The heathen culture of the earliest Anglo-Saxons is extremely hard to understand as so little survives and is largely filtered through the lens of Christian writers. However, place name evidence and archaeology can contribute to our understanding.

One of the key gods in the pantheon was Woden. He gives his name to Wednesday, which to the Romans was Mercurialis (the Day of Mercury) and in modern romance languages is still called after that god eg “mercredi” in French. The correspondence between Roman and pagan gods is of interest because the Romans often tried to match up pantheons as they subsumed various tribal groups under their banner.

Mercury was the god of knowledge and death. He was also the messenger, connecting him with writing, and also healing, and leading the dead to the Underworld. Interestingly these themes also appear in what is known of the Norse equivalent, Othinn, and what little evidence we have points to them holding true for Woden as well.

The derivation of the name is from the earlier Germanic language, meaning “lord of wod”. This referred to an excited mental state, such as rage, rapture or drunkenness. Related words include the Old English for possession by demons or madness (woddream) or frenzy (wodnes). According to Adam of Bremen (11^th century) “Woden id est furor” (Woden, that is, frenzy).

Old English glosses equate Mercury and Woden eg the Corpus Glossary at Cambridge.

The earliest written record of the Woden is the runic inscription on the Alemannic Nordendorf fibula, a 7^th century brooch from southern Germany. He next turns up in Bede (where else?) in his early 8^th century Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Germanic sources include Paul the Deacon’s History of the Langobards (late 8^th century), where Paul claims Woden is worshipped by all the nations of Germania.

Woden was probably associated with language. However we have no tradition of Woden creating the runes in the way we have for the Norse Othinn – at least, none that survives.

Place name evidence is widespread across England. These include Wednesbury and Wednesfield (Staffordshire), Woodnesborough and Wormhill (Kent), Wenslow and Wensley (Bedfordshire) and Wensley (Derbyshire). Older place names no longer in use also occur in records. However, not every place name means it was a temple or equivalent.

Woden also features in the genealogical lists of the almost all the Anglo-Saxon royal families as an ancestor. This includes Offa, Penda and Alfred. The original source does seem to have been Mercian, during the Mercian Supremacy in the 8^th century, and may have been adopted in Wessex and Kent at that time.

The link between Woden and kings and warlords was one of violence and supremacy. This was both on the battlefield and in the mead hall, when persuasion and fluency was critical to policy and decision making. Early leaders were often also priests, mediating with the gods on behalf of their people and this resulted in special (secret) knowledge through runes and writing. As healing was another of the god’s powers, the king was also seen as being able to cure disease and enact shamanic rites. Ultimately this resulted in a view of kings as sacred or having a special relationship with the sacred.

The cult animals of Othinn were the raven and the wolf, and this may also apply to Woden. The animals feature strongly in Anglo-Saxon art, such as the work from Sutton Hoo (early 7^th century).

We can also see some evidence of an eye defect on objects from various graves. Othinn is well known as the one-eyed god, having left one of his eyes in the Well of Mimir. There is no surviving equivalent story for Woden but there is some evidence in Anglo-Saxon art for a parallel tradition. Many of the heads of Woden are shown in profile, for example, so that only one eye is visible but this is not conclusive. More importantly the Sutton Hoo helmet has a variation in the decoration on the eyebrows. The garnets on the right eyebrow are back by gold foil, brightening their appearance, while those on the left are deliberately left without foil, darkening their appearance. This pattern of variation is repeated elsewhere. A number of button brooches (5^th-6^th century) show male faces with one vertical and one horizontal eye, thought to represent a one-eyed individual. It is possible these represent Woden.

Based on an article by Jenny Ashby, Withowinde #187 (Autumn 2018)

St Mary’s Broughton probably dates from between 970 and 1050 AD and was most likely a thegn’s private church rather than a parish church. It was originally turriform, that is, the tower was the nave, with the chancel to the east. Internally, the tower measures 18ft (5.49 m) east-west and 13ft (3.96 m) north-south, with the walls being 2 ft 10 ins (0.86 m) thick (Taylor and Taylor, 1965). This would have accommodated a congregation of about 70 people (3 people per square metre). However, the altar could have been sited within the nave, which would have made the area for a congregation even smaller. The current tower arch would originally have been the arch to the chancel and its best side faced the Anglo-Saxon nave so the worshippers would have seen the chancel framed by an exquisite arch (which is unfortunately now hidden by a hideous curtain). The tower arch is 10 ft 6 ins (3.2 m) tall and 4 ft 5 ins (1.35 m) wide, although the actual passageway through it is only 3 ft 3 ins (0.99 m) wide due to the projection of the inner jambs (Taylor and Taylor, 1965). These inner jambs currently support thin air, but it is believed they once supported a tympanum. The jamb on the left (looking east) is much worn away by scratchings, making it look like an egg-timer. Legend has it that it was used for sharpening blades, but it’s more likely to be a case of para-religious use; people were taking scrapings from a holy place to put in food or water as a cure. The marks were probably made with iron nails. This was a common practice in the medieval period. The arch itself has no keystone, which is typical of Anglo-Saxon construction. There is a doorway high up in the west wall of the current nave, ostensibly an entrance to a gallery for thegnly worshippers, but it is probably too high up for this.

The foundations of the Anglo-Saxon chancel extend 120 ins (304 cm) into the current nave (Points, 2016) and they are marked out in tape. However, there is no scar of it on the west wall of the nave. Externally, the Anglo-Saxon part of the tower extends to 40 ft (12.19 m); it was originally higher but both it and the stair turret (of which more later) were truncated when the belfry was replaced in the 14^th century. The tower consists of 4 bands of roughly equal height of quite distinct masonry. The first is roughly-coursed rubble to about 7 courses above the south door, then 12 courses of herringbone work (this mode of construction is an efficient way of building a strong wall out of rubbish material), then roughly-dressed rectangular stones, then a mixture of these with patches of irregularly laid rubble (Taylor and Taylor, 1965). This sequence can be seen internally too. The quoins, which strengthen the corners, are laid side-alternate. There are two small round-headed windows in the south face of the tower, one on each of the middle two bands of masonry, and one similar window in the herringbone band in the north face of the tower. The Anglo-Saxons used cast concrete to make the heads of such windows, which were faced, externally, with openings cut from single pieces of stone. The south doorway is obviously Anglo-Saxon, with its round head, hood moulding, large imposts (one glaringly restored) and decorated capitals.

The external stair turret, one of only four in the country, is what originally attracted me to Broughton Church. Round stair turrets may have represented the Holy Sepulchre, the stairs ascending to Heaven. Although still Anglo-Saxon in date, Broughton’s stair turret is a later addition; there is a straight joint between it and the tower. Also, the floor levels between the tower and turret are not properly aligned. It is not built of local stones but of sandstones and gritstones from the Pennines. These are reused Roman material, most likely from York or Templeborough, some of which contain Lewis holes. This was not only a convenient building material, it also gave a link to “Romanitas” and therefore the “true” church. The building style of the turret is different to that of the tower, comprising of large, square (average size: 18 ins or 0.46 m), roughly-dressed stones. The 3 turret windows are different too; they are narrow, rectangular, vertical slits, framed with narrow strips of stone (Taylor and Taylor, 1965).

Internally, the stair turret is effectively a rubble and concrete helical (going upwards) tunnel. The treads of the roughly-dressed steps are attached individually to a central pillar, or newel, and simply bedded on the floor of the tunnel. The newel is a stack of reused Roman columns! The stairway leads to a first-floor chamber, from which you can peer down into the church, but then carries on upwards, implying that it once led to a second-floor chamber. The ground-floor door to the stairway is round-headed, with the usual lack of keystone.

There are 2 “Lindseytype” grave slabs in the church, which show there was religious activity on the site in the late 10th or early 11^th centuries. One is incorporated into the floor around a pier on the south side of the nave and is almost impossible to photograph, but the other is much easier to see. It is in the Anderson Chapel at the east end of the north aisle and has some rather nice cable pattern moulding with figure-of-eight interlace.

After the Anglo-Saxon period, the church was extended, altered and moved outwards. The present nave and chancel are Norman; the aisles and arcades were added in the 1300s.

The settlement of Broughton sits on a route-way through the Lincolnshire Wolds that follows the River Ancholme. Broughton was sited on the Roman Ermine Street and must have been a Roman settlement. Ermine Street led from Lincoln to the Humber (then northwards) but there are no settlements along this stretch of it (they are all to the west on the spring line just below the Lincoln Edge) Broughton’s Moor Beck would have been the first source of flowing water after Lincoln and there might have been a nymphaeum here. Anglo-Saxon pottery and a Grubenhaus have been found in the village. The “tun” element in Broughton’s name is probably no earlier than the 8th century,  though the “brough” element may mean “borough” or it could refer to the mounds on the sandy hills within the village.

In the Domesday Book, Broughton has 2 recorded landowners and 29 sokemen (these were a class of free peasants who had more rights than villeins and are more numerous in Lincolnshire than elsewhere possibly descended from Viking settlers), along with 34 villeins and 8 bordars. A church and a priest are referred to; this church may have been St Mary’s, but as the tower nave appears to have been private, there may have been another church too. St Mary’s may have been built by Merleswein or Grinchel the latter was King Harold’s man in the area, the shire reeve of Lincolnshire.

References

Points, G. A Gazetteer of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian Sites: Lincolnshire. 2016. Rihtspell Publishing.

Taylor, H. M. and Taylor, J. Anglo-Saxon Architecture. Vol l. 1965. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

Lecture by Dr Kevin Leahy to the English Companions at Broughton Church on 2^nd June, 2018