Bishop Ecgred's generous gift, Teesdale Mercury

Bishop Ecgred's generous gift

Apr 23, 2008

IT may seem strange to us in this increasingly secular age but in Medieval times great magnates were in the habit of making large gifts to the church. These gifts were usually in the form of grants of land or tithes or rent. 

Historians often puzzle as to why this should have happened. It is one of those occurrences that pull you up and make you realise that people in the past often thought differently about life, the universe - and indeed about everything.  

Gifts were made to a variety of institutions, ranging from parish churches to monasteries and hospitals. One of the earliest recorded in our area was a large grant of land to the ‘Companions of St Cuthbert'. 

In about 830AD, Bishop Ecgred, of Lindisfarne, gave the ‘Companions' the village of Gainford together with its dependencies plus the vills of Wycliffe and Cliffe. 

He also gave them the vill and church at Billingham near the mouth of the Tees. All these places Ecgred himself had founded and built - at least that is what it says in the charter. 

However, historians nowadays point out that sculptures in the churches at Gainford, Billingham and Wycliffe all come from before Ecgred's time. Maybe it was the villages rather than the churches that Ecgred built. 

Who were these ‘Companions of St Cuthbert' and why were they given so much land and other possessions? 

The body of St Cuthbert, the holy bishop and hermit from Lindisfarne who died in AD 687, became almost from the time of his death the icon of the Northumbrian people. 

They believed themselves to be under his protection and his remains became a uniting presence for Northerners. Those men who looked after the saint's remains and the sacred books that had been written at Lindisfarne were given great respect. Could it be that in giving to the ‘Companions', people believed that in some way they were giving to the holy man himself - or is it much more complicated than that? The past is truly a different country isn't it?  

Ecgred's grant covered an enormous area. There was an Anglo-Saxon monastery at Gainford and the church there was a Minster church serving places nearly as far north as the River Wear. 

Wycliffe and Cliffe are on the south bank of the Tees. It isn't entirely clear which Cliffe was meant but it was probably the Cliffe that lies over the bridge at Piercebridge. 

Mind you there isn't much of a settlement at Cliffe and there's no sign of a church there so maybe the ancient Cliffe was somewhere else. 

You might well ask how it was that Bishop Ecgred had all this land to give away in the first place. The answer lies in the way the church was organised in the time of the Anglo-Saxons. 

In those early days, church leaders were almost invariably members of the ruling families. Bishop Ecgred was no exception to this - he was of noble birth. 

He held broad swathes of Northumbrian land and brought these lands with him when he was appointed bishop. 

Apart from the bishop, it is interesting to note that the main focus of the church in Northumbria in Anglo-Saxon times lay with the monasteries and noble women frequently headed them.

Another question that might fairly be asked is how we know so much about these grants. For this information we are indebted to a historian called Simeon of Durham. 

Simeon was a monk and precentor at Durham Cathedral at the beginning of the 12th century. He was present when St Cuthbert's tomb was opened in 1106, when Cuthbert's body was found to be still intact. Simeon chronicled the history of the kings of England from AD 616 until 1129, concentrating on the Northern kings, and the history of the church of Durham from the coming of Christianity to the north until 1129. 

It is clear that he had access to many documents and charters that are now lost. And because the priory at Durham was the direct successor of the Companions of Cuthbert, or the ‘Haliwerfolk' as they were commonly known, many of these documents concerned grants of land and property.

The times described by Simeon were some of the most turbulent in our history. Ecgred became Bishop of Lindisfarne in AD 830 - some 37 years after the first attack on Lindisfarne by Vikings from Denmark. 

He was responsible for moving Cuthbert's body and those of the later abbots and placing them in a church he built for that purpose at Norham. He also carried to Norham the little wooden chapel first constructed by St Aidan when he came to Lindisfarne in the year AD 635.

The assault on Lindisfarne in AD 793 marked the beginning of the Viking raids. In those troubled times, many of the lands granted by Ecgred were seized by invaders and by others. 

However, in AD 998 when Bishop Aldhun dedicated the new church at Durham and placed there the body of Cuthbert, many of these confiscated lands were restored. 

Simeon lists some of the places originally granted by Ecgred that were returned to St Cuthbert. 

He names Gegenford, Cuernington, Sliddenesse, Bereford, Lyrtington, Marawuda, Stanton, Stretlea, Cletlinga, Langadun, Mortun, Persebrige, the two Alclits, Copland, Weardsette, Bincestre, Cuthbertestun, Ticcelea, Ediscum, Werdetun, Hunewic, Neowatun and Helme. 

Most of these names haven't changed a great deal over time have they? 

Some you might not recognise are Whorlton for Cuernington, Sledwich for Sliddenesse and Escomb for Ediscum. 

Noticeable by their absence however are the vills of Wycliffe and Cliffe. 

They were never returned to the ownership of the Haliwerfolk or to the Priory of Durham that succeeded them - another one of history's little puzzles!

First published in the Mercury APril 16, 2008