Excavations at St Peter's Church, Barton-upon-Humber
H. E. M. Cool, Mark Bell, 2011. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000389. How to cite using this DOI
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Cool
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- ADS Collection: 1030
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000389
- How to cite using this DOI
Overview
The excavations revealed that the church was erected immediately to the west of a large sub-circular enclosure of middle Saxon date. The site of the church had originally been occupied by early Saxon timber buildings that had been sealed by an earthen platform. The platform had subsequently been the site of a late Saxon cemetery. A small amount of early to middle Saxon material was found and is discussed in the files available here. A few Roman items, most notably pottery sherds, were also found but these had not come from in situ occupation.
The bodies in the graves in the late Saxon cemetery were systematically exhumed before the first church was built at the beginning of the eleventh century. This was a three-celled building with a turriform nave, flanked by a nave and a baptistery. This was demolished in the late eleventh century apart from the turrifom nave which became the west tower of the new church. This church was extended considerably during the Norman period. Further additions were made during the early fourteenth and mid fifteenth centuries.
A total of 2750 skeletons were recovered from the graveyard and form the subject of Volume 2. An extensive programme of C14 dating was carried out to establish when burial started and it was found that most of the stratigraphically early burials are Saxo-Norman in date and so broadly contemporary with the first church. This included bodies from what had been interpreted as the pre-church, late Saxon cemetery. Burial continued until 1855. Full osteological information for all the skeletons is available in the database that can be downloaded here, together with the C14 dates. The database also includes a transcription of the parish registers which start in the sixteenth century (see Appendix 2) and details of all the grave monuments (see Appendix 6 and database).
The excavations also produced evidence of two of the three defensive circuits present at Barton. The western arc of the mid Saxon sub-circular enclosure passes below St Peter's, and a twelfth century defensive ditch was excavated on the edge of the churchyard. This is interpreted as an extension of the castle defences. This was a short-lived Norman castle erected during the period of the Anarchy.
The publication strategy for volume 1 has meant that the full discussion of the archaeology and architecture of the church and graveyard has been printed in the letterpress volume, together with information about the town and St Mary's, the other medieval church. Finds directly associated with the church and the graveyard (church fittings and monuments, coffins, grave goods etc) are discussed in the letterpress. Loose finds are discussed in Chapter 17 which is published here. The files also include the results of a project to examine the petrological and chemical compositon of the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval pottery.
The Appendices have also been published as digital files. As well as the ones already noted, these include information about the clergy and churchwardens (see Appendix 5), transcriptions of antiquarian records (see Appendix 3), details of the parish magazines (see Appendix 4) and a list of the principal archive sources (see Appendix 1).
The Digital Archive
The files available for download consist of the digital elements of Volume 1 and the database that was created and maintained by Mark Bell during the post-excavation project that ran from 1998. It contains the data created during that project for both volumes, together with additional information such as the transcription of the parish registers for St Peter's.
The volume 1 files consist of 19 pdf files which provide all of Chapter 17 and the appendices. If printed out in the order of the file numbering they will produce a fully paginated report. File 1-Preliminaries provides the contents pages for the digital files. The full bibliography that covers both the letterpress and digital files of volume 1 will be found in 17-Bibliography. The summaries for both volumes in English, French and German are also provided (18-Volume1-summary; 19-Volume2-summary)
The tables and table fields contained within the database are described in the database tables 'Database_Table_List.csv' and 'Database_Field_List.csv'.
