Wareham St Mary's

The “other” Wareham Church - St Martin’s - was one of the first I wrote about. Now, in 2022, I am finally getting round to writing about St Mary’s that, unsurprisingly, I visited on the same day!

Wareham is a place of which you may only have vaguely heard. Yet, in the days of King Alfred of Wessex it was a place of great importance. In AD878 Alfred defeated the Viking “Great Host” at the Battle of Edington. Alfred was not king of “England” - that political entity was first ruled by his grandson Athelstan in AD925 - so it was impossible both practically and militarily to expel Vikings who still controlled large areas of the country. Alfred and the Viking leader Gudrum (or Guthrum) agreed that the Vikings would control great swathes of eastern and northern areas which we now call the “Danelaw”. Alfred, however, was not so naive as to think he had brought about eternal peace. Impressed by the difficulties he had encountered in attacking Viking fortified towns - or “burhs” - he set about creating a lot of his own. One of these was at Wareham which was part of Wessex and a Channel port. The natural defences provided by the River Frome and salt marshes were augmented by huge earthworks to the west making the town well-nigh impregnable.

St Martin’s is substantially an Anglo-Saxon structure. St Mary’s, sadly, was rebuilt by the wretched Victorians on what we would now say was a catastrophic scale, such that only parts of the west wall of the pre-Conquest church remain. The Church Guide says the building was eighth century and was “on a magnificent scale and one of the earliest large stone buildings erected by the Saxons in this country. It was a large minster church..... So your heart bleeds really. What makes the church still worth a visit is its rare lead font and its Norman St Edward’s chapel.

There are only thirty two lead fonts left in England and that is almost certainly as the result of the lead being melted down for musket balls, particularly during the Civil War. There is even one recorded instance of a font being melted down to repair the church roof! I write a lot more on this subject when discussing the lead font at Long Wittenham in Oxfordshire. What sets Wareham’s font apart is that it is octagonal. This would have been much more challenging to manufacture than the usual round profile where two sheets could be rolled into semi-circular pieces and then soldered together. The greater complexity of the Wareham design is accompanied by much greater complexity and depth of decorative design - the twelve apostles - than is found on the majority of lead fonts.

If the lead font is arguably a curiosity, St Edward’s Chapel is a treasure. Unbelievably, it seems that the Victorians had no idea how old the nave was when they destroyed it. Perhaps even the Victorians could recognise a Norman chapel when they saw one so that is why it survived. It sits inconspicuously in the south east corner of the church under a very low vaulted ceiling that itself dates some two centuries later than the chapel. It is crypt-like in its atmosphere and proportions. It was dedicated to King Edward who reigned between AD875-8 before being murdered in Corfe Castle, probably by supporters of his half-brother Aethelred the Unready. Edward was hurriedly buried at Wareham but was moved to Shaftesbury a couple of years later. With wearisome predictability, miracles were attributed to him and he was duly recognised as a saint.

You might feel that I have done a poor job of “selling” this church to you but the font and chapel are well worth seeing. More to the point, the two Wareham churches are halves of one fascinating story of a town that few of us are familiar with today but which was pivotal during Wessex’s struggles to contain the Danes. What is more, you can see see remains of Alfred’s fortifications.






	Left: The chancel.Most of what you can see is fourteenth century. That includes the impressive east window of about 1325 but not, of course, the glass. The low door to the right don a few stairs to St Edward’s Chapel. Right: Looking towards the west end. The tower arch and the tower itself are fifteenth century. Everything else is bland, inoffensive Victorian.

Left: The triple sedilia and double piscina - the standard furnishings of a late medieval parish church. To the left is a doorway to the tiny fourteenth Becket Chapel which is kept locked. Right: A rather eclectic composition in the north aisle. Most conspicuous is a round Norman window which was reconstructed from the original stone that was found in the wall of the chancel when it was rebuilt. To its right is a badly weathered fourteenth century sculpture of the crucifixion originally over a north doorway to the church. A simple mediaeval double piscina also survives. Below the plaques is a a strange inscription. It is Anglo-Saxon and refers to “Catgug” which in modern Welsh would have been Cadogan. It means glorious in battle. The “Fi” of “filius” is missing and followed by “deo”: “faithful to God”.

Left: The lead font sits on a later Purbeck marble base. Right: Two of the faces. The apostles sit below Norman round arches that would have been the architecture of the time. The decoration has surprising depth, and the font could easily be mistaken for one of the even scarcer and infinitely more expensive Tournai marble ones.,

Various aspects of the font

Left: St Edward’s Chapel. The east window is thirteenth century, as is the vaulted roof. Centre: Aumbry cupboard and piscina to the right of the altar in St Edward’s Chapel. Right: The fourteenth century crucifixion sculpture.

Left: Another (and very wide angle) view of St Edward’s Chapel. Right: The chapel (behind the gates) from the outside. The heavy fall in the ground from west to east accentuates its crypt-like subterranean feel.

Left: Another ancient stone that was, like several others here, recovered from the walls of the nave. This one also refers to a man called “Deniel”, another Welsh name. Odd? See the footnote below. Right: The thirteenth century double piscina in the north wall.

The Catgug Inscription. The nature of the inscriptions is interesting. Clearly, they are not by skilled sculptors! It seems like they were hacked out by the surviving friends and families in moving testimonies.

Footnote 1 - The “Welsh”

To understand what the Welsh were doing in Dorset to have to understand who were the Welsh! Well, it is not for nothing that we still lazily refer to Wales, Scotland and Ireland as “The Celtic” nations. But the word derives from the Anglo-Saxon word “Wealsc” which simply means” foreigners”. We Britons were all Celtic and we spoke a form of the Celtic language called “Brythonic”. To the Saxons we were all “Wealsc”.

What happened when the Anglo-Saxons (as well as the Jutes and Frisians) arrived in post-Roman Britannia is still a source of much dispute. Was there genocide? That notion seems largely discredited. But it is a fact that many Britons were displaced and many headed west to join the existing populations of what we now call Wales. The kingdoms there, such as Powys and Gwynedd remained more or less independent and retained their own kings. Indeed, so did Cornwall. The Anglo-Saxons also never subjugated what we now know as Scotland. The southern areas were sometimes under Northumbrian rule but in fact, just to confuse things, a large part of south west Scotland had kings of Irish descent! We need then to completely forget notions of England, Scotland and Wales. They did not exist as political entities in the first millennium. England or “Anglaland” was not a reality until the tenth century.

So, these seventh century stones in Wareham do not commemorate men from what we now call Wales. They commemorate Britons who lingered in Wessex where they and their forefathers had always lived. They did so before the Brythonic language in what we now call England was completely transformed into what we now call “Old English” and which, by the way, no untrained modern person would be able to speak, read or write. These stones, then, are a wonderful reminder to us of a time when all was change and when Celt and Saxon were still learning to live with each other.

Footnote 2 - Aethelred the Unready and Musings on Nicknames!

As we have seen, “Saint” Edward was probably murdered by supporters of his half-brother, Aethelred “The Unready”. By the way (my favourite clause), early kingships in England (and indeed elsewhere in Britain) were not necessarily hereditary. They needed the approbation of the thegns and ealdorman who might, as in this case, prefer another candidate. Anyway....Aethelred.

The modern world seems to have lost its facility with nicknames. George III was known as "Mad King George" only posthumously and "Farmer George" which was contemporary, is lost. What about Edward (VII) "The Unzipped"? Victoria "The Sombre"? Elizabeth "The Virtuous"? Charles (I) "The Headless" would have been good. Henry VIII "The Incontinent" even better. Or "The Axeman". Where is the imagination?

It's even the same with modern sports people. As I write, The England rugby captain - Owen Farrell - is known to his team mates as "Faz". Great imagination, guys! Ellis Genge is "Gengey" and so on. Puh-lease! I would maybe have maybe called him “Khan” - geddit? "Becks", "Gazza" in football. "Stevie G". Playground stuff. I used to love the nickname "Budgie Byrne" bestowed by a West Ham United footballer in the sixties because he never stopped talking! Who remembers "Inchy" Heath, an Everton legend? At the other end of the height scale an Aston Villa beanpole called Ian Ormondroyd was known as "Sticks" for his improbably skinny legs.

British monarchs hardly ever have nicknames now. We had "Lionheart", of course. He could just as easily have been "Richard the Absent"! William the Conqueror? I think he was more generally known as "The Bastard" which was warranted literally and figuratively. John was known as "Lackland" but even that was really "Sans Terre" which was granted to him by his many French detractors. And, of course, even "Lionheart" was "Coueur de Lion". Mind you, all of the nobility were speaking French back then.

The Vikings were the world champions, of course. Who hasn't heard of Ivar the Boneless (my favourite, who may well have suffered from “brittle bone disease”), Bjorn Ironside, Harold Finehair, Harold Bluetooth, Erik the Red and so on? Did you know that Harold Bluetooth gave his name to our ubiquitous wireless technology? How much mead must he be drinking up in Valhalla laughing about that? And the French had their moments, my favourite being Charles the Fat!

Anyway, we British are singularly rubbish at pithy nicknames for our rulers, royal or otherwise. But that was not always so. Quite a lot of early rulers acquired "handles". William "Rufus", Edmund Ironside, Edward the Confessor. We had a few in those early times. I think Alfred the Great was a posthumous thing. But surely the most unfortunate English monarch in this regard was "Aethelred the Unready"? If you were to do a poll as to what modern people would think his main attributes were, I reckon 99% would come up with "Unprepared" or "Indecisive". You would have to think he was bit useless, wouldn't you?

In fact Aethelred’s name meant “badly advised” rather than unprepared! It was a pun on his name which meant “well-advised”. He was actually the longest-reigning Anglo-Saxon monarch AD978-1013, so perhaps not the klutz we might imagine! They didn’t last long in those days.

His reign was blighted by renewed Viking attacks. After defeat at the Battle of Maldon in AD991 he decided to massacre large numbers of Viking settlers in AD1002 on St Brice's Day. It was, to coin a cliche, an early example of "ethnic cleansing". Bear in mind, as well, that by now many of the Scandinavians were assimilated into English life. You would have to say that he was badly advised because those murdered people had lots of kin back in Scandinavia and the incident led to a successful revenge invasion led by Sweyn Forkbeard - another great nickname - the King of Denmark. Sweyn was King of England - perhaps England's least known king and actually "uncrowned" - for fourteen months while Aethelred was exiled in Normandy. Aethelred actually became King again for a couple of years after the death of Sweyn. Upon his own death, his son, Edmund Ironside ruled Wessex by agreement with Cnut - Sweyn's son - who ruled the rest of England. Edmund enjoyed his status for only a few months before he too died, leaving Cnut the ruler of all England. There was a lot of dying going on at that time, wasn't there?

Having corrected one misunderstanding about Aethelred's name, let's correct another: the notion that one axe-twirling, berserker Viking could kill ten Anglo-Saxons wimps without breaking sweat. Also the notion that any encounter between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings was sure to mean bloody defeat for the natives. Unless it was Alfred. Of course. I suppose the Vikings were the masters of guerilla, hit-and-run warfare. In the days of the raids, the English kingdoms were easy prey to the fast-moving longship-borne Scandinavian warriors. Once the Vikings took to the land, formed armies and decided to settle, however, they were far from invincible. Otherwise I would be writing this in Danish! History grants Vikings enormous prestige as individual warriors but that perhaps owes as much to their own folklore and their wonderful nicknames as to reality. The Anglo-Saxons were no pussycats and shared a Germanic heritage with the Vikings themselves and with the Normans whose reputation was equally ferocious. It was a time of warriors and the Anglo-Saxons were not hapless victims.

It's a good story, though, and I suppose we owe all of this garbage to TV and Hollywood. I love "Vikings Valhalla" on Netflix for all of its anachronisms. But you have to laugh at the battles scenes where Anglo-Saxon armies are constantly decimated. Not a spear - the weapon of choice of the Anglo-Saxon warrior - in sight. No vicious, horrible shield wall to shield wall encounters on fields soaked with blood and shit. It's all one-on-one fighting with swords and axes. And the Saxons are always clad in uniform armour oddly reminiscent of the Bayeux Tapestry. This despite the fact that the main strength of the Anglo-Saxon armies was the "fyrd" - the levies or militia from the shires who surely never donned any kind of uniform.

Still it's all good fun. As long as you don't mistake it for serious history!