Lythe, St Oswald

Two fragments of stone sculpture probably from a church building suggest the existence of a stone church on the site in the seventh, eighth, and/or ninth century, perhaps associated with the nearby monastery of Streoneshalh (modern Whitby).

The site of what is now St Oswald’s church, Lythe, could have been the focal point in an estate acquired by the religious community at Streoneshalh (Whitby) in the seventh century and the site of a church established for that estate by 685-6. However, this was more likely at Easington, North Yorkshire. St Oswald’s preserves stone fragments suggesting a possible connection to the religious community of Streoneshalh (Whitby) and the presence of one or more churches in the late seventh, eighth, or ninth century; it also preserves many stone fragments from the late ninth, tenth or eleventh century, suggesting that any early church remained a focus for worship, burial, or commemoration in this period (CASSS VI, pp. 153-67, Lythe). One or more churches may lie beneath the present church, but there is as yet no evidence for their form. In Domesday Book (1086x1088) Lythe was one of a discrete group of lands which passed together from one lord in 1066 to another by 1086 (GDB FO. 305r, I 305b, 5 N 1-8) and St Oswald’s church was mother-church to a mother-parish including Barnby, Borrowby, Egton, Ellerby, Goldsborough, Hutton Mulgrave, Mickleby, Newton Mulgrave and Ugthorpe, and encompassing these lands (Kain and Oliver 2001, pp. 53, 62, 100, 111, 131, 158, 166, 221). This block of lands and mother parish may reflect an earlier land unit on which a church was founded and for which it became pastorally responsible (Pickles 2016).

Probable.

Identification details.

• Administrative Region – Yorkshire and the Humber
• Administrative County – North Riding of Yorkshire
• Parish – Lythe
• Diocese (Current) - York
• Diocese (Historic) - York
• Place and Name – Lythe
• Historic vill/ township/ parish – Lythe
• Dedication (Current) - St Oswald
• Dedication (Current) - St Oswald
• Ownership – Church of England
• Designation – Grade I Listed Building (No. 1316097, 6th Oct., 1969)
• Church Environment Record - No Entry
• Post Code – TS13 5HP
• Coordinates - Longitude: -0.688512, Latitude: 54.506626
• Elevation: 130m/ 426.6ft

Context of the early church.

St Oswald’s church Lythe is three miles north-west of Whitby across the Esk estuary on the brow of the hill – Lythe bank – from which the village takes its name (Old English hlith and/or Old Norse lith, ‘hill’). Whitby Abbey and St Oswald’s, Lythe are intervisible.

According to both the anonymous Life of St Cuthbert and Bede’s Life of St Cuthberth, Abbess Ælfflæd of Streoneshalh (Whitby) invited Cuthbert during his episcopate to dedicate a church (Latin ecclesia) on land belonging to Streoneshalh called Osingadun, in 685-6. The story implies that Streoneshalh (Whitby) and Osingadun were within half a day’s travel of one another (VCA, iv.10 [pp. 126-9]; VCB c. 34 [pp. 260-5]). A plausible suggestion has been made that St Oswald’s, Lythe, could be the Osingadun church on the grounds of proximity to Whitby and the early fragments of stone sculpture discovered in the church (Cambridge 1995, pp. 140-4). However, the place-name evidence makes All Saints, Easington, North Yorkshire, the more likely candidate (Pickles, 2016).

Two stone fragments – one discovered during the 1910 restoration in the walls and foundations of the western tower, one discovered in the church c. 1980 – seem to be a late seventh- or early eighth-century stone finial from the gable of a roof (CASSS VI, Lythe 37) and a late eighth- or early ninth-century door jamb (CASSS VI, Lythe 36). The door jamb is carved on high quality stone from the Aislaby quarries exploited by the community at Streoneshalh (Whitby) and the finial is comparable with the Whitby plain cross series. A plausible suggestion is therefore that Streoneshalh (Whitby) had a church at Lythe: its topographical location is comparable with two retreat houses with oratories mentioned in Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people at Hexham and Lichfield; its eleventh-century estate and mother-parish are adjacent to the Whitby estate and mother-parish to the south east and the Osingadun/ Easington estate and mother-parish to the north west, sharing boundaries with both of them (Pickles 2016).

Multiple stone fragments from the late ninth, tenth or eleventh century include six from cross-shafts, two from cross-heads, seventeen from recumbent grave-markers known as ‘hogbacks’, two from related grave-markers, and eight from cross-shaped grave markers; in all this reflects somewhere between nineteen and thirty-five monuments (CASSS VI, pp. 153-67, Lythe). This suggests that any early church or churches remained a significant focus for commemoration in this period. Based on comparable concentrations of monuments at other sites, the association between ‘hogbacks’ and areas of Scandinavian settlement or trading, and the Old Norse myths represented on one of these monuments, a plausible suggestion is that these monuments were raised by Scandinavian traders operating via the beach between Whitby and Sandsend below Lythe Bank (Stocker 2000, p. 200).

The estate on which the church was founded may have included the site of a Roman signal station one mile to the north-west of Lythe near Goldsborough. This is notable because Streoneshalh (Whitby) was apparently founded adjacent to another lost Roman signal station (Bell 1998).

Building

A religious community’s retreat, oratory, or estate church?

General Information.

General Plan.

Two fragments of stone sculpture, perhaps architectural elements from stone buildings, could belong to two different dates and phases of building.

Plan – none

Parts

•Roof: A stone fragment discovered in the church c. 1980 has been identified as a late seventh- or early eighth-century finial from the roof gable of a stone church – CASSS VI, Lythe 37.

Plan – none

Parts

Door: A stone fragment discovered during rebuilding in 1910 in the walls and foundations of the western tower built in 1769 has been identified as a late eighth- or early ninth-century door jamb – CASSS VI, Lythe 36.

• Crosses: Stone fragments from six cross-shafts and two cross-heads were discovered during rebuilding in 1910 in the walls and/ or floor of the western tower built in 1769 and have been dated to the late ninth and tenth century.

• Grave-markers: Stone fragments from seventeen recumbent grave-markers known as ‘hogbacks’, two related grave-markers, and eight from cross-shaped grave markers were discovered during rebuilding in 1910 in the walls and/or floor of the western tower built in 1769 and have been dated to the first half of the tenth century or in one case to the tenth or eleventh century.

Chronology and arguments about dating: The dating of the remains from the early church or churches and the assigning of them to two phases depends on the art historical dating framework developed to analyze Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture.

Key Primary Sources

Historical sources

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

VCA: Anonymous Monk of Melrose, Life of Cuthbert, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940).

VCB: Bede, Life of Cuthbert, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940).

Sculptural sources

CASSS VI: Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Vol. VI: Northern Yorkshire, ed. J. T. Lang (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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

Bell (1998): Bell, T., ‘A Roman Signal Station at Whitby’, Archaeological Journal, 135 (1998), pp. 303-22.

Cambridge (1984): Cambridge, E., ‘The Early Church in County Durham: A Reassessment’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 137 (1984), pp. 65-82, at 74.

Cambridge (1995): Cambridge, E., ‘Archaeology and the Cult of St Oswald in Pre-Conquest Northumbria’, in C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge (eds), Oswald: Northumbrian kings to European saint (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995), pp. 128-63, at 140-4.

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

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.

Stocker (2000): Stocker, D., ‘Monuments and Merchants: Irregularities in the Distribution of Stone Sculpture in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire in the Tenth Century’, in Dawn M. Hadley and Julian D. Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 179-212, at 200.

Thacker (1992): Thacker, A., ‘Monks, Preaching and Pastoral Care in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds), Pastoral Care Before the Parish (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), pp. 137-70.

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

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

Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture – Volume VI: https://chacklepie.com/ascorpus/catvol6.php

Digital Survey of English Place-Names: https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/

Key to English Place-Names: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/ins/resources/kepn.aspx

Information About the Entry

26/06/24

Thomas Pickles

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