THE P RTAL


May 2012


Anglo-Saxon Saints of the Darlington Area


by Harry Schnitker


ALTHOUGH DARLINGTON is without a doubt an Anglo-Saxon settlement, it has no Anglo- Saxon remains. Not that this should surprise us: Deaornoth’s Farm did not become an important settlement until the eighteenth century.


Te Anglo-Saxon imprint


is a slight one and so we have to cast our net wider, and the haul then becomes more respectable. We find ourselves in the medieval diocese of Durham, here, the successor to Lindisfarne, and the influence of both great Anglo-Saxon sees can be felt everywhere.


River Tees Our first port of call is along the River Tees, in the


All Saints, Sockburn


adjacent parishes of Low and Over Dinsdale. Low Dinsdale has a church now much mutilated, the result of an 1876 ‘restoration’. If it had Anglo-Saxon ancestry, it has vanished. However, its porch contains the fragments of seven Anglo-Saxon crosses, which once stood proud in the churchyard. One is still in situ, but again is only a fragment.


Anglo-Saxon crosses Across the river, near Over Dinsdale, are the ruined


remains of the Church of All Saints at Sockburn. Nave and chancel are definitely Anglo-Saxon, and here no fewer than 22 remnants of Anglo-Saxon crosses remain. Tese must have been a tremendous statement of faith when standing.


Te Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that in 780


Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, was crowned here. Higbald leſt a good description of the great Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793, which martyred so many monks. Sometime later, Snaculf son of Cykel gave the local church to the see of Durham, where the monks of Lindisfarne had finally reburied the body of their patron Saint, Cuthbert.


Aycliffe To the north of Darlington we find another church


with substantial Anglo-Saxon remains, this time at


Aycliffe. Te church is dedicated to St Andrew, and incorporates remains of the tenth-century Anglo- Saxon church. Like the churches on the Tees, it has two fine cross-shaſts, one displaying an Agnus Dei, the other, the Crucifixion and the crucifixion of St Peter.


St Acca of Hexham Te original church was


older still, and dated back to just aſter 740. It was in that church that two diocesan synods were held in 782 and 789, as reported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Tis brings us to our regional Anglo-Saxon saint, for the titular of the church in those days was St Acca of Hexham. Acca died around 740, and was almost immediately revered as a saint. He had been a major scholar, whose library was famed, and who loaned many of his manuscripts to Blessed Bede as sources for his Ecclesiastical History of the English-Speaking People.


St Andrew St Acca had been a friend of St Wilfred, and had


succeeded him to the see of Hexham. He is oſten, and reasonably, credited with introducing the devotion to St Andrew to Scotland, where he fled in 732. We may recall that the church at Aycliffe, originally dedicated to Acca, now has St Andrew as its titular, and that the cathedral in Hexham carried the same titular.


Anglo-Saxon roots of the Catholic Churches Tis is a reminder of the common Anglo-Saxon roots


of the Catholic Churches in England and Scotland, just as Lindisfarne is a reminder of the common Celtic roots. Te dedication to St Andrew is, furthermore, a reminder of the Roman and Apostolic roots of our Faith. Hard to think of a more fitting Anglo-Saxon patron for the Darlington members of Ordinariate!


Page 14


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16