be tempted to conjecture—
taking a cue from Bemblowe—that the eponymous bēam stood on one of the
Bronze Age barrows. But the reality was even more complex.
About 1 km east of the main church, and almost precisely on its axis, stands
a small seventeenth- or eighteenth-century rubble-built cottage, now engulfed
in a housing estate built in the early 1980s. This cottage is captioned ‘The
Beam’ on a map of 1769, and ‘Hermitage or Beam’ on one of 1818.68
Extracted from its walls during renovations in 1985 were several fragments
of dressed and chamfered limestone, and a shaft-base of c.1100–40 with chip-
carved decoration.69 In conjunction with the proportions and the west–east
alignment of the cottage, these raise a suspicion that it has been rebuilt on the
footings of a twelfth-century chapel. Records of the Dean and Chapter of
Exeter, the proprietors of the rectory manor, confirm that suspicion. In 1317
the Chapter held thirteen acres ‘iuxta Beme’, and was receiving ‘half the
oblations of the chapel of St Andrew at Beme’; repairs to its glass windows,
roof, painted image of St Andrew, and bells are noted in 1325, 1329, and
1421/2.70 Secularized by 1575, when a cottage in Bampton called ‘Beame
hermitage’ was granted to tenants, the former chapel reappears in a court roll
64
Giles 1848, 66–8: ‘the stone-work, with which the sides of the Fountain are protected from the
weight of earth and trees . . . , is still in tolerable preservation, though four or five hundred years have
probably passed away, since it was erected’.
65
Exeter, Dean & Chapter Muniments, MS 6016/a, Map M/1.
66
Found by metal-detectorist ‘Sophie’ at SP 310 033. I am grateful to Toby Martin for the comment
that this brooch is remarkably similar to one from Grave 85A at the Empingham II cemetery (Rutland).
67
Lund 2010, esp. 51–4; Semple 2011; Thomas 2010, 104–6. Weapons, including a sword from
Chimney near Bampton, seem to have been deliberately deposited in the upper Thames in the ninth and
tenth centuries (Blair 1994, 98–9). Chester-Kadwell 2009, 29, notes, ‘Early Anglo-Saxon artefacts are
sometimes found in river dredgings: two spearheads, two cruciform brooches and one rectangular plaque
have been recovered by metal detector from dredging spoil in Norfolk’. I owe this reference to Helena
Hamerow.
68
British Library, MS Add. 31323-III; Exeter, Dean & Chapter Muniments, Map 13/74363a. The
1818 map is reproduced in Blair and Pyrah 1996, 12. See also Townley 1996, 48–9.
69
I am very grateful to the then owner, Mr Stephen Butts, for allowing me to examine this material.
70
Exeter, Dean & Chapter Muniments, MSS 2931, 2785 m.1, 2788 m.3, 5105.
202 John Blair
(a)
(b)
0 5 cm
(c)
Fig. 10.7. Bampton (Oxfordshire), Anglo-Saxon finds: (a) Sixth-century cruciform brooch
from the Shill Brook (private possession; drawing by Magdalena Wachnik); (b) Seventh-
century copper-alloy pin from burial found in gravel-quarry south-west of the Beam chapel
(Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford); (c) Bone pin-beater from burial at the Beam chapel (private
possession).
of 1657 as the ‘cottage, garden and orchard in Bampton called the Armitage
house’.71
This evidence tells us that the spot was known as Beme; that St Andrew’s
chapel—a dedication associated with conversion, with the eremitic life, and
potentially with standing crosses72—was built or rebuilt there no later than
c.1140; and that it was remembered as a hermitage by the 1570s. It is virtually
71
TNA, C66/1125 m.3 (= Cal. Patent Rolls 1572–5, p. 411); Exeter, Dean & Chapter Muniments,
MS 4779.
72
For these aspects of the apocryphal legend of St Andrew, see Scragg 1999 and Hill 2010. For
dedications and hermitages, see Blair 2005, 218, Bartlett 2002, xxxii–iii, 144–5, 172–3, and Kelly 2000,
clx–clxi.
Holy Beams 203
inconceivable that such a name, for such an isolated and insignificant spot,
could be an artificial back-formation based on an educated etymology of
‘Bampton’: we have to conclude that this was the original and eponymous
bēam. The 1069 charter implies, if it does not actually prove, that the name
Bemtune existed by the reign of Eadwig, in the 950s. Certainly the territorial
centrality of the place, indicated both by Domesday Book and by the satellite
east and north tūnas Aston and Brize Norton, mentioned in 958 and 1086
respectively,73 suggests that it was the category of important and perhaps early
tūn names. Presumably the bēam was older, and significant enough for this
locally very significant place to be named in relation to it.
Here archaeology is again helpful.74 At Calais Farm, some 200 metres west-
south-west of the Beam cottage, gravel-quarrying in the 1880s to 1890s, and
development in the 1980s, revealed an Iron Age and Romano-British settlement
and at least sixteen human burials (Fig. 10.8). Victorian observers took these
burials to be prehistoric, but associated with two or more of them were small
bronze pins, of which one survives and is datable to the late-seventh century
(Fig. 10.7).75 Further observations of burials were made in 1957 (‘apparently
that of a young person . . . the burial seems to have been rough and informal’),
and 1964 (unaccompanied supine inhumation ‘showing signs of haste and
disorder in the burial, thought to be a young female’).76 Around the Beam
cottage itself, several burials, six of which were plotted (see Fig. 10.9), emerged
during building and landscaping works in the 1980s. Radiocarbon samples
from three of these burials yield calibrated results in the tenth- to thirteenth-
century range, indicating a high medieval graveyard around the chapel.77
However, another burial, disturbed by extension works on the north side of
the cottage, was accompanied by a bone pin-beater (Fig. 10.7) suggesting an
early- to mid-Anglo-Saxon date.78
Sadly, the modern housing-estate was built without any archaeological obser-
vation; a large, unabraded sherd of early- or mid-Saxon grass-tempered pottery,
picked from a flower-bed near the Beam cottage,79 hints at the likely losses. But
73
Aston is indicated by on east hæma gemære in the charter-bounds of S 678; Brize Norton is
mentioned in Domesday Book. Note also that the western satellite, Black Bourton, is a burh-tūn
compound: cf. this chapter, n. 15.
74
This paragraph is based on Ellis 1891; Manning 1898, 11; Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Dept. of
Antiquities, Bampton file; and Chambers 1988.
75
A note by Percy Manning in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top Oxon. d.192, f. 93, identifies Calais
Farm as ‘where the burial pins were found’. The extant pin, now in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, is
labelled ‘Dug up in a gravel pit at Bampton, Oxon., found close to skeleton of adult female. Pres. by
Mr Jasper Taylor 1888.’ I am grateful to Seamus Ross for his opinion on the date, based on numerous
parallels. A similar pin, in silver, was found by the skull of a seventh-century female burial at Kingston
Down, Kent: Faussett 1856, 42–3.
76
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Dept. of Antiquities, Bampton file.
77
HAR 8089 (bp 1020 +/– 100), HAR 8091 (bp 850 +/– 40); HAR 8090 (bp 840 +/– 40).
78
These burials were observed by the owner, Mr Butts, to whom I am again very grateful.
79
Again found by Mr Butts.
204 John Blair
Fig. 10.8. Bampton (Oxfordshire): observations of burials and Romano-British settlement to

the south-west of the Beam chapel.
an aerial photograph taken during the dry summer of 1976 shows crop-marks
including ten to twelve small oval features, about 100 metres north of the
cottage, which can perhaps be interpreted as Anglo-Saxon sunken-featured
buildings (Fig. 10.9).80
Putting these rather frustrating fragments together, we can infer that the bēam
was located on the edge of a former Roman settlement, that there may have
been an Anglo-Saxon settlement in close proximity, that the twelfth-century
graveyard around the chapel overlay at least one mid-Saxon burial, and that at
least one of the burials on the Roman site was also mid-Saxon. Pins are very
common in seventh-century graves; thread-pickers are much rarer but do occur,
one of them in a richly furnished grave of two adults and a child at nearby
Cokethorpe.81 Like the minster complex 1 km to the west, the focal tree or post
that we can surely now infer to have occupied the site of the chapel did not stand
in isolation, but related to occupation and burials. Finally, the references to
80
This amateur coloured photograph, of unknown authorship, was lent to me by Anthony Page. I am
very grateful to Edward Impey, and the staff of the National Monuments Record, for producing the true-
to-scale plot upon which Fig. 10.9 is based. Helena Hamerow observes that whereas the larger features to
the north are too big, the others ‘look about right. It is interesting that they appear, perhaps coinci-
dentally, to occur in pairs. . . . There remains a real possibility in my view that some of these were SFBs’
(pers. comm., 2007).
81
Geake 1997, 60–1, 66–7, 174.
Holy Beams 205
Fig. 10.9. Bampton (Oxfordshire): the cottage on the site of the Beam chapel, in relation to
surrounding burials found in the 1980s, and crop-marks to the north photographed in 1976.
206 John Blair
burials which were ‘rough and informal’ and showed ‘signs of haste and
disorder’ sound rather like a late Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery (even though
the identification of the skeletons as young and female does not): an intriguing
possibility given the strong link now recognized between such cemeteries and
older ritual monuments.82
Of remarkable interest, for present purposes, is the pairing at Bampton of two
foci which have both an archaeological presence and a historical and onomastic
one: to the east the bēam, a cult site on the edge of a Romano-British and early
Anglo-Saxon settlement with seventh-century burials and eventually a chapel;
to the west the tūn, visible to us as a late Anglo-Saxon minster with its satellite
market town and royal house, but itself formed within a group of prehistoric
barrows, and possibly even influenced by Romano-British cult activity. The
Beam chapel is arguably our most convincing Anglo-Saxon case of that cele-
brated process, the conversion of pagan shrines to churches.83 Much remains
unclear about how the Christian ritual topography mapped onto the pagan
(does the alignment of the church and Beam chapel over the extraordinary
distance of 1 km represent precise axial planning of the kind seen at Yeaver-
ing?), but that it did so in some sense is hard to doubt.
Conclusion
Do the bēam sites so far identified show any consistent pattern? Two facts that
emerge rather clearly are the heavily wooded environments of several of them,
and their proximity to major rivers (see Fig. 10.1). While superficially these
facts would support the common-sense interpretations ‘tree’ and ‘plank bridge’,
we have seen logical objections to the first and topographical objections to the
second. At the Oxfordshire Bampton, the evidence that bēam meant a ritual
feature of major local importance is overwhelming. What the environmental
pattern may in fact demonstrate is the need for important regional shrines to be
accessible—which so often, in the early middle ages, meant accessible by
water—while at the same time tending to occupy wood-pastures on the margins
of communities. As Sarah Semple has recently observed, ‘accessibility, either
physical or visual, was a necessary element in the long-term significance of some
[sacred] places. . . . Numinous places may have evolved by repeated use and
visitation, by familiarity with the broad tapestry of the land and its resources.’84
At a more local level, various fragments of evidence assembled here—the
bi-polar layout at Yeavering, bēamas linked with Thunor’s lēahs, Bladbean with
Grims Acre, Beam Hill with Horninglow Cross, Bempton with Rudston,
Beam Mansion with Staplevale—point to a type of ritual arena that may be
82
Reynolds 2009. But a further possibility is that these are examples of those ‘deviant’ burials of females,
assumed to be religious or magical specialists, that sometimes occur in the seventh century (Reynolds 2009,
183–203).
83 84
Blair 2005, 185–6. Semple 2011; cf. Semple 2010, 24–5.
Holy Beams 207
understood as a complex rather than a single spot, focused on one or more holy
trees or their substitutes but including other components, and linking cult sites
at some distance from each other: holy zones rather than just holy points. The
fine-grained evidence for the Oxfordshire Bampton supports this rather
strongly, though it remains unclear whether tūn in the bēam-tūn compounds
denotes an entity that was itself sacred, or rather an important secular centre
defined by reference to an older sacred landmark. These ‘holy beams’, like the
trees both holy and non-holy discussed elsewhere in this volume, were part of a
wider landscape: except when seen in context, they would not have made sense
to their devotees and cannot make sense to us.85
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11
Recasting the Role of Sacred Trees
in Anglo-Saxon Spiritual History: The South
Sandbach Cross ‘Ancestors of Christ’ Panel in
its Cultural Contexts
The Anglo-Saxons, when newly Christian, may have seen their ancestors as
northern Israelites. If this was true, they would have reinterpreted their old
religion as a form of Judaism, the legitimate forerunner of Christianity, and
their old sacred trees and pillars, likewise, as precursors of the Cross. The aim of
this chapter is to view a panel on one of the Sandbach Crosses in this light. My
focus is on what the ‘Ancestors of Christ’ panel on the southern face of the
South Sandbach cross may reveal about conversion, when it is considered
alongside other evidence of early interaction between pagan cults and the
liturgy that replaced them. Therefore, whilst the ‘Ancestors of Christ’ panel
will serve as the rock upon which my discussion is built, it is the concepts which
satellite the image it presents, rather than the object in itself, which are of
particular interest. Each of the figures depicted on the panel bear rods, staffs,
or branches of some kind, a thematic concern which I will show to have been of
similar interest to both the compilers of the Junius 11 manuscript, and Bede in
his Historia Ecclesiastica. I will begin by outlining the research which has been
conducted so far on the ‘Ancestors of Christ’ panel, drawing attention to the
fact that each of these ancestors is depicted bearing a rod or staff of some kind.
This feature may be indicative of Anglo-Saxon interest in parallels between the
ancestry of Christ and the cross. As we shall see, this idea seems to have been
of some importance to the compilers of the Junius manuscript, which charts
the spiritual history of mankind in the Judaeo-Christian tradition from fall to
redemption, a process partly guided by numerous precursors to the cross of
Christ. I will go on to suggest that both the Junius manuscript and Bede’s
Historia seem to have been part of a conscious effort to recast the sacred trees,
pillars, and posts of the pre-Christian faith in a similar light, namely, as precur-
sors to the introduction of the Christian faith into Anglo-Saxon England. This
may also account for Bede’s presentation of the standards of two Anglian kings
as inadequate forerunners of the cross raised by the saint, martyr, and warrior-
king Oswald at the battle of Heavenfield. I will conclude by suggesting that the
‘Ancestors of Christ’ panel draws attention once more to the fashion in which
the vine-scroll carved stone crosses of Anglo-Saxon England helped to mediate
the transition from the veneration of sacred trees to the cross of Christ.
The South Sandbach Cross and the ‘Ancestors of Christ’ Panel

The two Sandbach crosses, both of which have been dated to the ninth century by
Jane Hawkes, now occupy a central position in the market place of Sandbach in
Cheshire (Fig. 11.1).1 The South cross is the smaller of the two, and is in markedly
poorer condition than its twin. Thanks in part to some significant damage and
weathering, the majority of the carvings that decorate its surfaces have been
rendered somewhat enigmatic. The iconographic significance of each of its four
panels remains elusive to some degree, and interpretative attempts must often be
made through reference to the clearer sculptural details and thematic programme of
the North cross. Perhaps for this reason, prior to the comprehensive study of both
Sandbach crosses by Hawkes, no interpretation had been offered of the panel
adorning the southern face of the South cross, the ‘Ancestors of Christ’ panel, despite
earlier description by Radford and Bailey.2 Hawkes writes that the decoration of the
southern face of the cross ‘consists of single figures set in individual round-headed
niches, but it differs from those featured on the north face of this and the North cross
in that the figures are not set in a stepped framework of rectangular cells’.3
At least fourteen such figures originally formed part of these carvings, and
perhaps more, at least eight of which are still depicted bearing staffs, sceptres,
or rods (Fig. 11.2).4 Hawkes has identified certain elements of this panel with
iconography common to ‘Christ’s Ancestors’ schemes, for which there are
Continental antecedents, and suggests that the significance of this genealogy
was ‘the demonstration it was perceived to offer of Christ’s human and divine
descent’.5 If this is indeed the case, these figures would recall the genealogy
established in Matthew 1:1–16 which traces the line of Christ from Abraham to
David, from David to the Babylonian exile, and from the Babylonian exile to
Christ.6 The division of these figures into two strips of seven, though probably
attributable in part to the practicalities of fitting fourteen figures onto the stem
of a stone cross, is nevertheless an interesting feature in its own right. Seven, a
1 2 3
Hawkes 2002, 137. Hawkes 2002, 115. Hawkes 2002, 115.
4 5
Hawkes 2002, 171. Hawkes 2002, 118–20.
6
Matthew 1:17. The genealogy of Jesus is similarly outlined in Luke 3:23–37.
Sacred Trees in Anglo-Saxon Spiritual History 213
Fig 11.1. General view of the Sandbach Crosses.
number of no great significance in Germanic mythology (unlike nine or three),7

is the biblical number of completeness, whilst fourteen is the numerical value of
the name of David.8 The particular feature of this panel to which I wish to draw
attention is the significance of the staffs, sceptres, and rods that these figures are
carrying. My aim is to show that the Anglo-Saxons were especially interested in
the parallels between the descent of Christ from the prophets, and the descent of
the cross from the sacred rods, posts, and trees of the Judaic tradition which
preceded the birth of Christ. This theme may have been of particular import-
ance to the Anglo-Saxons because sacred trees, pillars, and posts had been a
prominent feature of their heathen religion. The idea that the Anglo-Saxons
7 8
Simek 1993, 232–3. NIV Study Bible 1987, 1411.
Fig 11.2. The ‘Ancestors of Christ’ Panel on the south Sandbach Cross (detail).
were encouraged to regard their pagan ancestors in the manner of a lost tribe of
Israel, patiently awaiting the inception of the Christian faith, was demon-
strated convincingly by Nicholas Howe.9 It seems likely, similarly, that the
Church taught that the full spiritual significance of old heathen cult objects
was never understood until the people’s religion became formally Christian. At
the time of its creation, therefore, the ‘Ancestors of Christ’ panel may recall the
intertwined spiritual histories of both the Judaeo-Christian and the Germanic
traditions from which Anglo-Saxon Christianity had taken root and flowered.
This panel may therefore have functioned in part like the leaf-scroll that
adorns so many Anglo-Saxon stone crosses, which Richard North (endorsed
by Ó Carragáin) has suggested helped mediate the ‘transition from supersti-
tion to doctrine’, from the veneration of trees (or perhaps a world-tree) to that
of the crucifix.10
9
Howe 1989, 108–42.
10
North 1997, 275, 290; Ó Carragáin 2005, 49. See further discussion by Tolley in this volume,
177–85.
Sacred Trees, Pillars, and Rods in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS

Junius 11 (SC 5123)
The spiritual history of the cross, charting its progress in biblical history from
Genesis to Revelations, was of great importance to the Anglo-Saxons; it is
certainly a theme which seems to have been of some interest to the compilers
of the Junius Manuscript, home to the Old English poems Genesis, Exodus,
Daniel, and Christ and Satan, and the only one of the four poetic codices which
was illustrated to any great extent. In both the poetic texts and illustrative
programme of Junius 11 (which was left unfinished, with spaces remaining in
the manuscript for illustrations that were never supplied), precursors of the
cross play a prominent role in marking the spiritual history of humankind from
fall to redemption. I will attempt to demonstrate the way in which this was
achieved by addressing each of the texts as they appear in the manuscript,
beginning in the beginning, with Genesis. Although the Genesis of Junius 11
is generally thought to be a composite work, an Old English narrative (Genesis
A 1–234, 852–2936) supplemented by lines thought to derive from an Old
Saxon original (Genesis B 235–851), the poem is not presented in this way in
the manuscript, and as such this characteristic does not conflict with my
approach to the text.11 In Genesis 2:9 in the Old English Heptateuch, the
trees of Eden are not distinguished. It is written that lifes treow (‘the tree of
life’) was established on middan neorxnawange and treow ingehydes godes and
yfeles (‘in the middle of the garden, and also the tree of knowledge of good and
evil’).12 This is not the case in the Old English poem, where lifes beam (‘the tree
of life’ GenB 468) is described as swa wynlic, wlitig and scene, liðe and lofsum
(‘so very joyous, beautiful and radiant, lithe and praiseworthy’, GenB 467–8),
whilst se oðer (‘the other’) was eallenga sweart, dim and þystre; þæt wæs deaðes
beam, se bær bitres fela (‘entirely black, veiled and dark; that was the tree of
death, that bore much bitterness’, GenB 477–9). As Doane has observed, the
description of these trees as ‘starkly opposed symbols’ of good and evil is
intended to externalize the results of the Fall, ‘polarising them as symbols of
man’s free and absolute choice in the garden’.13
Eve, persuaded to eat from of the ‘Tree of Death’ by the Tempter, disguised on
wyrmes lic (‘in the likeness of a serpent’, GenB 491), bears one of the fruits of the
tree to Adam on handum (‘in her hands’, GenB 636), whilst sum hire æt heortan
læg [ . . . ] deaðbeames ofet (‘a certain one lay at her heart [ . . . ] the produce of the
tree of death’, GenB 636–8). When Eve eats from the tree she becomes impreg-
nated by its potential for evil. The seed of the fruit lies dormant until it is later
‘watered’ by the murder of Abel, when we see how cwealmdreore swealh þæs
middangeard, monnes swate (‘the earth swallowed that sad slaughter, the man’s
11
All references to Genesis A and Genesis B from Krapp 1931, 3–87.
12 13
Crawford 1922, 86. Doane 1991, 139; Shippey 1972, 152.
blood’, GenA 985–6). With original sin thus confirmed, the Tree of Death
entwines its roots with the family tree of men:
. . . of ðam twige siððan
ludon laðwende leng swa swiðor
reðe wæstme. Ræhton wide
geond werþeoda wrohtes telgan,
hrinon hearmtanas hearde and sare
drihta bearnum, —doð gieta swa—
of þam brad blado bealwa gehwilces
sprytan ongunnon.
From that seed there afterwards grew cruel fruit, and the longer the more violently.
These harmful fronds reached out widely amongst the nations of men to entrap them
cruelly, ensnared the sons of the Lord hard and sorely—as yet they still do—and from
them widely fruits of every sort of evil began to sprout. (GenA 988–93)
There is, however, one other feature of the pages devoted to Genesis that may be
intended to give the reader cause for hope. Oddly, this is the discontinuity
between the trees of the Genesis poem and their corresponding illustrations.
Neither the Tree of Life nor the Tree of Death is particularly distinguished from
the other in the manuscript illustrations unless it is through the actions of
Adam, Eve, or the Tempter. Intriguingly, a third tree is often present.14 On
page 11, this stands directly below God as he speaks to Adam and Eve.15
Shortly after (p. 13), it seems to have been transformed into a small plant
with three intertwining branches, which ‘seems to lack specific meaning’
according to Muir’s electronic edition, yet which is again positioned directly
below an image of God.16 On page 20 it divides Adam and Eve, who are shown
facing away from it towards the Trees of Life and Death, and on page 24, a
plant similar to the three-stemmed shrub on page 13 separates Eve from the
Tempter.17 Unusually, although for perhaps obvious reasons, page 34 depicts
Adam and Eve standing outside the usual triptych of trees, having eaten the
forbidden fruit and clothed themselves in leaves, but soon after (p. 39) they are
within the same space once more, with Adam seated against what may be the
Tree of Death, and Eve the Tree of Life.18 Although the eyes of each are fixed in
the direction of the other, it is uncertain whether they are exchanging glances or
observing the third tree. Finally, in the lower frame of the illustration on page
41, the legs of God are partially obscured by the central tree, resting upon a
cloud or a hillock.19 There are two illustrations where only one tree is shown.
The first is on page 31, and shows without doubt the Tree of Death from which
14
For instance on p. 24 (Junius 11), where Eve stands beside the Tree of Knowledge with its fruit in
hand.
15 16
p. 11 (Junius 11). p. 13 (Junius 11). Muir, 2004, illustration commentary to p. 13.
17 18 19
pp. 20, 24 (Junius 11). pp. 30–4 (Junius 11). p. 41 (Junius 11).
Eve plucks the fruit to give to Adam.20 The second is on page 44, where God,
delivering judgement to Adam and Eve, stands on the crest of a hill or mountain
directly above the third tree.21
It is likely that the proximity of God to the mysterious third tree in four of the
nine images depicting the trees of Eden (pp. 11, 13, 41, and 44) is intended to
indicate that it is in some way aligned with Him. This may be confirmed by the
depiction of Adam and Eve, knowing their sin and newly clad in leaves, gazing
towards the tree for solace in the lower frame of page 39. It seems likely that in
each case the third tree is representative of the tree on page 7, which is clearly
marked by the sign of the crucifix.22 It is arguable, therefore, that in its every
appearance the unmarked third tree is intended to prefigure the redemption of
mankind through the sacrifice of Christ. The central position of this tree
between the Tree of Death and the Tree of Life serves as a prefiguration of the
reunion of God and mankind through Christ that was intended to occur in a
poem like Christ and Satan.23
Whilst trees are largely absent from both the biblical Exodus and the
eponymous OE poem which follows on from Genesis in Junius 11, pillars do
play a particularly prominent role in the emigration of the Israelites from Egypt.
Divine columns of light and cloud guide the refugees across the desert through
night and day:24
Him biforan foran fyr ond wolcen
in beorhtrodor, beamas twegen,
þara æghwæðer efngedælde
heahþegnunga Haliges Gastes
deormodra sið dagum ond nihtum.
Before them in the bright sky went two pillars of fire and cloud. Those high thanes of the
Holy Spirit divided between themselves the journey of the courageous ones in day and
night. (Ex 93–7)25
These pillars are significantly more developed in the poem than the biblical text.
Using the complex metaphor of a ship passing over water, which Nicholas
Howe argued refers to the Anglo-Saxons’ own exodus across the North Sea
from their continental homelands, the poet describes how:26
Hæfde wederwolcen widum fæðmum
eorðan ond uprodor efne gedæled,
lædde leodwerod, ligfyr adranc,
hate heofontorht. Hæleð wafedon,
20 21 22
p. 31 (Junius 11). p. 44 (Junius 11). p. 7 (Junius 11).
23 24
Karkov 2001, 51. Exodus 14:19–20.
25
All references to Exodus from Lucas 1977.
26
Howe 1989, 72–107. Battles has argued that this journey begins in Genesis with the voyage of
Noah and the dispersal of his descendants after the destruction of Babel: see Battles 2000, 46, 62.
drihta gedrymost. Dægsceldes hleo

wand ofer wolcnum; hæfde witig God
sunnan siðfæt segle ofertolden,
swa þa mæstrapas men ne cuðon,
ne ða seglrode geseon meahton
eorðbuende ealle cræfte,
hu afæstnod wæs feldhusa mæst,
siððan He mid wuldre geweorðode
þeodenholde.
A cloud had with its broad expanses evenly separated the heavens and earth, leading the
troop of people, and drank the burning flame, hot brightness of heaven. The men looked
on in amazement, the most joyful of troops. The protection of a cloud moved across the
skies; wise God had covered the sun’s course with a sail, in such a manner that men
could not see its ropes, nor for all their skill might those dwellers in the earth see the sail-
road, how this greatest of tents was tied, when he honoured with glory that people loyal
to their lord. (Ex 75–87)
Of the heofonbeacen (‘heaven-beacon’, 107) that guided the Israelites by night,

it is said that:
Hæfde foregenga fyrene loccas,
blace beamas; belegsan hweop
in þam hereþreate, hatan lige,
þæt he on westenne werod forbærnde,
nymðe hie modhwate Moyses hyrde,
scean scirwerod, scyldas lixton.
This forerunner had fiery locks and bright beams; it cast a fear of burning upon the army,
of scorching flame, that it would burn up the troop in the waste, unless—brave
hearted—they heeded Moses; it shone, enveloped in brightness, and the shields gleamed.
(Ex 120–5)
On this point Catherine Karkov also notes how the image of this ship functions
as a ‘complex allusion to the cross’, drawing our attention to the beamas twegen
(‘two beams’, 94) that form its mast.27 Whilst the extended associations of the
word beam here are fairly clear, the later attribution of the Israelite victory to
the guidance of the wuldres beam (‘glorious tree’, 568) serves to further confirm
its function as a forerunner to the cross of Christ.28
Lucas argued that another prefiguration of the cross may be seen in the staff of
Moses, the ‘symbol of salvation’ used to part the waters and lead the Israelites to
safety across the Red Sea.29 The presentation of this rod as a grene tacne (‘green
standard’, 281) may draw upon the same holy-rood tradition that is found in an
Old English cross-legend contained in the twelfth-century manuscript Oxford,
27
Karkov 2001, 117. Karkov refers to Lucas 1976, 193–209.
28 29
Lucas 1977, 91. Lucas 1977, 114.
Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 343.30 This work describes how three rods
sprouted from beneath the head of Moses as he sleeps, on þam ylca stude þe he
on læg (‘from that same rod upon which he lay’).31 These rods, which pass in
turn through the hands of both David and Solomon, eventually become the three
crosses erected on Calvary. The Exodus poem is significantly older than the Old
English legend of the holy cross, the composition of which, at the very earliest, is
likely to have taken place at around the time that Junius 11 was compiled.32
Nevertheless, the existence of earlier Latin cross-legends raises the possibility
that the poet was implying a direct physical link between the grene tacne in
Exodus and the cross of the passion. In either case, the prefigurative symbolism
of this staff seems altogether undeniable.
In the Daniel poem which directly follows Exodus in Junius 11, a sacred tree
appears in the second dream of King Nebuchadnezzar that requires careful
handling if its function is to be understood within the context of the manu-
script.33 As Nebuchadnezzar slept:
Þuhte him þæt on foldan fægre stode
wudubeam wlitig, se wæs wyrtum fæst,
beorht on blædum. Næs he bearwe gelic,
ac he hlifode to heofontunglum,
swilce he oferfæðmde foldan sceatas,
ealne middangeard, oð merestreamas,
twigum and telgum. Ðær he to geseah,
þuhte him þæt se wudubeam wilddeor scylde,
ana æte eallum heolde,
swylce fuglas eac heora feorhnere
on þæs beames bledum name.
It seemed to him that there stood, fair upon the earth, a peerless tree that was steadfast in
its roots and bright in its fruits. It was not like any forest tree, but it towered up to the
stars of heaven, just as it enveloped the surfaces of the earth, with its twigs and branches,
the whole of middle earth, until it met the waters. There as he looked upon it, he thought
to himself that the tree sheltered wild beasts, providing nourishment enough from itself
alone, just as the birds also took their life’s sustenance from that tree’s fruits. (Dan 497–
507)34
30
Whilst this seems to have been based largely on Old French and Latin originals, Napier suspected it
had probably been copied from an Old English version ‘in the first half of the eleventh century’, which he
took as evidence that a ‘fully developed cross-legend’ may have been known in the early years of the same
century. See Napier 1894, ix, lviii.
31
Napier 1894, 2–3. Napier translated the word stude as ‘place’ (203), which seems to overlook
legendary associations between the rod of Moses and the trees of Eden. The word studu can be translated
as ‘post, pillar, prop’ (Toller 1898–1921, i, 930).
32
Lucas 1977, 72.
33
This episode is also discussed by Hooke in this volume, 241.
34
All references to Daniel from Krapp 1931, 109–32.
There is little sense of invention, at least in terms of details and particulars,

when this passage is compared with the biblical text.35 A messenger of God fells
Nebuchadnezzar’s tree, and the stump is bound in order to prevent it from
bearing fruit for seven years. As Daniel explains to the king, this tree is
representative of Nebuchadnezzar and his empire. Just as the tree was felled,
Daniel tells him, swa þin blæd lið (‘so will your prosperity be brought low’, Dan
562). Nebuchadnezzar’s punishment for failing to recognize the sovereignty of
God is seven years of bestial madness. After these seven years have passed,
Nebuchadnezzar submits to the higher authority and his wits are restored, in
keeping with the theme of transgression, repentance, and redemption running
throughout the manuscript.
The lack of significant modifications to this episode when it was imported
into the Anglo-Saxon world implies that sufficient common ground existed
between the Hebrew and Old English traditions for it to be understood without
alteration. In an Anglo-Saxon context this dream may have been understood as
a criticism of the projection of kings as gods through the pre-Christian imagery
of flourishing trees and plants.36 The dream and its outcome may therefore have
functioned as a poignant encouragement, reminder, or warning to Anglo-Saxon
rulers of the ‘preservation of those faithful to God, and the destruction of His
enemies’.37 Nebuchadnezzar’s sacred tree follows the pillars of Exodus, the rod
of Moses, and the trees of Life and Death in Eden. It demands consideration not
only as successor to these, but also as natural precursor to ‘the cross as the tree
of life’.38 In considering Exodus, it was suggested that the presentation of the
pillars and rods that delivered the Israelites from Egypt may have served to draw
parallels with the pagan Anglo-Saxon worship of trees and columns, presenting
them in the same light as prefigurations of the cross in the Judaeo-Christian
tradition. If this biblical narrative is once again considered alongside the
chronological, historical narrative of the Anglo-Saxons, Nebuchadnezzar serves
well when recast as a pagan king who defied a messenger of God and was
humbled accordingly. This episode in the book of Daniel provided an excellent
framework for the Old English poet, as he was able to draw upon symbolic
associations between ruler and sacred tree that were perhaps common to both
the Anglo-Saxon and Ancient Near Eastern traditions.
The final poem in the manuscript, Christ and Satan, does not seems to have
been part of the original plan for Junius 11, lacking spaces for illustration as
well as some of the quality of invention found in the other poems. Although
Christ and Satan may not originally have been intended to conclude the manu-
script, it seems likely that it took the place of a work which would have shared
35
Compare also with discussion of The Shepherd of Hermas by Tolley, this volume, 183.
36
See discussion in Bintley 2009, 75–84.
37 38
Farrell 1967, 135. Karkov 2001, 123.
many similar characteristics, functioning as the ‘synopsis of the divine plan and
the sacred history cyclically reviewed in the codex’, and recalling all acts of the
Creator’s orðonc (‘skilful work’, ChristS 18).39 The two trees that appear in this
poem, the Tree of Knowledge and the cross, are not presented in any particu-
larly distinctive fashion. In this respect the Tree of Knowledge in Christ and
Satan differs markedly from the Tree of Death encountered in Genesis. After
Christ enters hell, he sits among those gathered there to recall with Adam and
Eve how at the beginning of all things:
Ic on neorxnawonge niwe asette
treow mid telgum, þæt ða tanas up
æpla bæron, and git æton þa
beorhtan blæda, swa inc se balewa het,
handþegen helle.
I, newly established at the centre of the plain, a tree with branches, which in its boughs
bore up apples, and you two ate those bright fruits, just as the evil one ordered you to,
that lackey of hell. (ChristS 479–83)
When Eve, repenting, describes the relatively featureless Tree of Knowledge as a

halgan treo (‘holy tree’, ChristS 415), this stands in direct opposition to its
presentation in Genesis, where it is eallenga sweart, dim and þystre; þæt wæs
deaðes beam, se bær bitres fela (‘entirely black, veiled and dark; that was the
tree of death, that bore many bitternesses’, GenB 477–9). The terms used in the
description of the crucifixion are similarly lacking in character. Christ tells
the assembled inmates of hell that ic eow þingade þa me on beame beornas
sticedon, garum on galgan (‘I interceded for you when men pierced me on the
tree, with spears on the gallows’, ChristS 507–9), whilst the narrative voice
restates that he on beame astah and his blod ageat, god on galgan, þurh his
gastes mægen (‘he ascended onto the tree, and shed his blood, God on the
gallows, through his strength of spirit’, ChristS 547–8).
The conclusion I wish to draw from this section of my argument is that
prefigurations of the cross (its own ‘ancestry’ in fact), were of considerable
interest to those poets, artists, and compilers who were responsible for the
creation of works like the Junius manuscript and the visual and literary com-
positions contained therein. Junius 11 is not only important in this context
because it is home to four poems which each have some bearing on the idea of
the cross and those emblems of power which had preceded it in the Judaeo-
Christian tradition. The compilation of the codex and the unfinished pro-
gramme of illustrations may also reveal a great deal about the way that its
compilers thought about the cross in the context of human spiritual history.
When one considers the ‘ancestors of Christ’ in the light of this concept, this
39
Bradley 1995, 87. All references to Christ and Satan from Krapp 1931, 133–58.
goes some way towards affirming my suggestion that the Anglo-Saxons were
especially interested in exploring parallels between the descent of Christ from
his ancestors, and the descent of the cross from those sacred rods, posts, and
trees which had preceded his birth. These two concepts may have been neatly
unified by the so-called ‘Jesse Tree’ described in Isaiah 11, which outlines the
descent of the Messiah from Jesse, the father of David, and perhaps helped to
reinforce the idea that the parallel fates of Christ and his cross had been
inextricably conjoined since the creation.
Sacred Standards, Staffs, and Pillars in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica

Before drawing any conclusions as to what the full significance of the ‘Ancestors
of Christ’ panel may have been in Anglo-Saxon England, I first wish to demon-
strate that the Church may have encouraged the early English to approach their
own history in the same way as they did the history of the Israelites. That is to
say that they were encouraged to think of the sacred trees, rods, pillars, and
posts of their pagan ancestors as precursors to the cross, just as the same sort of
religious emblems had been considered sacred in the Judaic tradition before the
crucifixion of Christ. This is an idea in which Bede seems to have been particu-
larly interested. His Historia tells us that King Edwin of Northumbria travelled
everywhere, even in times of peace, preceded by a type of standard which Bede
identifies with something that he calls a Roman tufa (OE þuf).40 Edwin was
killed in battle c.633, during the rebellion of the British King Cædwallon
supported by Penda of Mercia.41 It was during this troubled period for the
kingdoms of Bernicia, Deira, and East Anglia that Sigeberht, a former king of
the East Angles who had abdicated in favour of a monastic life, was also killed
in battle against Penda, together with his successor and cognatus (‘kinsman’)
King Ecgric c.636.42 Bede tells us that due to his new-found religious vocation,
Sigeberht was opposed to participating in combat, refusing to carry into battle
any weapon other than a virga (‘staff ’), dum opimo esset uallatus exercitu
(‘though he was surrounded by an excellent army’).43 Despite this reticence,
Sigeberht’s presence on the field seems to have been of no small importance to
Ecgric and his army, as he was, Bede tells us, duce quondam strenuissimo et
eximio (‘once their most vigorous and distinguished leader’).44
It is possible that some connection may be drawn between Edwin’s tufa and
Sigeberht’s virga, as in many other respects the two men cut similar figures
as early Christian Anglo-Saxon kings, converts, martyrs, and saints. Wallace-
Hadrill suggested that in describing Edwin’s standard as a tufa, Bede was
40
Historia Ecclesiastica (= HE) ii.16, in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 192.
41
HE ii.20, in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 202.
42
HE iii.18, in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 268.
43
44
probably following his ‘usual practice’ of finding an appropriate Latin equiva-

lent for an Old English word; that tufa was in fact a contemporary ‘Roman’
word for the sort of standard the Anglo-Saxons knew as a þuf.45 Lewis’s
definition of the Latin tufa as ‘a kind of military standard’ is somewhat
obscure.46 However, Toller takes the Old English adjective þufe to indicate
something having ‘leaves in tufts’, a definition partially based on a reference
in the leechdoms to the use of þufe þistel (‘tufted thistle’) in a salve for cancer.47
Bruce-Mitford also thought that this term implied a ‘definite sense of foliage or
feathers’, suggesting that þuf may have referred to an object much like the
Sutton Hoo ‘standard’, when topped with foliage or branches.48 Although
Chaney suggested that this ‘standard’ might have been stuck into the ground
to act as a ‘rallying point during a battle’, this seems questionable when one
considers that it would then only have reached a height of around 1.7 m
(50 600 ).49 It seems equally possible that Edwin’s tufa may in fact have been a
wooden emblem, perhaps topped with branches or leaves, like the Emperor
Constantine’s standard in Cynewulf ’s Elene (123), where the word þuf is used
to identify the cross carried into battle against Maxentius.50 The term that Bede
uses to describe Sigeberht’s staff, virga, is perhaps more telling. This Latin word,
denoting a ‘slender green branch’, ‘rod’, or ‘switch’, may also in some contexts
imply magical or ancestral powers.51 In this respect it is possible that Sigeberht’s
virga may also be intended to recall the staff carried by Moses during the
Exodus from Egypt. There is little that can be said about Sigeberht’s virga as
far as the West-Saxon translation of the Historia is concerned. The word is
translated from the Latin as gyrde, thus shouldering both the benefits and
burdens of anonymity, in so far as gyrde, referring to a ‘staff ’ or ‘rod’, may or
may not be seen as an object of potential ritual significance.52 It is notable,
however, that in the Old English Heptateuch Moses’ staff is similarly described
as a gyrde.53 The þuf and virga, though borne by Christian kings, may have
retained significant associations with sacred trees, or potentially a ‘world-tree’,
in the minds of the men whom Edwin and Sigeberht commanded.54 Bede
granted neither of these saints and martyrs the honour of mediating the transi-
tion from rood to cross, and as such their standards (like their martyrdom) serve
45 46
Wallace-Hadrill 1988, 80–1. Lewis 1879, 1907.
47
Toller 1898–1921, 1972, i, 1075; Cockayne 1865, 312–13.
48
Bruce-Mitford 1978, 430–1; Wallace-Hadrill 1975, 49.
49
Chaney 1970, 143; Bruce-Mitford argued that this object was just as likely to be a ‘lighting device’,
as Martin Welch also maintained (Bruce-Mitford 1978, 4).
50
All references to Elene from Gradon 1977.
51
Lewis 1879, 1995. Chaney went so far as to claim that Sigeberht’s virga was an overtly pagan badge
of office (Chaney 1970, 212).
52
Miller 1890, 208; Toller 1898–1921, 1972, i, 495. It is possible that gyrd may derive from gyr, a
word which means ‘fir-tree’.
53
Exodus 17:5. Crawford 1922, 255.
54
See earlier discussion in this volume by Tolley, 177–85.
instead as a precursor to, and echo of, Oswald. There were good reasons for
this: Edwin had failed to safeguard Northumbria against its relapse into pagan-
ism, and Sigeberht had failed to willingly take on the role of a Christian warrior-
king. A true champion was required.
Thus the third book of Bede’s Historia opens with the victory of Oswald over
Cædwallon, with his army superueniente cum paruo exercitu, sed fide Christi
munito (‘small in numbers, yet strengthened by their faith in Christ’).55 This
army would in fact have consisted largely of heathen Bernicians, who may have
been particularly motivated by associations between the great wooden cross
raised by Oswald and the cult pillars of their religion.56 Following the defeat of
Osric of Deira and his brother Eanfrith of Bernicia, whose identification by
Bede as heathen kings clearly demonstrates a return to heathen worship in
Northumbria c.632–4, Oswald rallied enough support to lead a successful
counter-offensive against Cædwallon:57
Ostenditur autem usque hodie, et in magna ueneratione habetur locus ille, ubi uenturus
ad hanc pugnam Osuald signum sanctae crucis erexit, ac flexis genibus Deum deprecatus
est, ut in tanta rerum necessitate suis cultoribus caelesti succurreret auxilio. Denique
fertur, quia facta citato opere cruce, ac fouea praeparata, in qua statui deberet, ipse fide
feruens hanc arripuerit, ac foueae inposuerit, atque utraque manu erectam tenuerit,
donec adgesto a militibus puluere terrae figeretur.
The place is yet shown today, and held in great veneration, where before this battle
Oswald erected the sign of the holy cross, and on bended knee prayed to God that in
their desperate need He would hasten to the aid of his worshippers. Thereupon it is held
that when a cross had been hastily manufactured, and the pit prepared in which it was to
be firmly bound, he himself in the fervour of his faith seized it, and placed it in the hole,
and then held it upright with both hands, while the soldiers piled up the earth to fix it in
position. (HE iii.2)58
There is something particularly striking about the sheer physicality of this

episode in the Historia. That Bede has Oswald himself physically hold the
cross in place whilst earth is heaped around its base crams this moment with
immense symbolic power, signifying the unification of Deira and Bernicia’s soil
and people around one cross and one king, united in one force to crush the
British, whose own Christianity Bede is careful to pass over in silence, if not
deliberately obscure.59 This tree, appearing as a prefiguration of the Christian
cross, acts as a central pillar in Bede’s Historia, the point at which two faiths,
55
56
Stancliffe 1995a, 64; Cramp 1995, 22, 30. Oswald had been introduced to Christianity by the Irish
Church during his formative years (age 11–28), exiled in Dál Riada: see Stancliffe 1995a, 69. Cramp
(1992, 302) for this reason attributes the introduction of free-standing wooden crosses into Northumbria
to the ‘Celtic Peoples’.
57
This episode is also referred to in the Peterborough Chronicle entry for 634 (Irvine 2004, 24–5).
58
59
Wood 2006, 6.
two nations, and two armies are joined to conquer the enemies of the Anglo-
Saxons, and from whence the first true Christian Anglo-Saxon warrior-king
emerges victorious.60
This brief outline of the way in which Bede uses only three of the many sacred
crosses, posts, and pillars in the Historia, can be equated in some important
ways with the grand design of the Junius manuscript. Bede focuses upon these
three Anglian kings, converts at a time when Anglo-Saxon England is in the first
flowerings of the conversion, and transforms the pre-existing cult rods and
standards of the pre-Christian religion into precursors of the cross of Oswald,
which is raised at the start of the central book of the Historia, and might at no
great stretch be thought of as the central pillar of Bede’s work. In this way,
Bede actively and consciously transforms what may have been the cult objects
of the Anglo-Saxon heathen faith into very real and historical precursors of the
inception of Christ in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria.
Conclusion
This wide-ranging chapter has covered a significant degree of space and time in
Anglo-Saxon England, with the ultimate aim of demonstrating that one of the
reasons that the ‘Ancestors of Christ’ panel adorns the South Sandbach cross is
because of its creators’ interest in parallels between the descent of Christ and his
cross. I have argued that evidence for Anglo-Saxon interest in the role of the
cross in human spiritual history is visible not only in the carvings of this ninth-
century stone monument, but also in the pages of the tenth-century Junius 11
manuscript. The thematic progression of the poems in this codex and their
(unfinished) cycle of corresponding illustrations preserve an important sense
of the way in which the Anglo-Saxons thought about the sacred trees, pillars,
and posts of the Judaeo-Christian tradition as precursors of the cross of Christ.
But it is Bede who shows us that this idea was not in fact held at a distance by
the Anglo-Saxons, but practically applied to their own history. In this way the
sacred trees, pillars, and posts of their pre-Christian religion became part and
parcel of the same tradition; precursors themselves of the cross that arrived with
their conversion, and whose true spiritual significance might, as a result, be
finally recognized. There can have been few more fitting places for a reminder of
this process to have been carved than one of those stone crosses that presumably
replaced wooden preaching crosses, which in turn seem likely to have replaced
the wooden cult posts of Anglo-Saxon paganism. In this sense, it would have
functioned in a similar fashion to that which has been suggested of the ubiqui-
tous vine-scroll patterns that adorn not only the Sandbach crosses, but also
a countless multitude of monuments throughout Anglo-Saxon England, in
60
Tolley 1992, 166.
helping to bridge the transition from ‘superstition to doctrine’, from the vener-
ation of trees to the cross of Christ.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Richard North, Andrew Reynolds, Michael Shapland, John

Blair, Della Hooke, Clive Tolley, Chris Abram, Matthew Townend, Jane
Hawkes, and the anonymous readers for discussing the contents of this chapter
with me.
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Boydell), 3–13.
12
Christianity and the ‘Sacred Tree’
Della Hooke
(University of Birmingham)
Introduction
Trees were powerful icons in many pre-Christian religions, and the presence of
trees or posts as symbolic features at royal sites is now archaeologically attested
in Britain. Such beliefs had to be eradicated or transformed by the newly
emerging Christian Church. Yet superstition lingered on in some places:
revealed, for instance, in references found in a small number of Anglo-Saxon
charters and in some place-names. The tree itself also gained a new or adapted
iconography in Christian writings, for example in the trees of the Garden of
Eden or the Tree of Jesse but, above all, with the replacement of the living tree
by the ‘one, true cross’. Trees, however, continued to play a role in Christian
hagiography, found, for instance, in many saints’ Lives. Real trees, too, found a
new role in Christian thought—especially the yew, which was widely planted in
Christian churchyards, perhaps as a symbol of resurrection, although others,
such as the elder, were reviled. Few trees present today are likely to go back to
Anglo-Saxon times but ancient trees, in particular and perhaps more than ever,
still arouse admiration and esteem—they are as iconic as any historical building.
Trees in Pre-Christian Religion

There is ample evidence both from archaeology and classical writings that trees
played an active role in many early pre-Christian European religions. In Norfolk
an upturned tree, cut down in the spring of 2049 BC, just as it would have been
bursting into life, has been located at Holme-next-the-Sea. It may have served as a
mortuary table in Bronze Age times that carried the soul of the departed down to a
nether world of the ancestors, transferring life from this world to a below-ground
universe. It had been enclosed within an oval-shaped stockade of split poles which
still carried their bark on the outer side in order to resemble a huge living tree.1
1
Pryor 1993.
Christianity and the ‘Sacred Tree’ 229
The tree with its roots pointing upward and its branches downward is
echoed in the Hindu Veda texts. In other cultures, ‘world trees’ were also seen
as uniting different worlds, a function played by such mythical trees as the
Norse Yggdrasill. Yggdrasill grew beside the cosmic ocean, the boundary
between heaven and earth.2 The Siberian shaman travelled between worlds by
means of a living tree and was allegedly given tree burial when he died, the tree
his link in death with the cosmos.3 In what is probably one of the oldest living
religions, that of the Tanimuka and the Yukuna Indians of the Amazon Basin,
a sacred tree or a palm is thought to stand at the centre of the cosmos, holding
together superimposed levels that include six skies above, the Earth in the
middle, and six underworlds below, a cosmic river encircling all levels.4 The
Norse Yggdrasill has usually been interpreted as a giant ash; many religions
held a particular species of tree sacred, such as the fig (Ficus religiosa) in India
and the rudraksha (Eleocarepus ganetti) in Bali, Indonesia. Such trees were
probably seen as the dwelling places of deities, although within Hindu religion a
supreme being can be worshipped in innumerable forms.
Not only individual trees but entire groves might enjoy special status. While
certain groves in the traditions of ancient Greece or Italy were held to be sacred,
or to be the abodes of gods and goddesses, in Gaul the druids were also said by
Pliny to have carried out their rituals within oak groves,5 whilst according to
Tacitus, rites of blood sacrifice were conducted by the Suebi in their hallowed
groves.6
In Neolithic/Bronze Age times in Britain huge timbers were an integral part of
many henge monuments. It is possible that stone circles may have been associ-
ated with veneration of the dead—the ancestors—while timber circles may, on
the other hand, have been associated with the living.7 The two kinds of monu-
ments may have been linked in some way in early ritual, and only recently a
timbered henge has been located only some 900 metres away from Stonehenge
on the Wessex downlands.8 It seems that the continuous replacement of timber
posts may have been part of the ritual at the Neolithic sanctuary on Overton
Hill, Avebury, in the same region.9 Thus large wooden posts have been identi-
fied within some Neolithic long barrows and at focal points in later settlements,
perhaps serving as totem poles or the markers of assembly points.
Certainly trees or posts which may have been focal cult features can be
identified in the Iron Age, and ‘holy’ trees may have been a feature even of the
2
Tolley 2009, 314. See also discussion by Tolley, this volume, 177–85.
3 4
Smith 2012 , 282. Reichel 2012.
5
Naturalis Historia XVI. 95, in Rackham.
6
Germania 39, in Hutton 1970, 194.
7
Parker-Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998.
8
Additional information from V. Gaffney. See allied discussion of churches as stone ‘houses for the
dead’, and timber dwellings as fit for the living, by Shapland, this volume, 198–206.
9
Pitts 2001.
230 Della Hooke
early medieval period preceding full conversion to Christianity.10 At Navan

Fort in Armagh, a hillfort that was the site of the legendary court of Eamhain
Mhacha, a timber post had stood within concentric rings of oak posts and a
circle of timbered uprights in the first century BC—by then a feature within an
entirely ceremonial centre.11 A huge posthole supporting a ceremonial pillar has
also been identified before the royal palace of Ad Gefrin at Yeavering in
Northumberland, a major centre of assembly for an early seventh-century
Anglian kingdom that had inherited strong British traditions.12 John Blair has
argued that some place-names incorporating OE bēam may refer to a ‘holy’ tree
that had been replaced by a Christian church. At Bampton, in Oxfordshire,
burials, one dated to the seventh century, have been found at a place known as
‘The Beam’ which was to become the site of a later Christian chapel, perhaps
indicating ‘a pre-Christian cult site’,13 and at Ketton in Rutland he notes two
distinct groups of graves, one clustered around a tree and the other around a
small church. He notes how ‘It is tempting to see this as a holy tree, already a
focus of burial, Christianized by the building of a chapel which in turn attracted
manorial-status settlement’.14
There were certainly legendary references to particular sacred trees in
Ireland, many associated with druid priests (a sacred tree being referred to
in Ireland as a bile). These include the legendary trees that were the source of
sacred wisdom and offered protection to the five provinces of Ireland. They
were often interpreted as trees of a particular species, including yew, oak, and
ash.15 In Ireland, trees seem to have marked royal inauguration sites, if later
literary sources may be trusted.16 These sites may perhaps have included
Eamhain Mhacha, where a king would be ritually married to the goddess,
such as the whitethorn where the Maguir kings were traditionally inaugur-
ated in Co. Fermanagh.17 No outrage was as keenly felt as the deliberate
destruction of such a tree by one’s enemies: the Irish Annals for 982 record
how the great tree under which the O’Briens were inaugurated, standing at
Magh Adhair near Tulla in Co. Clare, was uprooted by Mael Seachlainn of
Meath ‘cut after being dug from the earth with its roots’. It may, however,
have subsequently sprouted anew from its stump because it was allegedly
cut again by a different antagonist some seventy or so years later.18 Similarly
trees were uprooted at the inauguration place of the O’Neills near Dungannon,
Co. Tyrone, in 1111.19
10 11
Hooke 2010, 8–9. Ó hÓgáin 1999, 171–2.
12
Hope-Taylor 1977; Bintley 2009, 51–6.
13
Blair 2005, 186 and this volume, 198–206.
14 15
Blair 2005, 381–2. Lucas 1963, 17–18.
16 17
Ó hÓgáin 1999, 168; Lucas 1963, 25–6. Low 1996, 82.
18
Lucas 1963, 25; O’Donovan 1856, ii, 714.
19
Lucas 1963, 25; O’Donovan 1856, ii, 991.
Lingering Pagan/Non-Christian Belief

When Christianity spread across Europe the ‘worship’ of heathen sacred trees
had to be expunged. An instruction in the Bible tells the faithful:
Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served
their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree.20
The surviving literature tells of a number of conflicts that arose when the
association of trees with prophecy or healing power had to be reinterpreted as
evil. St Martin, Bishop of Tours in the late fourth century, had to destroy a
heathen temple associated with a sacred tree,21 and as late as the eighth century
Boniface felt compelled to chop down a particularly large sacred oak at Gaes-
mere (?Geismar), which may have served as an assembly point for heathen
diviners and enchanters.22 Another tree, bearing the image of a viper, was
chopped down by St Barbatus of Benevento (d. 682), and the Irminsul destroyed
by Charlemagne—probably near the Extersteine in Westphalia—was either a
huge tree or a pillar that had been regarded as a sanctuary for the Germanic
tribes.23 Edict after edict shows how the Christian Church had to contend
with what it saw as continuing ‘tree worship’. A famous sermon attributed to
St Eligius, who was consecrated Bishop of Noyon-Tournai in the mid-seventh
century, exhorts believers to call upon Christ before setting out on a journey, or
beginning any other work, rather than having recourse to pagan superstition
or magic arts:
Let no Christian place lights at the temples, or the stones, or at fountains, or at trees . . . or
at places where three ways meet. . . . Let no one presume to make lustrations, nor to
enchant herbs, nor to make flocks pass through a hollow tree or an aperture in the
earth; for by so doing he seems to consecrate them to the Devil.24
Fines were instituted by the Frankish kings anxious to wipe out the worship of
springs, trees, and sacred groves in the later eighth century. These ordered that
such trees, stones, and springs where foolish lights were used or other obser-
vances carried out should be removed and destroyed. The Council of Nantes,
too, in AD 895 specifically ordered the destruction of trees consecrated to
‘demons’ or local gods.25 In addition to the destruction of such powerful images
which had served to focus tribal loyalties, ‘holy’ trees had to be removed as the
symbols of another religion that had to be replaced.
Edicts also show how the Christian Church in the British Isles had to contend
with similar pre-Christian beliefs as were found on the Continent. We might
believe that its documentation was merely copying that of Europe were it not
20
Deuteronomy 12:2.
21
A tale recounted by Ælfric: Vita S. Martini Episcopi (Skeat 1890, 244–5).
22 23
Noble and Head 1995, 126–7. Flint 1991, 209, 266.
24 25
Grendon 1909, 39. Philpot 1987/2004, 20.
232 Della Hooke
for a few small hints of continuing superstition. Boundary clauses associated

with charters and similar documents relating to Taunton estates in Somerset
seem to suggest that what the Church regarded as pagan practices indeed
lingered on in some parts of the rural countryside. The two boundary clauses,
allegedly dating from c. AD 854 are found in a twelfth-century manuscript, the
Codex Wintoniensis.26 One of these gives a landmark ðan halgan æsce, ‘the
holy ash’, while the other refers to this tree as quondam fraxinum quem imperiti
sacrum vocant, ‘an ash-tree which the ignorant call holy’, which perhaps
indicates how this should be interpreted. Further research needs to be carried
out, but the tree may have stood at Cat’s Ash in Fitzhead parish, close to the
Quantock hills. This site is a crossroads, itself a significant location in pagan
belief.27 There was another superstition that children or animals could be cured
of sickness by being passed through a hollow tree, or an aperture in the earth. Is
it possible that the þyrlan æsc ‘pierced ash-tree’ of a charter of Manworthy in
Milverton, also in Somerset, concerning a small one-hide estate granted in AD
963, hints at such a feature?28
There are also the numerous ‘holy oaks’ found in charters and place-names.
These may have simply been oaks on boundaries carved with the sign of a cross,
but if this was so why (like references to crucifixes on boundaries) are there are
so few of them? It has been suggested that Holyoaks in Stockerston, Leicester-
shire (Haliach 1086), in a region of Danish influence, takes its name from a tree
once sacred to Þunor.29 It is highly likely that this was an attempt to Christianize
the feature, which stood on an estate held by the Bishop of Lincoln in 1086 and
had a medieval hermitage established close by.30 Indeed, references to Þunor are
not uncommon, especially in woods in south-eastern England.31 This may refer
to Anglo-Saxon gods associated with a wave of heathenism introduced by the
Anglo-Saxons after the fifth century, augmented by a further resurgence in
heathenism in eastern and northern England after the arrival of the Danes in
the ninth century.32
Such names are not frequent as settlement names, but the middle Anglo-
Saxon period was one of considerable settlement shift with new village nuclei
and farmsteads becoming established (after the period of conversion). Concen-
trations of names associated with Germanic gods may on occasions be found
in remote and secluded areas where they somehow managed to survive: on
the south Staffordshire Plateau names such as Wednesbury and Wednesfield,
both incorporating references to the god Woden, might be just such examples.
However, the Mercian king Penda remained pagan up to the time of his death in
26 27
Sawyer 1968 (= S) 311; Turner 1953. Hooke 2010, 50.
28
S 709; Kelly 2007, no. 32, 220–4; Hooke 2010, 33.
29
A þureslege or ‘grove sacred to the god Þunor’ is recorded in the nearby parish of Ayston in Rutland.
30 31
Cox 2009, 251. Gelling 1973; Hooke 2010, 49–50 and fig. 4.
32
Whitelock 1965, 226; Horovitz 2005, 33.
the mid-seventh century and Wednesbury was a royal estate, with the Mercian
kings even claiming descent from Woden in their genealogical tracts.33
Although other explanations may be sought for such names, they may have
had a mythological meaning many centuries later.34 Pagan names found in
minor names, like the Leicestershire Holyoakes noted above, cannot, however,
always be easily dismissed. It may be significant that there are references to a
Tysemere and a Tysoe, the mere and hill-spur of Tiw, the Germanic god of war
or the spoils of war, on the northern and eastern boundary of the Hwiccan
kingdom,35 and every instance deserves close scrutiny for they certainly reveal
a continued knowledge of pre-Christian religion and mythology in a post-
conversion-period context.
An intriguing example of references to crucifixes and ‘holy’ oaks in charter
boundary clauses is found near Tardebigge in north Worcestershire, all appar-
ently located on roads or tracks leading towards Tardebigge church (Fig. 12.1).
A charter of Stoke Prior, to the west, that was probably forged by the Church of
Worcester in the early-ninth century in an attempt to prove its claim over an
estate for which it had only valid documentation for part of the land, refers to
‘the crucifix oak’, while a boundary clause of Tardebigge itself notes another
′
? 500
?Stoke Cross
? TARDEBIGGE ?cristel mæl ac

S
ealhmundes
S byrigenne
le haliok
C13
cristel mæl ac
–
leah names
S spring
Fig 12.1. Routeways approaching Tardebigge church (north Worcestershire) with items
noted in boundary clauses and place-names.
33 34
Dumville 1977. Hines 1997, 387; Horovitz 2005, 33–6.
35
Hooke 1985, 40. The northern boundary appears later to have been moved northwards.
234 Della Hooke
cristelmael ac ‘crucifix oak’.36 In addition, a place-name ‘Holyoake’s Farm’, le

Haliok, recorded in 1255, stands on another trackway to the south,37 perhaps
suggesting that the place to which these routes were leading needed to be
sanctified. The meaning of the name ‘Tardebigge’ has recently been interpreted
as of British derivation meaning ‘height of the magpie’, which in Modern Welsh
is Ardd-y-Bigg.38 Interestingly, the church here was later to be dedicated to
St Bartholomew, ‘the caster-out of devils’ (a church rebuilt upon the earlier
site in the eighteenth century). There are other place-names in Worcestershire
associated with pagan Anglo-Saxon gods, and another crucifix can be found to
the west of the River Severn on the boundary of Grimley, where the place-name
‘Grim’s Wood’ may have been associated with a prehistoric or Romano-British
enclosure there.
Symbols resembling crosses or stars had been carved on trees in Central
Europe in the period from the sixth to ninth century AD, perhaps marking
territories.39 Crosses fixed on oak-trees are also evidenced by a twelfth-century
reference in a cartulary of Saint Victor of Marseilles and on other trees in
charters of the same date confirming estates held by the abbeys of Zobor in
present-day Slovakia.40 In England, the cristel mælbeam on the boundary of an
estate at Hawkridge in Berkshire, recorded in AD 956, was clearly a tree or post
marked with (or bearing the sign of) a crucifix.41 It is not clear when the
perambulation of boundaries began in England as part of wider Rogation
ceremonies blessing fields and crops, but Rogation days are already mentioned
in the ninth/tenth-century laws of Alfred and Æthelstan.42 Perambulations
made during Rogation week would ensure that all remembered the boundary
line in the days before maps. ‘Gospel’ oaks continued to mark boundaries in
England, places at which pauses would be made during perambulations of the
bounds for the gospel to be read and blessings to be sought for the productivity
of the parish lands. But if any boundary ceremony was already being carried out
in Anglo-Saxon England, references to crucifixes in charter-bounds are, as noted
above, surprisingly few.43
The Church’s Influence upon Literature

Although the Church generally discouraged a preoccupation with the natural
world, the Bible and other Christian writings do, nevertheless, contain a great
deal of tree symbolism.44 Jennifer Neville points out that the natural world
36
Hooke 1990, 65–9, 403–7; S 60; S 1598.
37 38
Mawer and Stenton 1927, 364. Breeze 2006, 75–6.
39
Dreslerová and Mikuláš 2010.
40
Dreslerová and Mikuláš 2010, 1072.
41
S 607; Kelly 2001, no. 57, 242–6; see Blair, this volume, 191.
42
Alfred 5v, Æthelstan V.3i, in Attenborough 1922, 66–7, 154–5.
43
Hooke 2010, 51.
44
Hooke 2010, 26–31, 72–85; see further discussion later in this chapter.
was generally depicted in such a way as to stress the danger and insecurity of
worldly life, a place that was unmastered and threatening.45 In general, wild
places such as woods were Britain’s equivalent of the desert wildernesses of
the Bible: places sought out by saints in order to wrestle with demons and to
test their faith. They no doubt imitated Christ’s trials as he wandered for
forty days and forty nights in the wilderness before his decision to ride into
Jerusalem but also, perhaps, drew upon Athanasius’s Life of St Antony, well
known in Western Europe.46
Several British saints sought out remote surroundings for their hermitages
and also chose to establish their first churches in wilderness locations.
St Patrick, preaching in Ireland during the fifth century, is said to have founded
his ‘great church in the wood of Fochloth’.47 According to Bede, when Cedd,
the mid-seventh century bishop of the East Saxons, was asked by Æthelwold to
select a site for a new monastery in his native Northumbria, he similarly chose
a site ‘among some steep and remote hills which seemed better fitted for
the haunts of robbers and the dens of wild beasts than for human habitation’,
and so turned a wilderness into a fruitful ground. This became the monastery
of Lastingham, the abbacy of which he bequeathed to his brother Chad
(Ceadda).48 Chad, too, was to be transferred to a see established near Letoce-
tum ‘the grey wood’ (later Wall) in south Staffordshire (then in Mercia) in
c.667. His cathedral was to be built at Liccidfeld, ‘the open land near the grey
wood’; he also sought out a secluded place nearby for reflection. The ‘grey
wood’ in question may have been an extensive district in this region. The hermit
Guthlac (d. 714) also sought out the wilderness of the Fens, although the Exeter
Book suggests that he came to love the remote spot within a wood revealed to
him by God, despite its location upon an island in the desolate fens. Here he
dwelt close to beorg on bearwe ‘the hill/mound within the grove’ (l. 148).49
According to Geoffrey of Burton’s twelfth-century Life of St Modwenna, this
Irish saint had also chosen to found a hermitage in a wooded place, here upon
an island in the River Trent in Mercia, near which was to be founded Burton
Abbey. This location she
loved . . . very much. . . . For at that time all these places were a complete wilderness, full
of woods but empty of people, the dwelling place of wild animals and a desolate
solitude.50
Indeed, it became customary for monasteries to claim a foundation in a remote

and often wooded location, as in the case of Lastingham church or Burton
Abbey, noted above, or that of Great Malvern Priory in Worcestershire.51
45 46 47
Neville 1999, 7, 30, 43, 122–8. Clarke 2006, 27. Low 1996, 83.
48
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica (= HE) iii.24, in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 287.
49
For references to Guthlac see Krapp and Dobbie 1936, 49–88; also discussed by Semple 2010, 25.
50 51
Bartlett 2002, 144–5. Darlington 1928.
236 Della Hooke
The Church in Ireland seems to have absorbed more easily than the Roman
Church aspects of pre-Christian belief, which often involved natural features
such as trees and woods, and Irish literature reveals a deep love of nature. There
is an obvious joy in depicting trees in their natural surroundings, especially in
the tales of the hermit Marbán who preferred to dwell alone in his ‘bothy in the
wood’. The Irish saint, St Deglan, too, built himself a cell between a hill and the
sea hidden away with ‘trees close about it’.52
In spite of saints accepting their chosen remote places for Christian worship,
the wilderness did not lose its association with fear or even horror. Saint Paul’s
vision of a northern hell presented a forbidding image of a northern ‘wilder-
ness’: in part a chilling, icy, wood where black souls hanging from trees are
tormented by monsters seizing them like greedy wolves.53 This is reflected in the
description of the location of the monsters’ lair in Beowulf: both sources
perhaps drew upon the early Christian Visio Pauli.54 In Beowulf, the monsters
Grendel and his mother are said to live in a threatening wilderness:
Hie dygel lond
warigeað, wulfhleoþu, windige næssas,
frecne fengelad, ðær fyrgenstream
under næssa genipu niþer gewiteð,
flod under foldan. Nis þæt feor heonon
milgemearces þæt se mere standeð;
ofer þæm hongiað hrinde bearwas,
wudu wyrtum fæst wæter oferhelmað.55
They hold that hidden land, the wolf inhabited slopes, windy headlands, the perilous
fen-path, where a mountain-stream passes down beneath the headland’s mists, the water
under the earth. It is not far from here in a measure of miles that the mere stands; over it
hang frosty trees, a wood fast in its roots overshadows the water.
Even if the Church attempted to remove any concept of tree worship from
Anglo-Saxon society, trees had an iconic role to play in the Bible. With Genesis,
the Bible opens with the story of the Garden of Eden, planted by God: here
stood ‘the tree of life . . . and the tree of knowledge of good and evil’.56 Whether
interpreted as one, two, or even three individual trees, this may incorporate a
universal concept of World-Tree symbolism.57 Furthermore, tree symbolism
reappears at the end of the last book of the Bible when the tree of life in the
midst of God’s paradise offers the last chance of conversion at the Apocalypse.58
Furthermore, after the destruction of this earth, the image of the ‘new heaven
52 53
Jackson 1935, 96–7. Blickling Homily XVII, in Morris 1967, 208–11.
54
Swanton 1978, 298; Wright 1993.
55 56
For references to Beowulf see Fulk, Bjork, and Niles 2008. Genesis 2:9.
57
See discussion by Tolley and Bintley, this volume, 177–85 and 211–27.
58
Revelation 2:7.
and a new earth’ is revealed to St John: at the heart of this vision, beside ‘the
‘pure river of water of life’ stood ‘the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of
fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for
the healing of the nations’.59 This order of tree symbolism is also found in the
Psalms, the very first of which uses the tree as a metaphor for humanity
choosing whether to follow the path of holiness or of wickedness. The former
shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his
season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.60
This sets the scene for further psalms in which a major theme concerns man’s
choice between good and evil (but needing God’s help and guidance because of
man’s vulnerability). This theme is also clearly expressed by a tree metaphor in
Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, in that only a ‘good tree’ can ‘bring forth good
fruit’.61 But metaphorical references to trees occur throughout the Bible, includ-
ing many to Christ’s favoured Cedars of Lebanon. These trees once flourished
across Mount Lebanon which bounded Palestine on the north and were used to
build King Solomon’s First Temple. In Psalm 92 the metaphor of the tree
becomes more specific: ‘the righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like
a cedar in Lebanon’.62
Many important meetings appear to have taken place at trees, especially close
to oak trees: the Lord appeared to Abraham within the oak groves of Mamre,63
a site probably lying to the north of Hebron; Abraham buried his wife there
and was himself also buried in a cave there by his sons. Abraham also travelled
through the lands held by the Canaanites to the oak of Moreh at Shechem,64
a place located on a pass near Mount Ephraim, and it was there that he made
his first altar to the Lord in Palestine. It was also under an oak in Shechem
(perhaps the same tree) that Jacob buried all the idols or ‘foreign gods’.65
Beneath an oak at Oprah Gideon saw the angel who advised him to flee from
Israel.66 Augustine’s meeting with the British bishops in 603 below an oak may
have deliberately continued this biblical symbolism.67 More modern transla-
tions of the Bible imply that there was a royal inauguration site at Shechem
when Abimelek is crowned ‘by the oak of the pillar at Shechem’,68 hoping
thereby that his claims to kingship would be strengthened (he later destroyed
the city)—Joshua had gathered the tribes of Israel here and had addressed them
with his final words of counsel69—and it was here that Rehoboam, the son of
59 60 61
Revelation 22:2. Psalm 1. Matthew 7:18.
62
English Standard Version 2001.
63
Genesis 18:1. Translations of the Hebrew MFP PFMA elon in the Bible differ and ‘plain’ in the KJV is
read as ‘oak’ in more modern translations: see, for instance, English Standard Version 2001and cf.
Clarke’s Commentary of the Bible: <http://clarke.biblecommenter.com/genesis/12.htm>.
64 65 66
Genesis 18:1. Genesis 35:4. Judges 6:11.
67
HE ii.2, in Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 134–5.
68 69
Judges 9:7; English Standard Version 2001; Low 1996, 82. Joshua 20:7.
238 Della Hooke
King Solomon, also came in the hope of getting his succession to the throne
confirmed,70 only to be rejected by the Israelites.
The species of the tree is not always specified. It was within a ‘burning bush’ in
the wilderness of Mount Sinai that Moses saw an angel and heard the words of
the Lord Himself.71 Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem was accompanied by
the waving of branches cut down from nearby trees, some strewn in his way.72
Trees then, as now, were used to show ancestral descent, with the Messiah
heralded as ‘the stem of Jesse . . . a branch shall grow out of his roots’,73 or in
modern translation: ‘There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and
a branch from his roots shall bear fruit’.74 The Tree of Jesse, represented in
Christian art from the eleventh century, thus depicts the descent of the Messiah.
The Bible, therefore, has no hesitancy in referring to ‘Christian’ trees, but the
sacred trees of pre-Christian religion, especially the ‘world-tree’, had to be
replaced within Christianity by the one true cross. Indeed, Christian teachings
encouraged the interpretation of earlier sacred trees as prefigurations of the
cross.75 If the living tree as a feature of delight was generally to be replaced by
the dead tree in the form of the cross, this was one that was to be honoured
above all others for its role in supporting Christ for the salvation of mankind. In
The Dream of the Rood the poet had seen:
. . . syllicre treowe
on lyft lædan leohte bewunden,
beama beorhtost . .
. . . a more wonderful tree
towering in the sky suffused with light,
brightest of beams . . . (ll. 4–6)76
Felled to become the cross of crucifixion the living tree has been transformed: it
becomes se sigebeam ‘the tree of victory’.77
Most Old English literature, such as the poem The Phoenix, is given a thoroughly
Christian overtone, with the cross of Christ’s crucifixion a recurrent symbol.78 The
high tree upon which the bird roosts, the heanne beam ‘lofty tree’ (l. 171) is
reminiscent of the tree that was to be chosen for the cross of crucifixion in The
Dream of the Rood. In Judgement Day I, the cross is described as a ful blacne
beam ‘very bright tree’ (l. 66).79 In the poem Elene the cross of Christ becomes
70 71
Kings 12:1. Acts 7:30–1.
72
Matthew 21:8; John 12:13; Low 1996, 82–3. John identifies the tree as a palm, but Matthew
is unspecific as to the type of tree.
73 74
Isaiah 11:1. English Standard Version 2001.
75
Bintley, this volume, 211–27; Bintley 2009.
76
For references to The Dream of the Rood see Krapp 1932, 61–5.
77
The ‘tree of light’ reappears in later literary contexts such as the Life of St Kenelm (see later in
this chapter). Also Bintley, this volume, 144–57.
78
For References to The Phoenix see Gollancz 1895.
79
For references to Judgement Day I, see Krapp and Dobbie 1936, 212–15.
the wuldres beam (l. 217), halige treo ‘holy tree’ (l. 442), the æðelan beam ‘noble
tree’ (l. 1073), the wuldres wynbeam ‘glorious tree of gladness/delight’ (l. 843),
the sigebeame ‘victory tree’ (ll. 420, 444, 665, 846, 860, 964, 1027), or lifes
treo/w (ll. 664, 706, 756, 1026), selest sigebeama ‘the best tree of victory’
(l. 1027), the rodorcyninges beam ‘the King of Heaven’s tree’ (l. 886). Thus the
cross in Elene, þær sio halige rod . . . mærost beama ‘the sacred cross, most
famous of trees’ (ll. 1011–12), became the new tree of life.80
The replacement of the tree by the cross in the New Testament was to
continue both in reality and in a literary context. The replacement of real sacred
trees by a Christian cross seems to have been a deliberate way of replacing the
old non-Christian beliefs.81 John Blair notes how the Old English word for
‘cross’ was drawn not from any loan-word based upon the Latin crux, but was
rod, treow, or beam, all meaning ‘tree’.82 Whereas a large posthole feature had
stood before the royal palace and assembly place of Yeavering, tall crosses were
now to be erected beside monasteries in Northumbria in the pre-Viking period.
Crosses were also raised before battles, as when Saint Oswald erected a cross
as a talisman for victory before his battle at Heavenfield against Cadwallon
(probably in alliance with the heathen Penda) in 634. Crosses, too, may have
been carried into battle to protect their wearers, like those recently found in the
Staffordshire hoard, possibly carried by Northumbrian warriors.83 They also
replaced trees at the sides of roads or crossroads, especially in Northumbria,
although the ornamented stone crosses of eighth-century Northumbria con-
tinued to be decked with foliage or jewels and hung with garments like pagan
trees. Some crosses were even soaked with blood, a familiar association with
necromancy but changed here to represent the blood of Christ. Others remained
associated with healing and the archers depicted on the Ruthwell Cross or at
Hexham may represent Ishmael, who became an archer (Genesis 21:20), or may
represent the agents of the pains called elfshot, thought to be caused by arrows
discharged by elves. The Ruthwell Cross has carved upon it a few lines from an
earlier form of the work preserved in the Vercelli Book poem The Dream of the
Rood.84
Even in the austere world of the Christianity of the Roman Church, all was not
lost for the living tree in iconic representation. A sculpture preserved in Romsey
Abbey, originally gilded and thought to date from c.960, shows living tendrils
emerging from Christ’s crucifix, as the rood took on new life, perhaps signifying
the forthcoming resurrection (Fig. 12.2).85 Simon Schama notes that ‘the verdant
cross’ appears as ‘a large golden cross . . . in the form of a burgeoning, flowering
80
For references to Elene see Krapp 1932, 66–102.
81
Bintley, this volume, 211–27; Bintley 2009.
82 83
Blair 2005, 227. Leahy and Bland 2009, 36–7.
84 85
Flint 1991, 257–8. Tweddle 1995, 261–3.
240 Della Hooke
Fig 12.2. A sculpture of c.960, preserved in Romsey Abbey, showing living tendrils emerging
from Christ’s rood. (Copyright Romsey Abbey, by permission of the Revd Tim Sledge.)
plant’ in the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem in the fourth century AD.86 Sometimes
the ‘Tree of Life’ reappears on medieval grave slabs, as at Durham Cathedral
or Lanercost Priory, Cumbria. It is, however, far more numerous in parts of
Scandinavia, where over 350 are known from the west Swedish region of Väster-
götland alone. Rather than being influenced by the English Romanesque style,
these may represent a Byzantine style from the early eleventh century, brought to
86
Schama 1995, 214.
Sweden in an orthodox-Christian period prior to the Catholic mission.87 Such

contact is also mirrored in Sweden on some rune stones.88 Orthodox Christianity,
like the Irish Church, appears to have assimilated tree symbolism rather more
easily than did Rome, although it clearly played a part in most early Christian art.
The trees of the Garden of Eden are also, unsurprisingly, found portrayed
in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, the early-eleventh-century codex, Junius 11,
preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Here, three trees are depicted, each
‘with fleshy tendrils terminating in acanthus-style fronds that sprout from a
single root’.89
Christian Hagiography
Trees remained associated with saints and hermits and continued to play a role
in many saints’ Lives. Only a few such Lives in Britain are of pre-Conquest date,
and as cults of saints flourished in medieval times, much of their content may
reveal the workings of the medieval rather than the Anglo-Saxon mind. A few,
however, like the Life of St Kenelm, apparently composed in the middle of the
eleventh century, probably incorporated earlier material already in circula-
tion,90 although this, too, was later to be much embellished. The text recounts
how the child had seen, in a dream, a tree standing before his bed, ‘so high that
it reached right up to the stars’ with himself standing ‘in its lofty top, from
where I could see everything for miles around’.91 This has to be based upon the
biblical version of the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, whose dream of a great
tree was interpreted by his court magician as portraying himself becoming a
strong ruler with wide dominion:
The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached into heaven, and the sight
thereof to the end of all the earth: the leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much,
and in it was meat for all: the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the
heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed of it.92
Nevertheless, the king saw ‘an holy one’ descend from heaven and ordered the
tree to be cut down, leaving only its stump, thus preparing him for fearful events
to come.93
Kenelm’s visionary tree was described thus: arbor pulcherrima et late effusis
ramis spatiosa ab imo ad summum omnibus floribus refertissima, ‘the tree was
very beautiful and spreading, with wide-stretched branches, filled from bottom
to top with all kinds of flowers’. He could see that innumeris luminaribus et
lampadibus totam ardere, ‘the whole thing blazed with countless lights and
87
The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches separated officially in 1054.
88
Rhodin, Gren, and Lindblom 2000.
89
Hawkes 2003, 273 and fig. 28; Bintley, this volume, 215–22.
90 91
Love 1996. See also Blair, this volume, 191.
92 93
Daniel 4:11–12. Bintley, this volume, 219–20.
242 Della Hooke
lamps’, and that three parts of this land were bending low in devotion to him.94
However, he saw a trusted friend smite the tree so that it fell, he himself
changing into a white bird that soared into the sky. The tree here appears to
have signified Kenelm himself and the dream presages the death of the seven
year old at the hands of his tutor. When he was taken into the woods of Clent in
north Worcestershire by his foster-father Askebert, where the actual murder is
said to have taken place, he is said to have planted his staff in the ground at the
spot he felt his body should be buried. ‘Immediately the staff took root and
began to grow leaves, and from it grew a huge ash-tree.’95 This would remain a
memorial to the murder which swiftly followed in ‘a deep valley hidden
between two mountains in that wood called Clent’; the Vita claims that this
tree continued to be honoured thereafter in memory of the saint.96
Staffs driven into the ground by Aldhelm and Eadwold also sprouted miracu-
lously into ash trees (legends drawn from Germanic culture). John Blair has
commented how ‘the ash was in fact the archetypal sacred tree of northern
pagans, and the recurrent choice of it in hagiographies shows beyond doubt that
these associations were a veneer on a pre-Christian substratum’.97 It may be
significant that the two Somerset charter references to what appear to have been
pagan practices were both to ash trees (see above). At Newlyn East in Cornwall,
however, it was a fig tree growing against the south wall of the church
which was said to have sprouted from the staff of St Newlina, a virgin martyr.
At St Mullen’s Well, Listerling, County Kilkenny, it was a thorn tree that
was reputed to have grown from a saint’s staff (the latter examples probably
drawing upon Celtic tradition). The conversion of a saint’s staff to a growing
tree is, therefore, ‘something of a stock miracle in hagiographical literature’,
continuing the tradition of tree iconography, occurring in the lives of the
saints Ninian (sixth-century bishop of Whithorn), Æthelthryth (Ethelreda, late
seventh-century abbess of Ely), Aldhelm (early eighth-century bishop of Sher-
borne), and many others. In Welsh tradition it was Cyngar whose crosier stuck
into the ground gave rise to a shade-giving yew.98 The tradition was probably
based upon the Biblical story of Aaron’s rod that was passed on to Moses and the
children of Israel, which ‘budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blos-
soms, and yielded almonds’.99 Thus while many such stories recount saints’ staffs
sprouting miraculously into ash-trees, other trees might be involved. In Ireland,
St Senan dug a well for his community with a hazel stake which he set beside the
well and which grew into a hazel bile (the Irish term for a sacred tree)—the nut of
the hazel was, in Celtic legend, an emblem of concentrated wisdom. In another
Welsh saint’s Life, that of Lleuddad, a number of staffs grew ‘like a growth of
Moses . . . into one tree; each one a bush, bearing leaves’.100
94 95
Saint Kenelm, ll. 43–6, in Love 1996, 56–7. Love 1996, 58–9.
96 97 98
Love 1996, 59–60. Blair 2005, 477. Henken 1991, 115.
99 100
Numbers 17:8. Henken 1991, 116, citing Jones 1926, 41, l. 23–8.
Some saints’ lives contain other tree miracles—thus, as previously noted,

St Martin was able to avert a falling tree collapsing onto a group of people by
making the sign of the cross and making it, as if it had been struck by a sudden
whirlwind, fall in a different direction. In the twelfth-century Life of St Cadog,
a sixth-century saint and abbot of Llancarfan in Glamorganshire, a tree bent
itself over a river as a bridge, and in the fourteenth-century Life of St Beuno, a
seventh-century Welsh saint living in Gwynedd, a tree could discern friends
from enemies.101
In medieval times several saints were specifically associated with forests and,
hence, with hunting—among them St Giles and St Leonard, remembered in
many church dedications in the more wooded parts of England. Both St Eustace
and St Hubert, the latter the bishop of Maastricht and Liège with a diocese that
included the heavily wooded Ardennes in what is now Belgium, are said to have
encountered a stag carrying a crucifix between its horns. It was this vision that
led to the conversion of Eustace, until then a general in the Roman army named
Placidius.102
Saints’ Lives were not the only place in which the tree cult witnessed a
revival within Christian thought in the medieval period: it was also expressed
in ecclesiastical sculpture. Although a foliate head had been incorporated
within the stonework of Trier cathedral as early as the sixth century, it was
only from the twelfth century that such objects become frequent in English
churches in the form of heads with greenery curling from their mouths. They
appear on grave slabs, misericords, walls, roofs, and doors and in porches. In
most early carvings the leaves are stylized but when they can be identified in
the later carvings (in England not until the late-thirteenth century) some plant
species such as vines or particular trees can be identified. Of the latter, the
leaves are most commonly those of the oak, followed by the hawthorn. In
Southwell Minster, Nottinghamshire, all manner of other plants appear
between the arches of the building, including ivy, bryony, and nettle, but
also the wild apple and maple, often in combination. While it is obviously
incorrect to see the foliate heads as ‘pagan’ features, somehow introduced by
stealth into the church fabric, their interpretation remains controversial. They
have been seen as an expression of man’s wickedness by some writers, with
unholy thoughts spewing as greenery from the mouth: ‘an image of death and
ruin rather than life and resurrection’.103 However, the frequency with which
they are associated with burial and tombstones suggests perhaps recognition
not only of the suffering and decay of man but also the hope of rebirth and
resurrection.104
101
Henken 1991, 171, citing Vita Sancti Cadoci (British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A.xiv) and
Buchedd Beuno (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Jesus Coll. MS 119).
102 103 104
Jones 2007, 191–2. Basford 1978, 8, 20. Woodcock 2005, 58–63.
244 Della Hooke
The Iconography of Tree Species in Folklore and Legend

Trees also played a prominent role in folklore and legend, although the date at
which particular legends passed into folk memory are rarely certain. Almost
every species of native tree had its own special attributes, some already hinted
at in Old English literature. The oak may have enjoyed a special role as the
tree sacred to Jupiter, the chief god of Rome, while his Greek counterpart Zeus
was worshipped in a grove of sacred oaks at the foot of Mount Tomarus. In the
Celtic world the oak was the tree sacred to both the druids and to the Daghdha
(the chief of the elder Irish gods).105 By early medieval times the usefulness of
the oak was recognized in literature—it ‘nourishes meat on the land for the
children of men’—probably a reference to its acorns feeding swine in wood
pastures; ‘it travelled’ over the gannet’s bath—referring to its use for building
the stoutest ships and a recognition of its strength.106 Indeed, it was the main
timber used in the buildings of the period, including churches. A distinctive tree
in the landscape, it was perhaps its impressive form and its usefulness that
influenced its continuing role in folklore. Usually identified as a ‘masculine’
tree, some early medieval portrayals involve decidedly phallic imagery. In the
Cotton Julius calendar for September, which shows pigs foraging for acorns in
the woods, the acorns appear to be depicted with testicles, perhaps indicative of
fecundity (alternatively, but not convincingly, these could be an attempt to show
the common oak gall or other acorns), while the Latin word for acorn, glans,
can also refer to the penis.107
The ash had been equally powerful in pre-Christian belief and had also been
held sacred: it was the tree sacred to Poseidon, the second god of the Achaean
trinity and the tree most often associated with Yggdrasill, the Norse ‘Tree of
Life’. This aspect was not allowed to continue in a Christian context in Britain,
but it did remain associated with battle. Its wood was used for making spears,
so much so that an æscstede became the Old English word for ‘a place of battle’.
The Vikings were often known to the Anglo-Saxons as Æscling (‘men of ash’)
but whether this acknowledged their reliance upon the magic of the ash, as is
claimed by Paterson,108 and the Norse legend of the first man being called Askr
‘ash’, or their use of ash wood for spears and ships, is not entirely clear.109 Its
earlier role may, however, have lingered on, for it remained associated with
healing, especially when associated with springs of clear water. Given its
feathery foliage and often graceful form it was frequently regarded as a ‘femi-
nine’ tree, despite its use for the weapons of the battlefield.
One tree seems to have been accepted readily into Christian iconography: the
yew, which had perhaps been adopted by Christians even in late Antiquity. This
tree had had a prized status in both Germanic and Celtic cultures, and may have
105 106
Hooke 2010, 9–14. The Old English Rune Poem, in Halsall 1981, 92–3.
107 108 109
Cooper 2005. Paterson 1996, 153. Hooke 2010, 201.
been the closest that Britain had to the Cedar of Lebanon, Christ’s favoured
tree. It was also quickly linked to ideas of death, purification, and resurrection,
and with eternal life. Indeed, yew is the only evergreen that can re-sprout
however ruthlessly it is cut back. Much has been written about ancient yews,
and many claims have been made for the age of some of them reaching several
thousand years. However, most ancient yews are hollow and dendrochronology
is not permitted as it might introduce disease into the tree. While there may be
little truth that some yews pre-date the churches beside which they stand it is
likely that this species was planted beside churches at a very early date.
Romano-British burials have been found close to an ancient yew at Claverley
in Shropshire, and early British memorial stones, probably marking a grave, lay
beneath the yew (or yews) at Llanerfyl in Gwynedd; many more examples could
be cited, but no direct association proved.110 Neither is there any English
documentary source confirming their age, but Bevan-Jones argues that some
of the oldest yews may have been planted by the very first Christians, marking
early saints’ cells, and that such trees might be as much as 1,500 to 2,000
years old.111
There were other species of tree, however, that were not so well favoured.
The elder, Sambucus nigra, OE ellen, was singled out, for instance, by Wulf-
stan in the Canons of Edgar of c.1005–8 as a place for the carrying out of
the ‘devil’s craft’, although what practices this involved remains unspeci-
fied.112 It took a long time for this tree to lose such an unsavoury reputation.
In legend the elder was the tree species associated with witches, who were
thought to be able to turn themselves into this tree if necessity arose, like the
elder witch of the Oxfordshire Rollright Stones that turned the king and his
men to stone. People are said to have danced at the stones in the past on
Midsummer’s Eve with elder garlands in their hair, but Christian reaction
to these activities led to other customs which involved cutting the elder in
order to ‘bleed’ the witch. The damaged witch returning to human form
might be recognized by the marks on her person of the wounds caused.
Beliefs in witchcraft were particularly long-lived in this area and there were
also many local superstitions concerning divination at the site. In Scandi-
navian and Danish myth the elder was the ‘Elder Mother’, called Elle or
Hyldemoer: it was she who worked strong earth magic and avenged all who
harmed her host trees.113 Perhaps this strong association with women’s secrets,
sometimes in apparent conflict with Christian belief but also daring to present a
rival power, was part of the cause for the antipathy felt by the male-dominated
medieval Church, and in folklore the elder remained involved with magic,
medicine, and witchcraft.
110 111
Hooke 2010, 41. Bevan-Jones 2002.
112 113
Fowler 1872, 4. Paterson 1996, 279.
246 Della Hooke
Christianity, with its growing hold over religion and belief, appears to have
managed to virtually eliminate actual tree worship across most of the country.
However, the Church had to face not only lingering superstition but another
resurgence in heathenism after the Danish and Norse invasions of the ninth
century and subsequent Scandinavian settlement.114 Cnut’s laws of c.1020–3,
which incorporated St Wulfstan’s reaction to Danish paganism, forbad ‘the
worship of idols, heathen gods, and the sun or the moon, fire or water, springs
or stones or any kind of forest trees . . . ’,115 and perpetrators of ‘any heathen
practice’, including resorting to the sanctuary of ‘a stone or a tree or a well or
any such nonsense’, were fined under the laws of the Northumbrian priests soon
after.116 It may be significant that much of this writing followed the eleventh-
century reformation of the Roman Church and efforts to impose stricter obser-
vation of the Christian faith ‘before the Antichrist’s imminent coming’.117 Such
efforts seem to have been largely successful, but although the Christian Church
was through its teachings able to replace the ‘sacredness’ attributed to some
trees with that of the cross, tree symbolism did manage to survive in the realms
of legend and folklore and even within the Church itself.
An Appreciation of Nature
If the Church, at its most austere, had discouraged its followers from being
concerned with the delights of their earthly surroundings, it was also the Church
that later encouraged them to appreciate the gifts of God’s creation. The
bringing in of greenery to decorate churches is documented from the late
Middle Ages but was probably a much older custom: parish accounts often
show payments for the purchase of holly and ivy at Christmastide. Protestant
reformers were troubled by the possible pagan associations of this practice, and
such payments disappear from churchwardens’ account during the reign of
Edward VI.118 Until that time branches were also brought in during Holy
Week and on the first Sunday in May. Once driven from the Church, festivities
incorporating the decking of homes with greenery lingered on in the countryside
until the more relaxed atmosphere of the Restoration period and the trend
towards a greater use of ceremony in Anglicanism in the nineteenth century.119
Although the Church is probably more concerned with people in their everyday
lives and surroundings, an appreciation of nature is not neglected. Not only do
harvest festivals offer opportunities for thanksgiving for beneficial crops and
domestic animals, but the bringing in of greenery is once again a part of much
Church ritual on other festive occasions.
114
Whitelock 1965, 226; Bethurum 1957, 319–20, nn. 165–8.
115
Canute II 5.1; Robertson, 176–7; Blair 2005, 482.
116
Whitelock 1979, 475; Wormald 1999, 208–10, 396–7.
117 118 119
Blair 2005, 482. Hutton 1996, 34. Hutton 1996, 197.
Conclusions
The ‘sacred’ tree could not be entirely eradicated by the Christian Church and
much of its iconography and symbolism was absorbed and given a new mean-
ing. Indeed, the Bible is full of tree symbolism.120 A love of trees as beautiful
features in their own right generally had to await changing attitudes in the post-
medieval period. We have come to appreciate trees of great antiquity in particu-
lar. Few, apart from the yew, are likely to go back to Anglo-Saxon times but they
are as iconic—probably more so—than any historical building.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank the Revd Tim Sledge for permission to reproduce
Fig. 12.2, which remains the copyright of Romsey Abbey, and Phoebe Merrick
for drawing this sculpture to my attention.
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Index
Note: English place-names are identified by reference to pre-1974 counties. Counties are not provided in
parentheses in this index for place-names that are identified as a possible generic in the main text. Page
numbers referring to images are identified in bold.
Aaron 242 Babylon 212, 220

Abel 215 Bali (Indonesia) 229
Abimelek 212, 237 Balkerne Hill, Colchester (Essex) 92
Abraham 212, 237 Bamford 84 n., 187 n., 188, 191
acorns 244 Bampton (Devon) 196 n.
Acton 88 Bampton (Oxon) 13, 194, 196–207, 199–200,
Adam 215–17, 221 202, 204–5, 230
Æcerbot Charm 7, 12, 144–57 Bampton (Westm) 196
Ælfsige of Faringdon 194 Bampton Castle 198
Æthelberht, king of Kent 28, 31 Barbatus, St, of Benevento 231
Æthelberht, St 191 barley 116, 118
Æthelred II, king of England 25–6 Barnstaple 188 n., 194 n.
Æthelstan, king of England 234 barrows 34, 109, 114, 189–90, 194, 198, 200–1,
Æthelthryth, St, abbess of Ely 242 206, 229, 235
Æthelwold, king of East Angles 235 Barstable 188 n.
Aegean Sea 178 Bartholomew, St 234
Agni 181 battering ram 5, 131, 134, 136, 138, 146 n., 165
agriculture 125–9, 136–8, 147, 150, 152–4, 164–7 Baulker, Farnsfield (Notts) 88
Aidan, St 30 Bayeux Tapestry 36 n., 61, 162
alcohol 108, 112, 116–18, 160, 168–70; see also Bayton (Worcs) 81
ale; beor; cider; mead; perry; wine Beacon Hill (Staffs) 194
alder 5, 88, 170–1 bēam 7, 13, 80–1, 83–4, 91, 93 n., 94, 125,
Alderton 88 146 n., 153–4, 186–210, 192, 230
Aldhelm, scholar, bishop of Sherborne 124 n., Beam Hill (Staffs) 194, 206
127, 131 n., 165, 167, 190, 242 Beam Mansion 193, 193, 206
ale, ealu 116–18 Beard Mill, Stanton Harcourt (Oxon) 92
Alfred, king of Wessex 25–6, 31–2, 234 bears 36–7
altars 37, 178, 199, 237 Bede:
Amazon, River 229 Historia Ecclesiastica 13, 29–30, 184, 190,
Ancient Near East 220 191 n., 211–27, 235
Andreas 133 Historiam Abbatum 29–30
Andrew, St 93, 133, 201, 202 beech 5 n., 125, 162–3, 165 n., 166, 170 n., 171
Antony, St 151, 235 Belchamp Otton (Essex) 191
apple 221, 243 bells 124, 201
Appleford 188 belts 107, 161, 189
arable 147, 150, 164 Bempton (East Yorks) 196–7, 197, 206
ards 126 Bemwick (Cambs) 188, 193
Ardennes (Belgium) 243 benches 169
arrows 131–2, 239 Benfleet (Essex) 188, 195
ash 5, 88, 98, 170 n., 191, 229, 230, 232, Benty Grange helmet 109
242, 244 Benwick (Cambs) 193
Ashford 188 beor 116–18
Ashton 88 Beornwald, St 198
Asser, bishop 25, 31–2 Beowulf 29, 108–9, 118–19, 168–9, 188, 236
Athanasius’ Life of St Antony 235 Berechurch (Lancs) 93
Augustine, St, archbishop of Canterbury 28, 30, Bernicia 191, 222, 224
72, 237 Beuno, St 243
Australia 178 Bicester (Oxon) 65, 68
Avebury (Wilts) 34, 229 birch 5 n., 170 n., 189
252 Index
Bishopstone (Sussex) 4, 52, 57, 58, 61, 65, cauldrons 108–9, 116, 170
66, 74 cedar 237, 245
Bladbean (Kent) 94, 194, 195, 206 Cedd, St 235
boars 109 cemeteries 24, 25 n., 197, 201, 206; see also
boats 6, 63–4, 162, 168–9 burial
bōc 162–3 Chad, St 235
Boniface, St 127, 231 chalk 57, 110
books 63, 70, 125, 162–3 Chalk (Kent) 80
Bord Hill, Thurlstone (West Yorks) 81 Charlemagne 179, 231
Borgepollen (Norway) 85 charters 7, 8, 31, 84, 88, 95, 97, 134, 147, 186–8,
Borthwood (Isle of Wight) 80 191, 195–6, 198, 203, 228, 232–4, 242
bottles 161, 164, 168, 170 Cheddar (Som) 47, 49, 65, 67, 72
bowls 5, 109, 115–18, 138–9, 170 n., 188 Chester (Ches) 64
bows 125, 131, 138 China 178
Bradbury (Co Dur) 90 Christ 13, 48, 133, 147–52, 155–6, 191, 211–27,
Bradkirk (Lancs) 93 231, 238–9
bread 150–5 Christ and Satan (OE poem) 215–22
Bredbury (Ches) 90 Christchurch (Dor) 26
Bredenbury (Here) 90 Christianity 6, 7, 9–10, 13–14, 27, 28–38, 119
Bretford (Warks) 86 Church 28–31
Bretforton (Worcs) 86 churches 6, 24–5, 28–32, 34–8, 48–9, 51, 62, 69,
bridges 46, 82–8, 83, 85, 87, 93–6, 188 n., 192–3, 73, 92–3, 133, 139, 152, 154, 189,
206, 243 211–27, 228–50
Brindiwell, Cheriton Fitzpaine (Devon) 81 churns 122, 125
Britain, British 28, 64, 109, 110, 112, 126, 177, cider 116
228–9, 235, 241, 244–5 ciuitas 33
bronze 109, 203 Claverley (Salop) 245
Bronze Age 198, 200–1, 228–9 Clent (Worcs) 242
brooches 201, 202 Cnut, king of England 246
broom 125 coins, coinage 3, 7, 22, 25, 125 n., 198–9
Broomfield (Essex) 119 Cokethorpe (Oxon) 204
Brown Bess musket 110 Constantine, emperor 223
Brussels Cross 154 Constantinople 180
Bryants Gill (Cumb) 22, 24 conversion 9, 13–14, 28–9, 36–7, 144, 154–5,
bryony 243 189, 196, 202, 206, 211–27, 228–50
buckets 3, 6, 108–9, 112, 114, 116, 118, coopering 73, 113–5, 118
122, 124–5 copper 114, 116, 199 n.
Burdale (Yorks) 92 coppices, coppicing 88, 110, 147, 166, 183
Burgh by Sands (Cumb) 86 Corstopitum 36 n.
burh 25–6, 32–3, 89–90, 96 cosmos 178–82, 229
burial 4, 6, 12, 36–7, 107–8, 114, 115–20, Cotton Caligula A. vii, see under Manuscripts
168–70, 186 n., 189–90, 200, 203–6, Cotton Julius A. vi, see under Manuscripts
229–30, 243, 245 Cotton Tiberius B. v, see under Manuscripts
burrs/burrwood, see walnut coulters 126–9, 136, 147 n.
Burton Abbey 235 Council of Nantes 231
Burton on Trent (Staffs) 194 Creedy, River 84
Cricklade (Wilts) 26
Cadog, St, and abbot of Llancarfan 243 crosses 9–10, 29, 48, 132, 147–52, 168, 183, 187,
Cædwallon, king of Gwynedd 222, 224, 239 190–1, 197, 202, 211–27, 232–4, 239
Cain 215 crossroads 232, 239
Calvary 151, 219 cups 5, 6, 12, 27, 108–10, 112, 115–18, 138,
Canaan, Canaanites 237 168, 170
Canterbury (Kent) 28, 30, 37 n., 72, 93, 194 Cynewulf, Old English poet 223
Carolingians 28 Cyngar, St 242
carpentry, see woodworking
carving 36, 91, 212, 225, 243 Dagenham Beam Bridge 83
cask 170 Daghdha 244
castles 24, 25 n., 26, 32, 55, 198, 200 Dál Riata 224 n.
castrum 33 Danelaw 36–7, 246
cathedrals 28, 30, 235, 240, 243 Daniel (OE poem) 215–22
Cat’s Ash, Fitzhead (Som) 232 Daniel, prophet 220
Index 253
David, king 212–13, 219, 222 Eynsford Castle 24

death 6, 36–7, 114, 134, 151 n., 160–1, 167, Eyrbyggja saga 179
180–3, 215–16, 229, 243, 245
defences 25–6, 32–3, 88–90; see also burh Faccombe Netherton (Hants) 24–5, 31,
deforestation 7–8 51, 62
Deglan, St 236 Failsworth (Lancs) 92
Deira 197, 222, 224 Felkirk (West Yorks) 93
dendrochronology 3 n., 46 n., 245 Fermanagh, Co. 230
Denmark, Danes 36, 84, 232, 246 fertility 144–57, 177–85, 244
Derwent, River 188, 192, 197 figs 229, 242
devils 124, 132–3, 234 Finland, Finns 87, 180
Dill Hundred 94 flails 108, 124–5, 136–8
Domesday Book 84, 95, 198, 203 flasks 108, 110, 115–18
dragons 182–3 Fochloth, wood of 235
Dream of the Rood 10, 15, 130 n., 132–3, fonts 6, 37
144–57, 165, 187, 238–9 forests 8, 150
dreams 219–20, 241–2; see also Dream of Forton (Staffs) 88
the Rood forts, fortifications, see burh; defences
drinking horns 109, 115–18 Fortuna, goddess 199
Droitwich (Worcs) 88, 198 fractio panis 151
Droxford (Hants) 195 Franks Casket 184
druids 2, 229–30, 244 Franks, Frankia 231
Dublin 113 Freomund, St 191
Dungannon (Co Tyrone) 230
Durham (Co Dur) 92 gallows 7, 132 n., 133–6, 138, 148–9, 165, 181,
Durham Cathedral 240 186 n., 221
Garðarı́ki (Russia) 180
Eadwig, king of Mercia 198, 203 Gartree Hundred 188
Eadwold 242 Gaul 229
Eamhain Mhacha 230 Geismar (Hesse) 231
Eanfrith, king of Bernicia 224 Genesis 215, 236–7, 239
earthworks 90, 200 Genesis (OE poem) 215–22
East Anglia 108–10, 116, 119, 222 Geoffrey of Burton, Life of St Modwenna 235
Ecgric, king of East Anglia 222 gerd 79, 80, 90, 94
Eden 215–17, 219 n., 228, 236, 241 Germania of Tacitus 181, 229
Eden, River 196 giants 33, 36, 179
Edward VI, king 246 Gideon 237
Edward the Confessor, St, king of England 24 Giles, St 243
Edwin, king of Northumbria 188, 222–4 gilt 110, 115, 117
Elbridge (Sussex) 84 glass 109, 115, 118–19, 201
Elham (Kent) 195 gloves 161
elder 228, 244–5 Gokstad (Norway) 108
Elder Mother 245 gold 3, 107–9, 119, 239
Elene 132 n., 168, 223, 238–9 Goltho (Lincs) 51, 65, 67, 70, 71
Eligius, St, Bishop of Noyon-Tournai 231 Goodmanham 197
elm 98 Grafton 88, 95
Elm Bridge 84 Great Malvern Priory 235
Ely (Cambs) 82 Great Stockhay (Dorset) 88
Emmaus 151–2 Great Torrington (Devon) 193, 194 n.
Ephraim, mount 237 Greece, Greeks 229, 244
Erce 152 Green Man 243
Escomb (Co Durham) 30 Green Shiel (Northumb) 22–3, 28, 31
Eternity 12, 34–8 Gregory I, Pope 194
Eucharist 151 Grendel 29, 168, 236
Eurasia 177–9 Grimley (Worcs) 234
Eusebius 127, 165 Grı́mnismál 177
Eustace, St 243 Grims Acre (Kent) 194–5, 195, 206
Eve 215–16, 221 Grovely Forest (Wilts) 171 n.
Exeter Book, see under Manuscripts Grubenhäuser 108, 198–9, 204
Exodus (OE poem) 215–22 Gunwalloe (Corn) 22–3
Extersteine (Westphalia) 231 Guthlac of Crowland, St 235
254 Index
Gwithian (Corn) 22 Iron Age 25, 108, 203, 229

Gwynedd 243–5 Ishmael 239
Israel, Israelites 151, 211, 214, 217–18, 220, 222,
Hadrian’s Wall 35, 36 n. 237–8, 242
halls 4, 24–5, 28, 29, 31–2, 70, 92, 169, 190 Italy, Italians 229, 241
Hallstatt D 108 ivy 243, 246
Harrowing of Hell 132–3
harvest 112, 136–9, 152–6, 246 Jacob 237
Hávamál 180–1 Jarrow (Co Dur) 29, 127
Hawkridge (Berks) 191, 234 Jelling, Jutland (Denmark) 84, 108
hawthorn 243 Jerome, St 151
hazel 110, 170 n., 242 Jerusalem 32–3, 235, 238–40
Hazelford 188 Jesse Tree 212, 222, 228, 238
Heavenfield 9, 184, 212, 239 John, St 200, 237
Hebron 237 Joshua 237
hedges 94, 110, 171 n., 189 n., 191 Judaism 13, 211, 213–14, 220–5
Heimdallr 183 Judgement Day I 238
Heliand 154 Judgement Day II 189 n.
Hell 132–6, 221, 236 Junius manuscript, MS Junius 11, see under
Hellesvean (Corn) 22–3 Manuscripts
helmets 107–9 Jupiter 244
Hemington (Leics) 46
Hemington (Notts) 82, 84 Kenelm, St 191, 238 n., 241–2
Heorot 29, 169 Kempley (Glos) 46
Heptateuch (Old English) 167, 215, 223 Ketton (Rut) 186 n., 230
Hereford (Here) 25 Khanty 179
Hexham (Northumb) 239 Kirkbampton (Cambs) 196
Hiberno-Norse 36, 113
Hinduism 178, 229 Læráðr 182
Hochdorf (Germany) 108 Lanercost Priory (Cumb) 240
hogback tombs 36–7, 48 n., 64 Langland, William 183
holly 246 Larne, Co. Antrim (Ireland) 114, 115
Holyoaks (Leics) 232–3 Last Supper 151, 155
Holme-next-the-Sea (Norf) 228 Lastingham (North Yorks) 235
Holtspur 94 Lathbury (Bucks) 90
Holy Island, Lindisfarne 22–3, 31 lathes 5, 62, 125, 137–9, 164 n.
Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem 239–40 laws 131 n., 134, 234, 246
Horninglow Cross (Staffs) 194, 206 leather 108–9, 115, 136, 159, 161, 164,
horses 115, 181–2 167–8, 170
hoses 161 Lebanon, Mount 237, 245
Hubert, St 243 Lechlade (Glos) 94
Hull, River 82 Leonard, St 243
Hurlbridge, Hatherleigh (Devon) 86 Lichfield (Staffs) 235
Hurleston (Ches) 91 Life of St Kenelm 238 n., 241–2
Hurworth (Co Dur) 92 Life of St Modwenna 235
Húsdrápa 183 lime, linden 5 n., 109, 167, 171
Hwicce 233 Lindisfarne Gospels 163
Hyrst 80, 81 n. Little Stockhay (Dor) 88
Llanerfyl (Gwynedd) 245
Iceland 183–4 Lleuddad, St 242
illustrations 69–71, 127, 134, 162, 215–22 logs 81, 85, 86, 87, 88, 92, 93, 97, 113, 114
inculturation 152 Loki 183
India 177–8, 181, 229 London 2–3, 31, 46, 63, 166
Indo-China 178 Longney (Glos) 194
Indo-European 179, 181 looms 125, 145 n., 165 n., 169
Indra 179 lundr 182
Instaple 188 n., 194 n. Lydford (Devon) 26
Ireland, Irish 28, 30, 119, 177, 224, 230, 235–6, Lyminge (Kent) 127, 147 n., 194
242, 244
Irminsul 178–9, 231 Madagascar 34–6
iron 4, 109, 112–14, 118, 129 n., 179 Mael Seachlainn of Meath 230
Index 255
Magh Adhair (Co Clare) 230 Nene, River 188, 193

Maguir 230 Neolithic 190, 197, 229
Malham Moor (Cumb) 22, 24 nettle 243
Mamre 237 Newlina, St 242
manna 151 Newlyn East (Corn) 242
Mansi 189 Newtimber (Ssx) 93
Manuscripts: Ninian, St, bishop of Whithorn 242
Codex Wintoniensis 232 Noah 127, 217 n.
Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3501 (Exeter Norman Conquest 24, 30, 38
Book) 122–43, 145–7, 154, 158–61, Norse 9, 11, 13, 36, 113, 177–84
164–5, 235; see also Riddles North Star 178–9
London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula Northampton (Northants) 24
A. vii 154 Northumbria, Northumbrians 31, 70, 190, 222,
Cotton Julius A. vi 127, 244 224–5, 235, 239, 246
Cotton Tiberius B. v 127 Novgorod (Russia) 113
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 343 219
Junius 11 127, 211–27, 241 oak 5 n., 84, 87–8, 98, 118, 169, 170 n., 171,
Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CXVII 180, 229–34, 237, 243–4
(Vercelli Book) 151, 154, 239 Old Windsor (Berks) 24
Manworthy in Milverton (Som) 232 Oldaport (Devon) 26
maple 5 n., 6, 108, 110, 112, 115–18, 168, Oprah 237
170 n., 171, 243 Oseberg (Norway) 108, 169
Marbán 236 Osric, king of Deira 224
Market Rasen (Lincs) 94 Oswald, St, king and martyr 9, 184, 190, 212,
Martin, St, bishop of Tours 231, 243 224–5, 239
masonry 22–6, 29–31, 37–8, 57, 62–3, 73, 200–1 Óðinn 181, 183
mass 32, 151–2, 155 Overton Hill, Avebury (Wilts) 229
Mawgan Porth (Corn) 22, 23 oxen 125, 129, 145–7, 149, 158–61, 163–7
Maxentius, emperor 223 Oxford (Oxon) 26
mead, medu 108, 116–19, 146
Mediterranean 108, 115, 117 Paanajärvi (Russian Karelia) 85
meeting-place 80, 94, 188–9, 194, 237 Palestine 237
Melrose (Roxburghshire) 30 Patrick, St 235
Mercia, Mercians 25, 198, 222, 232–3, 235 Paul, St, the Apostle 236
Mermedonia, Mermedonians 133 Paul, St, of Thebes 151
Merovingians 119 Penda, king of Mercia 222, 232, 239
Mesopotamia 178 pens 124
metalwork 12, 107–10, 117–19 perry 116
Middle Harling (Norf) 49, 50, 57 Peter, St 30
mills 3, 92, 124, 178 Phoenicia 178
minsters 24 n., 28, 32–4, 36–7, 72, 92–3, 188 n., Phoenix, The (OE poem) 238
194, 198, 200, 204, 206, 243 Piers Plowman 183
Miðgarðr 180 pillars 13, 178–80, 186–8, 190–1, 211–17, 220,
Modwenna, St 235 222–5, 230–1, 237
monasteries, monasticism 23–4, 30, 32–4, 38, Pilton (Rut) 91
222, 235, 239 pine 112
Mordvins 180 Pisa National Park (eastern Finland) 87
Moreh at Shechem 237 Pliny the Elder 229
Moses 218–19, 220, 223, 238, 242 ploughs, ploughing 122–9, 145–7, 150,
Mouldboard 126, 129 161, 164 n.
Mound 1, Sutton Hoo 107–9, 113, 116, 119, pollarding 167
168, 170 n. pope, papacy 28, 30, 194
Mound 2, Sutton Hoo 119 Portchester (Hants) 25 n., 55–6, 63
mounds 200, 235 Poseidon 244
Mounterley Wood, Brigstock (Northants) 80 posts 7, 9–10, 80–1, 84, 97, 178–80,
MS Bodley 343, see under Manuscripts 186–210, 229
Mullen (St), well of, Listerling, Co Kilkenny 242 pots, pottery 203
Prajapati 181
Nantes, Council of 231 Prior Rakes (Cumb) 22, 23
Navan Fort (Co Armagh) 230 Prittlewell (Essex) 107, 115, 118–19
Nebuchadnezzar, king 191 n., 219–20, 241 Psalms 237
256 Index
Quabrook, Hartfield (Sussex) 93 Semnones 181, 183

Quantock Hills 232 Senan, St 242
Quick Stavers (West Yorks) 94 Sermon on the Mount 237
Severn, River 194, 234
rakes 122, 125 Sewerby (East Yorks) 197
Rasen, River 94 Shafton (West Yorks) 91
ravens 151 shamans, shamanism 9, 180–2, 229
Ravning Enge, Jelling (Denmark) 84 Shebbear (Devon) 80
Rehoboam 237 Shechem 237
relics 191 n., 198 Shedfield (Hants) 196
reliquaries 3 n., 125 Shepherd of Hermas 183
Rg Veda 178 ships 35, 107–9, 117, 125, 161, 165–6, 168–9,
˙
Ribblehead (Lancs) 22, 24 170 n., 217–18
Richmond Park, London 166 shoes 161, 164, 168
Riddles of the Exeter Book 1: 165 n.; 3: 165 n.; shrines 4, 91, 189–90, 196 n., 197, 199, 206
10: 165 n.; 12: 158–74; 16: 124; 21: Siberia 180–1, 229
125–9, 145–7, 164; 23: 125; 26:; 30: 125; Sigeberht, king of East Anglia 222–4
32: 125; 33: 125; 34: 125; 36: 166; silver 108–10, 115–18, 203 n.
38: 164; 40: 165 n.; 52: 125; 53: 130–8, Simy Folds (Co Dur) 22, 23, 24
145, 165; 54: 125; 55: 125, 165 n.; Sinai, Mount 238
56: 125, 165 n.; 58: 125; 72: 164; Singleton (Lancs) 91
73: 125, 131; 81: 165 n.; 88: 165 n.; slaves, slavery 125, 146, 147 n., 150, 160, 168
92: 125; 93: 165 n., 166 Sockbridge (Westm) 93
Ripon (North Yorks) 30 softwood 112
Rogation days 234 Solomon, king 219, 237–8
Rollright Stones (Oxon) 245 souls 35, 132–3, 150–1, 178, 228, 236
Romans, Romanitas 25, 27, 28–38, 194, 196 n., South Cadbury (Som) 25
198–200, 203–4, 243–4 Southampton (Hants) 26, 65
Rome (Italy) 28, 31, 33, 183 Southwell Minster (Notts) 243
Romsey Abbey 239, 240 Sparham (Norf) 92
roots 54, 110, 148, 166, 171, 180, 183, 186, 216, Sparsholt (Berks) 80
219, 229–30, 236, 238 spears 3 n., 5, 80, 116, 131, 134, 138, 165 n.,
ropes 133–4, 137, 167 188 n., 201 n., 221, 244
rosettes 115 spolia 29–31
Rossley Manor, Dowdeswell (Glos) 79–80 Spoonlets (Kent) 80
Rostley, Owermoigne (Dor) 79 Spoonley (Glos, Oxon, Salop) 80
Roundwood (Essex) 53–4, 57 Springfield Lyons (Essex) 35 n., 47, 65, 67
Rounton (North Yorks) 91 springs 81, 183, 233
rudraksha 229 Spuncombe 81
Rudston (East Yorks) 197, 206 Staffordshire hoard 239
rugs 168 Stapleford 188
Rus 180 Staplehurst (Kent) 81 n.
Rusper (Ssx) 94 Staplers (Isle of Wight) 81 n.
Ruston (North Yorks) 91 Staplevale (Devon) 194, 206
Ruthwell Cross 10, 151, 154, 184, 239 stapol 7, 79, 81, 90–1, 93 n., 94, 95–6,
186–210
St Mullen’s Well, Listerling (Co Kilkenny) 242 Stardway, Codford (Wilts) 87
Sámi 178, 180 Staveley 79, 95
Sandbach (Ches) 211–12, 213–14 Stepney (Mx) 82
Sandbach Crosses 7, 211–27 Steyning (Ssx) 58, 59, 60, 61
Satan 132–3, 150, 215, 231 Stickwick (Devon) 92
Saxons (Continental) 177–8, 231 stocc 79, 80, 82, 85–90, 92–3, 96
Scaftworth (Notts) 92 Stockerston (Leics) 232
Scandinavia, Scandinavians 22, 24, 31, 36–7, 64, Stockey Bottom (Oxon) 88
67, 92 n., 178–83, 240, 246 Stockford, Studland (Dor) 86
Scots Pine 112 Stockholt (Bucks) 80
sculpture 29, 36, 211–14; see also crosses; Stockley 79
hogback tombs stocks 82, 85, 87–9, 93, 96, 98
Seahenge (Norf) 228 Stockurth (West Yorks) 92
Selja, Mora (Sweden) 81 n. Stockwith (Notts, Lincs) 82
semiotics 158–74 Stoke Canon (Devon) 89
Index 257
Stoke Newington (Mx) 98 practical uses 5–6, 234

Stoke Prior (Worcs) 233 see also alder; apple; ash; bēam; beech; birch;
stone, stones 6, 7, 12, 27–38, 48, 62–3, 69, 83, burrs, burrwood; crosses; Dream of the
92, 96–8, 178, 187, 190, 197, 199, Rood; elder; forests; gallows; hazel; Jesse
212–14, 231, 239, 241, 245–6 Tree; lime; linden; maple; oak; pillars; pine;
Stonehenge (Wilts) 34, 229 posts; Scots Pine; stapol; Tree of Death;
Studland (Dor) 86 Tree of Knowledge; Tree of Life; walnuts;
Suebi 229 world tree; yew; Yggdrasill
Sulgrave (Northants) 24–5, 31–2, 59, 60, 61 Tree of Death 215–16, 221
sunken featured buildings 108, 198–9, 204 Tree of Knowledge 215–16, 221, 236
Sutton Hoo (Suff) 6, 12, 107–19, 168, 169 n., Tree of Life 215–16, 236, 237, 240
186 n., 223 Trent, River 82, 194, 235
Swallowcliffe Down (Wilts) 114, 119 Trier Cathedral 243
Sweden 81 n., 241 Tumberhill, Stathern (Leics) 81
swords 107, 118–19, 201 n. tūn 90–1, 96, 196
Symphosius 127 Tysemere (Worcs) 233
Tysoe (Worcs) 233
Tacitus, Cornelius 181, 183, 229
Tamworth (Staffs) 3, 25–6 Urals 180
Tanimuka 229 urbanism 21, 25, 32–3, 188
Taplow (Bucks) 107, 109, 114, 118–19 Urbs 32–3
Tardebigge (Worcs) 233–4, 233
Tatwine 124 n., 127 Västergötland (Sweden) 240
Taunton (Som) 191 n., 232 Velhurst (Sy) 80
temples 21, 69, 179, 200, 231, 237 Vercelli Book (Codex Vercellensis), see under
Thames, River 198, 200, 201 n. Manuscripts
Theale (Berks, Som) 94 Victor, St, of Marseilles 234
Thelbridge (Devon) 84 vicus 196
thorn 81 n., 242 Viking 64, 68–9, 108, 168 n., 169, 180, 244
Tiw 233 villa 196, 199
Þórr 179 vines, vine-scroll 212, 243
Þórsdrápa 179 Visio Pauli 236
Throckenholt (Cambs) 80 Vix (France) 108
Thundersley (Essex) 195 Vo˛lsunga saga 182
Thunor 188, 195–6, 206 Vo˛luspá 179
Thurstable (Essex) 188
timber 12, 27–38, 78–98, 108–13, 119–20, wagons, 125–6, 129, 146, 148
144–56, 187–90, 196 n., 229–30, 244 Wales, Welsh 160–1, 167, 169–70, 177, 242–3
timber 27, 78, 89–90, 97 Wallingford (Berks) 26, 33 n.
Timberhurst (Dor) 80 Walls, see defences
Timberley (Ssx) 79 walnut 6, 108, 110–12, 111, 115–16
time 36; see also eternity Wareham (Dor) 26, 33 n.
Timsbury (Som) 80, 89 Wealhtheow 169
Tiw 233 weaving 169
Tomarus, Mount 244 Wednesbury (Staffs) 232–3
Torridge, River 193 Wednesfield (Staffs) 232
Totnes (Devon) 26 wells 125, 200–1
tower-naves 25 West Cotton (Nothants) 62, 70, 71
towers 4, 25 Wessex, West Saxons 25, 229
towns 32–3, 90, 198, 199, 206 West Stow (Suff) 108
trees: Whitby (North Yorks) 30
as material culture 6–7, 122–43, 138–9, 145, Whitstable (Kent) 94
158–9, 168–9 Wilfred, St 30
as people 244 William of Malmesbury 32, 37 n.
as raw material 12, 79–81, 95–6, 97, willow 5 n., 91 n., 183
138–9, 189 Wilton (Wilts) 26
in art 10–11, 211–27, 243 wı̄n 116
in literature 7, 211–27, 10–13 Winchester (Hants) 24, 61, 72
in religious practice 7, 9–10, 13–14, 91, 97, Winchcombe (Glos) 26
177–84, 211–27, 228–50 wine 116–18
landscape contexts 80–1, 97, 186–8, 195–6 Woden 194, 232–3
258 Index
Wood, see timber Wulfstan, Canons of Edgar 245

Woodbridge 86 Wulfstan, St 194
Woodchurch (Kent, Ches) 93
Woodcote 89 Yardbury (Devon) 90
Woodhall 89 Yardhurst (Kent) 80
Woodham (Sy, Essex) 89 Yardley 79, 95
Woodhouse 89 Yeavering (Northumb) 9, 28, 70–2, 190, 206,
Woodkirk (West Yorks) 93 230, 239
woodland 7–8, 79–81, 89, 93, 95, 119, 147–8, yew 112–13, 113, 114, 170–1, 228, 242,
150, 155–6, 181, 193–4, 196–7, 243, 246 245, 247
woodworking 45–6, 61–3, 70, 73, 112, 119, Yggdrasill 13, 177, 180–2, 229, 244
158–60 yokes 125
Wootton 78 n. York (North Yorks) 3, 197
world pillar 178, 214 Yukuna 229
world tree 13, 177–85, 236
Wrafton (Devon) 91 Zafimaniry 34–6
wudu 78 n., 80, 89, 93, 96, 146 n., 163, Zeus 244
165–71 Zobor (Slovakia) 234

(Medieval History and Archaeology) Michael D. J. Bintley, Michael G. Shapland - Trees and Timber in The Anglo-Saxon World-Oxford University Press (2013)

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Medieval History and Archaeology

Trees and Timber in the

RECENTLY PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES

LITURGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND SACRED PLACES IN

RURAL SETTLEMENTS AND SOCIETY IN

PARKS IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

ANGLO-SAXON DEVIANT BURIAL CUSTOMS

BEYOND THE MEDIEVAL VILLAGE

WATERWAYS AND CANAL-BUILDING IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

FOOD IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

1. An Introduction to Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World 1

PART I: TIMBER IN ANGLO-SAXON

3. The Sophistication of Late Anglo-Saxon Timber Buildings 45

4. References to Timber Building Materials in Old English Place-Names 78

PART II: PERCEPTIONS OF WOOD

7. Brungen of Bearwe: Ploughing Common Furrows in Exeter Book

8. Breaking the Mould: Solving the Old English Riddle 12 as

PART III: TREES AND WOODLAND

10. Holy Beams: Anglo-Saxon Cult Sites and the Place-Name

11. Recasting the Role of Sacred Trees in Anglo-Saxon Spiritual

12. Christianity and the ‘Sacred Tree’ 228

10.5 Bampton (Oxfordshire): the medieval town in relation to

Origins and Aims

interdisciplinary emphasis of this volume is based on the belief that correspond-

and the Coppergate excavation in York3 remain notable exceptions. Archaeolo-

Wood and Timber in the Ritual of Everyday Life

The Materiality of Wood

perspective is John Blair’s recent discussion of the development of Anglo-Saxon

Natural and Artiﬁcial in Wooden Material Culture

Trees and Woodland in the Anglo-Saxon Landscape

Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England

Trees and Woodland in Anglo-Saxon Artistry

between modern interpretations of Anglo-Saxon buildings which have empha-

Into the Woods

Hooke, D. (2010), Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape

Survey of the evidence

community. Simy Folds and Ribblehead have been seen as Scandinavian;13

Æthelred II therefore seems likely.32 At Oldaport (Devon) a spur of land was

Explanations: Timber as the Material of Secular Society

Christianity and Rome in Anglo-Saxon England

in explicit contrast to existing traditions of timber construction.83 When this

in a ceremony following Roman liturgy and practice, all as part of the

In his description, Asser seems to be referring to two different buildings, or

buildings of stone and wood, of the type apparently excavated at Sulgrave.

Christianity, Stone, and the Eternal

explicitly Christian sources, humans are conceived of in terms of trees whilst

It is clear from other evidence that appropriation by the Church of this

adorned the gables of these skeuomorphic tombs were a well-understood medi-

131 132 133

the local collapse of monastic authority, must be treated as a signiﬁcant phe-

Addyman, P. V. (1972), ‘The Anglo-Saxon House: A New Review’, Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Blackwell),

Jarvis, K. S. (1983), Excavations in Christchurch 1969–1980 (Dorchester: Dorset

Sum mæg wrætlice weorc ahycgan

Anglo-Saxon wood-working can be divided into two branches which equate to

of the poorest nineteenth-century cottagers. Others, drawing particularly on the

elaborate metalwork, carved stone, and illuminated manuscripts. Merely

Precision of Anglo-Saxon Plan

post from which

Discussion of the application of practical geometry in medieval Europe has

There is rather different evidence of planning in the mid- to late-tenth-century

regular in plan were ignored. S15 at Portchester Castle (Hampshire), for

both tenth-century, were not contemporary.30 However, if we consider the

contain brid or bryd, possible unrecorded side-forms of bred. Timber can be