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The Saxon Cathedral of Elmham

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

The site of the See of Elmham has been the subject of one of those entirely artificial controversies which troubled the archaeological peace of the nineteenth century, and arose from a curious and then very prevalent phase of archaeological thought. Plain, and one would have thought obvious, statements of fact were first queried and then rejected to substitute in their place theories unsupported equally by evidence, tradition, or probability. Such was the theory which endeavoured to transfer the See of Elmham from North Elmham in Norfolk to South Elmham in Suffolk, in the face of all definite evidence and reasonable probability and solely on the ground that a pre-Conquest church, known traditionally as the Old Minster, existed in the Suffolk area. The fact that the word Minster is sufficiently widespread and seldom indicates a cathedral was not considered, and the statesman Theodore was credited with the inconceivable stupidity of splitting up the East Anglian See by establishing two bishop's stools within thirteen miles of one. another. This theory, which received the tentative support of more than one distinguished antiquary, has now, one may hope, been finally consigned to the limbo from which it should never have emerged ; the paper of the late Mr. Richard Howlett1 sets forth the clear facts of the case and the overwhelming evidence in favour of the Norfolk site.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1926

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References

page 402 note 1 ‘The Ancient See of Elmham’, Howlett, Richard, F.S.A., in Norfolk Archaeology, xviii, p. 105Google Scholar. He quotes a report prepared for Bishop Anthony Bek in which the statement is made ‘Manerium de Northelmham fuit antiquo tempore sedes episcopalism’.

page 402 note 2 See The Builder, March 1903.

page 407 note 1 Compare the church of Loppia, near Lucca, the plan and part of the structure of which dates from the foundation of the priory in the tenth century; also Heiligenberg (Germany) said to have been built 865–91.

page 408 note 1 These towers are almost invariably east of the transept, a position rendered inconvenient at Elmham by the absence of a rectangular presbytery.