Considering churches and their churchyards as landscapes of memory has many benefits I’ve addressed before on this blog. It helps us consider in holistic terms the mnemonics of the built environments, spaces, memorials, fixtures and fittings, paths, thresholds and boundaries both inside and outside. It helps us to understand the complex biography of these environments not only in regards to the story they tell about the human past and the changing social, political, economic and religious changes affecting the church and its community, but how those elements interleave and interconnect in building the commemorative story of the place.
At Brixworth, these relate to many of the typical elements of church architecture, fixtures and fittings as well as churchyard memorials but also to the specific references to the Anglo-Saxon origins of the church and community. In this regard, it can be considered, as might other churches of Anglo-Saxon origin in which their heritage tourism celebrates their Anglo-Saxon art, architecture and archaeology, as Anglo-Saxonist landscapes of memory.
The traces of the early medieval past are not only displayed and interpreted by a guidebook and heritage interpretation panels, but also because the Anglo-Saxon past is reformulated using new logos and commemorative media within and outwith the church and through the village via signs and a heritage trail. These focus on the description of the church as ‘Saxon’ and the use of the eagle motif from the Anglo-Saxon sculpture within various art.
Inside the church itself, the key elements of its Anglo-Saxonist celebration of early medieval origins comprise the sculpture and architecture itself, including the eagle sculpture well-lit within a protected niche just inside the south door. The eagle is also etched upon the glass door at the entrance. In stark contrast, the later medieval sculptural fragments (many from tombs) are given no pride of place and stacked out of the way without heritage interpretation in a side-chapel at the east end of the south aisle.
The most striking elements in the environs of the church in which Anglo-Saxon themes and deep-time are evoked are in the Millennium Beacon and adjacent Millennium Garden in which the eagle and the foundation date of AD680 are proudly displayed. The garden has no overtly Anglo-Saxonist elements within it but the arched wooden lychgate could be argued to reference the Anglo-Saxon arches of the church itself.
More broadly, the village celebrates the church and its Saxon origins through integrating the church into the village heritage trail and through repeated waymarkers to the ‘Saxon church’.
One final element worthy of note is how a prominent Anglo-Saxon archaeologist’s passing has been integrated into the commemorative dimensions fo the landscape, albeit in temporary form. I refer to Dame Professor Rosemary Cramp, may she rest in peace. The text doesn’t explicitly reference her passing, but my visit coincided with news of her death in April 2023.
Hence, the medieval church of All Saint’s Brixworth with its striking Anglo-Saxon components of architecture and sculpture provides a distinctive example of this phenomenon of a ‘landscape of memory’ and one with overt Anglo-Saxonist dimensions. This seems to have been particularly enhanced around the Millennium and has been maintained subsequently.
Archaeo𝔡𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔥 