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Early 7th-century pendants unearthed in Kent. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Anglo Saxons - The origins of England
3
days
from
£1,010
12th March 2025
- Eleven 40-minute talks with Q&As and one panel discussion spanning Wednesday afternoon to Friday lunchtime.
- Esteemed historians speak on Anglo Saxon history, archaeology, art and culture.
- Based at the ever-welcoming Castle Hotel in Taunton for two nights.
The Anglo-Saxon era, from the early fifth century to the Norman Conquest, is crucial to our understanding of England, for it was during this turbulent half-millennium that the foundations of the country were laid. The early English produced dazzling works of art, such as the Sutton Hoo treasure and the Lindisfarne Gospels, and works of poetry that continue to resonate. It remains a period of considerable obscurity, far less well documented than the centuries that followed. In recent decades, however, thanks to the efforts of historians and archaeologists, more and more has been discovered about this dynamic yet mysterious lost world.
The excellent Castle Hotel, Taunton, is our host. Renowned for its service, comforts and superb catering, it has been owned and run by the Chapman family for over 60 years. The symposium takes place in the Music Room.
Our speakers will include: Professor Michelle P. Brown, Dr Helen Gittos, Dr Marc Morris, Professor Rory Naismith, Professor Levi Roach.
Full programme to be confirmed.
Speakers
Professor Michelle P. Brown
Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the University of London, she is a Visiting Professor at University College London and a Visiting Research Fellow at Durham University. Her former positions include the Curator of Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library, the Sandars Lecturer in Bibliography at Cambridge University, and Lay Canon and Chapter Member at St Paul’s Cathedral. She has published on the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Luttrell Psalter, and the Holkham Bible. Her latest book is Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion, 2023).
Dr Helen Gittos
Associate Professor, Colyer-Fergusson Fellow and Tutor in Early Medieval History at Balliol College, Oxford. Her work focuses on the history of the church and its rituals in the Middle Ages, and she is as interested in buildings, objects and archaeological evidence as in written texts. She is the author of several works on medieval liturgy, including Liturgy, Architecture and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England (2013). A second strand of her research has been about language, and in particular the role and status of English in relation to Latin; She has also been researching aspects of the conversion of the Anglo Saxons to Christianity.
Dr Marc Morris
Author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England (2021), as well as The Norman Conquest (2012) and biographies of Edward I and King John. Marc studied and taught at the universities of London and Oxford and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He presented the highly acclaimed TV series Castle and wrote its accompanying book. He regularly writes for history magazines and broadcasts on radio and television.
Professor Rory Naismith
Professor of Early Medieval English History at Corpus Christi College Cambridge. His research focuses on economic and social developments in Anglo-Saxon England. He is interested in the cross-fertilisation of material and written sources, and has worked particularly closely with coinage. At present he is preparing a major study of the social impact of monetisation in early medieval England and its neighbours, to be published by Princeton University Press.
Professor Levi Roach
Professor of Medieval History and Diplomatic at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Kingship and Consent in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Whitfield Prize 2014 proxime accessit) and Æthelred the Unready (Longman-History Today Prize 2017, Labarge Prize 2017) and Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton University Press, 2021). His latest book is a popular history, Empires of the Normans: Makers of Europe, Conquerors of Asia.
Itinerary
Talk 1. Marc Morris
The Anglo-Saxons: An Overview
In the early fifth century Britain was a ruined Roman province – a land of crumbling temples and abandoned villas. By the late tenth century it was dominated by a newly forged kingdom called ‘England’ – a country of shires, monasteries, boroughs and bishoprics. That transformation was caused by the Anglo-Saxons. This talk explores their journey from warlords to kings, from paganism to Christianity, and from a galaxy of competing peoples to a single, unified nation.
Talk 2. Michelle Brown
Bede and the Northumbrian Renaissance
Bede (c.673-735) was one of the greatest scholars of the post-Roman West. But how did this Anglo-Saxon, entrusted aged 7 to the new monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow and spending his life there, achieve this? Only travelling locally, how did he write a guide to the sacred sites of the Near East, still used by travellers in the early 20th century? How did he produce the first tide timetables, having recognised gravitational pull of the moon? Why is he ‘the father of English history’? What was his role in creating Codex Amiatinus, the Lindisfarne Gospels and the cult of St Cuthbert? Did he give us our earliest English poetry and the first biblical translation in English? This lecture explores these questions, within the context of the Northumbrian Renaissance.
Talk 3. Helen Gittos
Title tbc
Talk 4. Martin Carver
The Sutton Hoo Story – encounters with Early England
Sutton Hoo in Suffolk is a 6th- and 7th-century burial site famous for its buried ship, laden with treasure, and unearthed in 1939. New excavations were undertaken between 1983 and 1991 to establish the context of the ship burial. The “Sutton Hoo Story” was then extended in both time and space: in time back to the neolithic and in space over Britain and the continent and the Mediterranean. Work in progress includes exploration of nearby fields in the National Trust property (by Time Team) and a full-sized reconstruction of the Mound 1 ship by the Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company across the river at Woodbridge. This talk offers a review and update and a forum for new ideas.
Talk 5. Helen Gittos
Talk tbc
Talk 6. Levi Roach
The Fury of the Northmen: The Vikings in England from Alfred to Æthelred
The Vikings were one of the most dynamic factors in the history of medieval England. While the first recorded attack on Lindisfarne in 793 is perhaps the most famous, it is the armies which beset England in the reigns of Alfred the Great (871–899) and Æthelred the Unready (978–1016) which were to have the most lasting impact. Without them, would have been no unified kingdom of England as we know it; there would also have been no Norman Conquest.
Talk 7. Rory Naismith
Talk tbc
Talk 8. Plenary
Talk 9. Michelle Brown
Anglo-Saxon Art, Saints, Scholars and Vikings
The Viking impact was a catalyst to the coalescence of nation states in Britain, Ireland and parts of continental Europe, as well as Scandinavia. Anglo-Saxon England emerged from the raids and resistance of the ninth century with a renewed commitment to its cultural identity and faith, and to regaining the Danelaw through conversion and conquest, occasioning trans-cultural exchange. The Benedictine reform movement fostered artistic flowering, whilst renewed, royally-sponsored Scandinavian attacks in the late tenth century led English scholars to stock their libraries with anthologies of English poetry, science and sermons. For the brief time that England formed part of Cnut’s international Scandinavian trading empire, patronage of ostentatious arts flourished, reflecting complex relations that would culminate in England clashing with the Northmen in 1066, related in the Bayeux Tapestry
Talk 10. Rory Naismith
Talk tbc
Talk 11. Martin Carver
Formative Britain – as told by archaeology
This talk explores the story of Britain between the end of Roman rule and the Norman Conquest, the fifth to 11th centuries ce – but unusually, as a tale told by archaeology. Five great themes of archaeological discovery provide our frame: Personhood (about people), Working from home (about houses and settlements), Addressing eternity (about burials), Monumentality (about sculpture, churches and illuminated manuscripts) and Materiality in words (about myths and records). The result shows an island of great diversity, its political theatre at first focused on single male leadership, then on spirituality and then putting its faith in wealth. This 700 year journey – in which the English had an increasing role – formed the Britain we have today.
Talk 12. Marc Morris
The Anglo-Saxons: Myth and Reality
Ever since the Norman Conquest, the English have looked back on the Anglo-Saxon era with nostalgia and tended to regard it as a golden age. Pre-Conquest kings were elected and the Church was more pristine; women had better rights than they did in later centuries, and people in general enjoyed greater freedom. But how much of this is true, and how much of it is the product of wishful thinking?
Order of talks may be subject to change.
Practicalities
Prices, per person. Two sharing: standard double or twin £1,010; garden room £1,260. Single occupancy: deluxe single £1,010; double for sole use £1,210.
Hotel accommodation for 2 nights; breakfasts and 2 dinners with wine; admission to the talks; drinks reception; refreshments during breaks; gratuities for hotel staff.
The Castle Hotel, Taunton: the hotel’s bedrooms are individually and charmingly decorated. Doubles and twins are mainly of a good size, and the largest – Garden Rooms – overlook the garden. The majority have a bath with a shower fitment (only four have a walk-in shower, so please request when you book if you require one of these).
The hotel has a lift, though some bedrooms do then involve some step access. There are no bedrooms on the ground floor. The Music Room is on a mezzanine level, which can only be reached via a flight of stairs from the lobby.
Taunton lies on the doorstep of Exmoor and the Quantocks, areas with some of the loveliest countryside in England.
Maximum 68 resident participants.
Dates & prices
2025
Date
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