Hackness, St Peter's

The monastery of Streoneshalh (modern Whitby) founded a daughter house at Hackness in 680 with a church and monastic buildings.

On the site of what is now St Peter’s church, Hackness, Abbess Hild of Streoneshalh (Whitby) founded a religious community in 680. The history of this community in the later seventh and early eighth century is known from Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people (HE iv.23 [pp. 412-15]) and one of its abbesses is probably mentioned in Stephen of Ripon’s Life of Wilfrid (VW c. 59 [pp. 126-9]). By the eleventh century there were three churches in Hackness, two dedicated to St Peter and St Mary (WC, I, pp. 1-10, Nos 1-3). It is possible that there were two churches, St Peter and St Mary, from an early date, because two churches with these dedications are a known feature of other early religious communities. Fragments of stone sculpture preserved at St Peter’s church include what seem to be architectural elements and parts of cross-shafts relating to an early church (CASSS III, pp. 135-44), and parts of the present church may date from before 1100 (Bilson 1924; Taylor and Taylor 1965-78), I, pp. 269-70). The subsequent history of this community is not known from contemporary written sources. During disputes over the re-foundation of Whitby some of the monks moved to Hackness, between 1078 and 1086x1088; St Peter’s subsequently became a cell of Whitby Abbey (GDB fos 232r, 380v, I, 323a, 13 N 13; II, 380d, SN D 8-9; WC, I, pp. 1-10, Nos 1-3; Burton 1994; Burton 1999, pp. 23-44). The church of St Peter became a parish church and was mother-church to a mother-parish including the townships of Hackness, Broxa and Suffield with Everley, and the chapelry of Harwood Dale with Silpho; the mother-parish of St Mary’s Whitby shared a boundary with the adjacent mother-parish of Hackness (Page 1932, pp. 528-32; Kain and Oliver 2001, pp. 68, 120, 199, 209; Pickles 2016).

Certain.

Identification details.

• Administrative Region – Yorkshire and the Humber
• Administrative County – North Riding of Yorkshire
• Diocese (Current) - York
• Diocese (Historic) - York
• Parish – Hackness
• Historic vill/ township/ parish – Hackness
• Dedication (Current) - St Peter
• Dedication (Historic) - St Peter
• Ownership – Church of England
• Designation – Grade I Listed Building (No. 1296564, 18th Jan., 1967)
• Church Environment Record - No Entry
• Post Code –YO13 OJN
• Coordinates - Longitude: -0.512308, Latitude: 54.301421
• Elevation: 60.1m/ 197.2ft

Context of the church.

According to Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people, completed c. 731, Abbess Hild of Streoneshalh (Whitby) founded a religious community (Latin monasterium) 13 miles from Streoneshalh at Hackness in the year of her death, 680. Bede relates a story that a member of this community, a nun called Begu, witnessed the death of Hild in a dream. This story refers to male brothers (Latin fratres) from Streoneshalh travelling to Hackness and refers to the community at Hackness as sisters (Latin sorores), and names the nuns Begu and Frigyth: this suggests it may have been a nunnery. This story refers to the existence of a church (Latin ecclesia) and dormitory (Latin dormitorium) (HE iv.23 [pp. 412-15]).

Stephen of Ripon’s Life of Wilfrid tells us that when King Aldfrith of the Northumbrians died in 705 there were two female religious present at his deathbed – his half-sister Abbess Ælfflæd of Streoneshalh (Whitby) and another Abbess Æthelburh (VW, c. 59 [pp. 126-9]). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D, s.a. 705 tells us that this took place at Driffield (ASC D, p. 25). A cross-shaft dated on art historical and linguistic grounds to sometime between the late seventh century and the early ninth century, carries an inscription to an Oedilburga, apparently referring to her as religious abbess (Latin religiosa, abbatissa), and most loving mother (Latin mater amantissima) (CASSS III, Hackness 1a-b). It seems likely that Stephen of Ripon and this cross-shaft are referring to the same person, an abbess of Hackness in the early eighth century.

Building

Principal church of a religious community.

Group

The church of St Peter was perhaps part of a group including a church of St Mary.

General Information

<Plan of present church following the VCH>

The standing remains and sculpture suggest the existence of a church in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, but the dating of each strand of evidence is too broad to allow us to distinguish more than one phase.

Plan <Plan following Taylor and Taylor>

Parts

Several sections of the present church of St Peter, Hackness, derive from a building preceding a Romanesque re-building: they are identifiable because of the contrast in masonry, construction techniques, and the fact that they are in places cut through by Romanesque features. These are the chancel arch and the south walls of the chancel and nave (Taylor and Taylor 1965-78, I, pp. 268-70; III, pp. 748, 759, 769, 786, 795, 839, 863, 948, 959 964, 1006-7 1052).

Material and techniques of construction

• Walls and masonry:

i. Chancel arch <Photograph>: The chancel arch comprises jambs of five long-and-short stones laid alternately flat and upright, square imposts projecting beyond the wall faces and soffit, and a semi-circular arch of nineteen regular through-stone voussoirs. The north impost – Hackness 3 – may or may not be in its original position, because it has been recut on the east and west sides to be flush with the wall: it carries a symmetrical design of four interlaced animals, with traces of gesso, and is dated on art historical grounds to the late seventh or early eighth century.

ii. Nave <Photographs – walls, quoins>: The south wall of the nave is constructed of large, well-cut, squared stones forming a wall around 30cm or 12 inches thick, which is cut by the Romanesque arches of the south aisle arcade. There are remains of two megalithic, single-splayed windows with large through-stone sills and jambs at the level of the arcades. There are visible side-alternate quoins defining the north-western, south-western, and north-eastern corners of the nave.

iii. Chancel <Photograph>: The south wall of the chancel is constructed of the same large, well-cut, squared stones as the south wall of the nave.

Liturgical structures

• Shrine: two stone fragments, one built into the present church of St Peter (CASSS III, Hackness 3), one discovered in 1981 in the vicarage garden (CASSS III, Hackness 4), may derive from one or more composite shrines, dated on art historical grounds to the late seventh or eighth century – CASSS III, Hackness 3, Hackness 4.

• Grave marker: a stone fragment apparently found in the rockery of Low Hall in the nineteenth century has been identified as partial remains of a grave-marker with a plain incised cross, dated on art historical grounds to the late seventh or eighth century, and which perhaps stood in the church due to its parallels from Streoneshalh (Whitby) and the the lack of weathering; it was reused as a Romanesque architectural feature – CASSS III, Hackness 2.

• Cross: Two stone fragments discovered in an outbuilding of Hackness Hall are parts of a cross-shaft dated on art historical and linguistic grounds to the period between the late seventh and early ninth century; Latin inscriptions suggest that the cross commemorated an abbess, Æthelburh, who was probably present at the deathbed of King Aldfrith in 705, and it is possible that it stood in the church as a liturgical focus – CASSS III, Hackness 1a-b.

None.

Chronology and arguments about dating:

The earliest parts of the present church are clearly pre-Romanesque. Based on the idea that the north impost of the chancel arch – Hackness 3 – was in situ and George Baldwin Brown’s art historical assessment of the decoration on this impost, Harold and Joan Taylor suggested that the church belonged to their period B1, 800-850. Since then, Jim Lang has reanalyzed this impost for the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, noting that it may or may not be in its original position on account of the re-cutting of the east and west faces to fit flush with the walls: he has re-dated it to the late seventh or early eighth century and suggested that it could be part of a shrine or a grave-marker re-used as an impost. If this impost is in situ, it would suggest that the earlier church dates to this period. If this impost is re-used, it would suggest that the earlier church belongs to some time after the late eighth or early ninth century. The single-splayed windows, long-and-short jambs, side-alternate nave quoins, and the nave dimensions are consistent with a pre-Romanesque date but are not in themselves conclusively diagnostic of a particular period.

Interpretation:

Parts of the present church derive from an earlier, two-celled stone church from before the twelfth century, perhaps as early as the late seventh or early eighth century. Fragments of stone sculpture seem to derive from shrines, grave-markers, or crosses disposed within a church during the period between the late seventh and early ninth century.

Key Primary Sources

Historical sources

ASC: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. D. Whitelock, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Revised Translation (London: Eyre and Spottoswoode, 1961).

GDB: Great Domesday Book, ed. and trans. M. L. Faull and M. Stinson, Domesday Book: Yorkshire (Chichester: Phillimore, 1986).

HE: Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people, ed. and. trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).

VW: Stephen of Ripon, Life of Wilfrid, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927).

WC: Cartularium Abbathiae de Whiteby, ed. J. C. Atkinson, 2 vols (Durham: Surtees Society, 1879-1881).

Archaeological sources

Taylor and Taylor (1965-78): Taylor, H. M. and J. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965-1978).

Sculptural sources

CASSS III: Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Vol. III: York and Eastern Yorkshire, ed. J. T. Lang (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Parochial sources

Kain and Oliver (2001): Kain, R., and R. Oliver, Historic Parishes of England and Wales: an electronic map of boundaries before 1850 with a gazetteer and metadata (Colchester: History Data Service, 2001).

Key Secondary Sources

Bilson (1924): Bilson, J., ‘Hackness Church, a note on the earlier building’, The Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 27 (1924), pp. 406-7.

Burton (1994): Burton, J., ‘The Monastic Revival in Yorkshire: Whitby and St Mary’s, York’, in D. W. Rollason, M. M. Harvey and M. C. Prestwich (eds), Anglo-Norman Durham 1093-1193 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), pp. 41-51.

Burton (1999): Burton, J., The Monastic Order in Yorkshire 1069-1215 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Page (1923): Page, W. (ed.), A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2 (London: Victoria County History, 1923), pp. 528-32.

Pickles (2016): Pickles, T., ‘Streanaeshalch (Whitby), its Satellite Churches and Lands’, in T. Ó Carragáin and S. Turner (eds), Making Christian Landscapes in Atlantic Europe: Conversion and Consolidation in the Early Middle Ages (Cork: University of Cork Press, 2016), pp. 265-76.

Sermon (1996): Sermon, R., ‘The Hackness Cross Cryptic Inscriptions’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 68 (1996), pp. 101-111.

Thompson (1924): Thompson, A. H., ‘Monastic Settlement at Hackness and its Relation to the Abbet of Whitby’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 27 (1924), pp. 388-40.

Winterbotham (1982): Winterbotham, J. J., ‘An Anglo-Saxon Carved Stone from Hackness, North Yorkshire’, The Antiquaries Journal, 62 (1982), pp. 357-8.

Heritage Gateway: https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/

Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England: www.pase.ac.uk

Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture – Volume III: https://chacklepie.com/ascorpus/catvol3.php

Information about the Entry

26-06-24

Thomas Pickles

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