Patrick Comerford
I was writing yesterday about my visit to Stafford last week and to Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church in the centre of the town. At the west end of the church is the site of a chapel associated with Saint Bertelin or Saint Beorhthelm, who is said to have established a hermitage ca 700 CE that is said to mark the beginnings of Stafford.
Saint Bertelin was an obscure Anglo Saxon saint. He is said to have established his hermitage ca 700 CE on the Isle of Bethnei in the marshes around the River Sow. Bertelin – whose name gradually took the form Bertram in some areas – later moved his hermitage to Ilam in Derbyshire, where his shrine and well made Ilam a popular place of pilgrimage.
The first building on the site in Stafford seems to have been a Late Saxon timber chapel, commemorating Saint Bertelin, although The first historical reference to Saint Bertelin at Stafford appears in a list of tombs of saints for pilgrims by Hugh Candidus of Peterbrough, who died ca 1175, in a reference ‘in Stefford sanctus Berthelmus martyr’.
Saint Mary’s Church was rebuilt in the late 12th and early 13th century, and was joined to Saint Bertelin’s chapel through a doorway in the west wall. The chapel became a shrine to Saint Bertelin, and was a place of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages.
The chapel was later used as a council chamber and a school, before it was pulled down in 1801 to allow more room for burials in the churchyard. Following the demolition, the site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel was destroyed largely by burials in the 19th century and only patches of wall and floor and several early graves definable.
The blocked former west entrance into Saint Mary's was the only surviving evidence for the existence of the chapel until the local authority decided to clear the gravestones and create a garden of remembrance.
Before the clearance work began, an archaeological investigation was carried out in 1954 at the site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel by Adrian Oswald (1908-2001), curator of archaeology at Birmingham City Museum.
Oswald found a set of stone foundations interpreted as belonging to Saint Bertelin's mediaeval chapel. Beneath the stone was a set of post-holes with a central grave-shaped pit in the centre of the structure containing a large lump of oak with a cylindrical base that had been placed in a pit.
The archaeologist and historian CA Ralegh Radford (1900-1998) initially interpreted this as a 1,000-year-old a wooden cross of the Mercian period and a later reconstruction was put on the site.
In the popular retelling of these interpretations, it was said that the remains of a timber cross buried 5 ft below the surface, and from this it was deduced that ‘it is entirely possible that this cross was the one used by Saint Bertelin himself. Beneath the cross were the remains of a timber building, which it seems reasonable to assume was the one built by Bertelin.’
However, a re-assessment of the site was made in in 1984 by Professor Martin Carver, who considered the finds in the context of other archaeological investigations at Stafford. Carver is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York and director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project. He founded the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit (BUFAU), later called Birmingham Archaeology, at the University of Birmingham, and is the author of The Birth of a Borough. Archaeological studies of Anglo-Saxon Stafford (2010).
Carver argues that the shape of the wood lump, with a cylindrical base, and the leather attached inside to the top, all suggest that this was a coffin, not a cross, resembling the tree-trunk coffins known from the seventh century onwards in East Anglia.
The general sequence reported by Oswald was largely endorsed, seeing the site as one of a timber structure succeeded by a later stone chapel. However, the earliest part of the sequence associated with the timber structure and coffin was found to be inverted in respect of the dates. A layer of ninth century charcoal (830-845 CE) lay above the layer containing a Saxon farthing of Athelred II (971-1016) lost before 1000 CE, which in turn lay above the 12th century log coffin.
From this evidence, it could be argued that the coffin was buried in a late 12th century stone chapel, and the coffin was simply part of a late 12th century foundation process.
Carver suggests the log coffin was buried within a timber structure dated to the period 800-1000, and so too late to be used to support legends of an eighth century foundation associated with an ‘Isle of Bethnei’.
The timber chapel, or possible mortuary house, may have burnt down in the ninth century, which would account for the charcoal layer. Carver rejected the date 1180 for the log coffin. The timber chapel was superseded by a stone chapel with a truer east-west alignment. The floor of this stone chapel would have sealed the log coffin and the layers above it.
This stone chapel appears to have fallen into disuse and was probably demolished around the time of the Conquest and then rebuilt in stone on an improved alignment. A layer of brown soil, interpreted as a layer of ‘disuse’ appears to separate the floor of the first stone chapel from the second, later stone chapel rebuilt on the same site, slightly offset to the south, laid out in dressed stone indicating a small nave and a narrower chancel, with a tiled floor laid in the 14th century.
The muddled evidence may suggest the first chapel was built of timber between 800 and 1000. A tree-trunk burial was placed centrally in this structure, and presumed to be an object of veneration. The date range of other finds allows the construction of the timber chapel to belong to the foundation of the burh by Æthelflæd in 913 CE, and it seems likely the chapel was built during the reconquest of English Mercia.
Still, local publications continue to maintain this was Saint Bertelin’s preaching cross and this is echoed on the plaque at the site:
‘Site of St. Bertelin’s Chapel
‘This site was excavated in 1954 AD. The foundation stones have been restored upon the exact plan of the chapel built about 1000 AD.
‘The wooden cross is a replica of the cross lying five feet below with indications of a wooden building of much earlier date. The position of the cross indicates that it was regarded with great sanctity and may be the preaching cross of St. Bertelin the founder of the town of Stafford circa 700 AD.’
Meanwhile, the name of the early hermit and saint is continued in Saint Bertelin’s Church, the parish church for the north end of Stafford, on the corner of Holmcroft Road and Eccleshall Road.
After visiting Saint Mary’s Church and Saint Bertelin’s Chapel, I went to see Saint Chad’s Church opposite the Ancient High House on Greengate Street. Saint Chad’s is the oldest surviving building in Stafford, with a story stretching back to the 12th century, and perhaps even back to the time of Saint Chad, the first Bishop of Lichfield (669-672).
Saint Chad’s was built ca 1150-1190 and an inscription names the founder as Orm: Orm vocatur qui me condidit (‘He who made me is called Orm’). Orm was a major landowner of Danish origin and the dragons in the carvings are a pun on his name ‘Orm’ or ‘Worm’.
Saint Chad’s was restored from a forgotten and ruinous state in the mid-19th century. The restoration was carried out by Henry Griffiths, Robert Ward and George Gilbert Scott, who also built the Norman-Romanesque front and donated the statue of Saint Chad in the central niche. At the same time, Scott was carrying out extensive restorations of Lichfield Cathedral.
Saint Paul’s Church, which I passed on the way to Rugeley and Lichfield, is a Grade II building on Lichfield Road. It was designed by Henry Ward and built in 1844. The steeple was added in 1887 by Robert Griffiths. The stained glass includes late 19th and early 20th century work by Hardman and Co, AJ Davies of Bromsgrove, and Smith of St John’s Wood, including a particularly good 19th century east window.
I had visited four churches and chapels in Stafford – Saint Mary’s, Saint Bertelin’s Chapel’s Chapel, Saint Chad’s Church and Saint Paul’s Church. But before leaving Stafford last week I also visited Sir Martin Noel’s Almshouses on Earl Street, which still has its chapel.
As for Saint Bertelin, his feast day is celebrated on 10 August.
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