This is a guide to churches within a “day trip” of Oxford which have been authoritatively reported as having Anglo-Saxon or early Post-Conquest structural remains.
Instructions: The Gazetteer is available in two forms (PDF and Word) The images associated with this are in various zipped files.
Users are strongly recommended to read the “Introduction and Advice” on page 1 of the gazetteer.
The content of the new version of the gazetteer includes images of 25 churches which were not available for the first version. The revised descriptions of these churches often reflect the writer’s visits. There are also notes and pictures of 4 churches not mentioned in version one.

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In 1983 the Sutton Hoo treasure loomed large, as it still does, and the Coppergate helmet had just been discovered in York; pictures of this helmet on the cover and within this volume were among the first to appear anywhere. Since that time the two most striking discoveries relevant to the world of Beowulf are the series of large early medieval halls excavated near the village of Lejre in Denmark, long thought to be the location the poet imagined for the hall Heorot (see http://www.acmrs.org/publications/catalog/beowulf-and-lejre), and the huge Staffordshire Hoard with its own online site. Two additional pictures are offered here with my translation: Ian Harvey’s superb photograph of the mask of the Sutton Hoo helmet (do not miss the bird flying up the mask, its wings marked by garnets), and, for an analogue to the interior of an early medieval hall in use, Ben Stechschulte’s photograph of a Senecan longhouse reconstructed by members of that tribe.

Here are three further books containing images that help us visualize the world of the poem:

Randolph Swearer, Raymond Oliver and Marijane Osborn, <i>Beowulf: A Likeness</i> (Yale, 1990). Swearer’s sometimes almost surreal photographs alongside Oliver’s verse retelling of Beowulf freshly evoke armor and other artifacts, and Swearer also includes a range of photographs locating the action of the poem geographically. My essay at the end, “Imagining the Real-World Setting of <i>Beowulf</i>,” explains the significance of the photographs -- for example, of the Oseberg ship as a ghost-ship floating over the landscape of Sutton Hoo (pp. 12-13) and the horrifying sight of the only manuscript of <i>Beowulf</i> in existence engulfed in flames (pp. 94-97).

Seamus Heaney and John D. Niles, <i>Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition</i> (Norton 2008). Niles imaginatively combines artifacts with landscape in the illustrations he selected for this lavish yet inexpensive book.

Stephen Pollington, Lindsay Kerr and Brett Hammond, <i>Wayland’s Work: Anglo-Saxon Art 4th to 5th Century</i> (Anglo-Saxon Books 2010). Again heavily illustrated and with extensive useful commentary, this fine book offers the most definitive collection to date of the “artistic” artifacts of the period named.
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The church was extended in the 14th century, adorned with dripstone carvings, 17th century hatchments and further extended in the Victorian period. The church was made redundant in 1956 and was converted to a Museum of Rural History in the 1970s. Since 1997, it has been closed to the public but CO1 is working with Colchester Borough Council and English Heritage to restore the Grade 1 listed building as a place of national importance, incorporating a public café, a youth music and arts venue and a place for communities to meet and be supported.

The café is run by employed staff and volunteers, working regularly with organisations such as GO4 Enterprise, whose aims are to provide training, work and ongoing support to young people unable to get employment. CO1 has free Wifi and is a licensed venue for live music.
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Info:

CO1 (Youth Culture Ltd) - Registered Charity 1085944

Visit the café: Mon-Fri 9am-4.30pm
CO1, Holy Trinity Church, Trinity Street, Colchester CO1 1JR
01206 571427
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