9781800084360
9781800084377
A detailed study of one of the oldest largely intact churches in England.
The Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, built on the ruins of a Roman fort, dates from the mid-seventh century and is one of the oldest largely intact churches in England. It stands in splendid isolation on the shoreline at the mouth of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, where the land meets and interpenetrates with the sea and the sky. This book brings together contributors from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences to uncover the premodern contexts and modern resonances of this medieval building and its landscape setting. In analyzing the significance of the chapel and surrounding landscape over more than a thousand years, this collection additionally contributes to wider debates about the relationship between space and place, and particularly the interfaces between both medieval and modern cultures and also heritage and the natural environment.
The Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, built on the ruins of a Roman fort, dates from the mid-seventh century and is one of the oldest largely intact churches in England. It stands in splendid isolation on the shoreline at the mouth of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, where the land meets and interpenetrates with the sea and the sky. This book brings together contributors from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences to uncover the premodern contexts and modern resonances of this medieval building and its landscape setting. In analyzing the significance of the chapel and surrounding landscape over more than a thousand years, this collection additionally contributes to wider debates about the relationship between space and place, and particularly the interfaces between both medieval and modern cultures and also heritage and the natural environment.
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Contributors
Introduction: A contested landscape
Johanna Dale
Section 1: St Peter’s Chapel and its pre-modern contexts
1 St Peter’s Chapel: What the building has to tell us
David Andrews
Appendix: The 1978 survey of St Peter’s Chapel
2 The Roman fort of Othona
Andrew Pearson
3 Dengie, Ythancaestir and Othona: The early medieval landscape context of St Peter-on-the-Wall
Stephen Rippon
4 Cedd, Bradwell and the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England
Barbara Yorke
5 Put to good use: The religious afterlife of the Saxon Shore forts
Richard Hoggett
6 Early medieval monasteries on the North Sea coast of Anglo-Saxon England
David Petts
7 Land, marsh and sea. Transformations in landscape and farming at Bradwell on Sea, c.1086–c.1650
Kevin Bruce and Christopher Thornton, assisted by Neil Wiffen
Section 2: St Peter’s Chapel and its modern contexts
8 ‘A building of altogether exceptional interest’: The rediscovery of St Peter’s Chapel in the nineteenth century, and its restoration in the twentieth
James Bettley
9 ‘And withal a great silence’: The spiritual landscape of the Othona community and St Peter-on-the-Wall
Ken Worpole
10 A case study in vulnerability: Bradwell A, a trial environment for nuclear power
Gillian Darley
11 The St Peter’s Way: Leisure, heritage and pilgrimage
Johanna Dale
12 Maldon and the Blackwater Estuary: Literature, culture and practice where river meets sea
Beth Whalley
13 The last of Essex: Contemporary architecture and cultural landscape
Charles Holland
14 Care and maintenance in perpetuity? The nuclear landscape of the Blackwater Estuary
Warren Harper and Nastassja Simensky
Index
List of tables
Contributors
Introduction: A contested landscape
Johanna Dale
Section 1: St Peter’s Chapel and its pre-modern contexts
1 St Peter’s Chapel: What the building has to tell us
David Andrews
Appendix: The 1978 survey of St Peter’s Chapel
2 The Roman fort of Othona
Andrew Pearson
3 Dengie, Ythancaestir and Othona: The early medieval landscape context of St Peter-on-the-Wall
Stephen Rippon
4 Cedd, Bradwell and the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England
Barbara Yorke
5 Put to good use: The religious afterlife of the Saxon Shore forts
Richard Hoggett
6 Early medieval monasteries on the North Sea coast of Anglo-Saxon England
David Petts
7 Land, marsh and sea. Transformations in landscape and farming at Bradwell on Sea, c.1086–c.1650
Kevin Bruce and Christopher Thornton, assisted by Neil Wiffen
Section 2: St Peter’s Chapel and its modern contexts
8 ‘A building of altogether exceptional interest’: The rediscovery of St Peter’s Chapel in the nineteenth century, and its restoration in the twentieth
James Bettley
9 ‘And withal a great silence’: The spiritual landscape of the Othona community and St Peter-on-the-Wall
Ken Worpole
10 A case study in vulnerability: Bradwell A, a trial environment for nuclear power
Gillian Darley
11 The St Peter’s Way: Leisure, heritage and pilgrimage
Johanna Dale
12 Maldon and the Blackwater Estuary: Literature, culture and practice where river meets sea
Beth Whalley
13 The last of Essex: Contemporary architecture and cultural landscape
Charles Holland
14 Care and maintenance in perpetuity? The nuclear landscape of the Blackwater Estuary
Warren Harper and Nastassja Simensky
Index