Within the Danelaw area the tenth century, especially the middle and
second half of the tenth century, was a prolific period for
church-building, seeing the emergence of new parishes - presumably
to serve new manors and villages formed out of, presumably, larger
older estates (Dawn Hadley is the person to consult on this). The
phenomenon of church-building doesn't have to be linked closely with
Danes qua Danes, and indeed by the middle of the tenth century it is
quite likely that Danes and Anglo-Saxons would have been so
intermarried that it would have been hard to tell them apart (cf.
e.g. the Oda-Oswald kingroup). The parts of Eastern England which saw
the largest numbers of new parochial foundations were the areas where
Domesday suggests the densest population figures: East Anglia and
Lincolnshire (the bits of Lincs not consisting of marsh, that is).
Co-relating the expansion of the parish network to Scandinavian
settlement doesn't work so convincingly - E. Anglia hadn't had the
dense Scandinavian settlement that Lincolnshire had, while Yorkshire,
which had received a lot of Scandinavian settlement, didn't
proliferate parishes to the same extent.
The excavation at Raunds Furnells (Northants) suggested that, even
for these very small, simple churches, careful attention
might be paid to ritual at their consecration. Might not therefore
the existence of yew trees at Burton upon Stather imply that whoever
was building the new church there in the tenth century was doing
things by the book, and planting yew trees in the churchyard if
that was what people did at other churches? And the influence would
not necessarily have to come from Denmark. It could perfectly well be
indigenous (and, as such, perhaps be influenced by Welsh or Irish
customs).
Julia Barrow
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