|
St Bees |
||
The Priory Church of
|
| Home Village Forum Site Map FAQ Help Contact |
|
Church Index
Priory Index
Church History Index
Pre-Conquest
Benedictine
Post Reformation
19th Century
20th Century
Conjectural layout
Monastic Services
|
 |
Pre-conquest times Little is known about the church before the Norman conquest and we must turn to fragments of stone, place-names and legends for help. In about AD 600 the area became part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, and during the 800's it was subject to occasional Viking raids. From about 925 the Vikings started to settle intensively in the area. The name St. Bees is a corruption of the Norse name for the village "Kirki-Becoc", which can be translated as the "church of Bega". St. Bega is our local saint and was supposedly an Irish king's daughter who valued virginity. She was said to promised in marriage to a Viking prince and according to a medieval manuscript was "son of the king of Norway". Bega then "fled across the Irish sea to land in this remote spot on the Cumbrian coast. There she settled for a time, leading a life of exemplary piety. Then, fearing the raids of pirates which were starting along the coast, she moved over to Northumbria."
There is nothing to support the oft-quoted date of AD 650 for St. Bega, and AD 950 is more likely. There is also no evidence of a "Nunnery" - another speculative piece of history from the 1800's. Rather, St. Bega may have lived as a hermit or "anchoress". For a fuller understanding of the St. Bega legends, you are strongly recommended to go to "St Bega: Cult, Fact and Legend " on this website, which is latest definitive analysis of the known historical sources, and from which the above extracts are taken.
Above - Scroll-work Cross in the Priory history area; it dates from the 10-11th Century Right - The 9th Century Celtic cross, the oldest carved stone in the parish: still standing in the Priory's ancient graveyard.
|
Home Village Forum Site Map FAQ Help Contact Copyright Bega Web Sites 2007 |
She is associated in legend with a number of miracles, the most famous being the "Snow miracle". This reads: "Ranulf le Meschin had endowed the monastery with its lands, but a lawsuit later developed about their extent. The monks feared a miscarriage of justice. The day appointed for a perambulation of the boundaries arrived - and, lo and behold, there was a thick snowfall on all the surrounding lands but not a flake upon the lands of the priory." 
The foundations of buildings found in exacavations and the carved stones tell us that that was a church here before the Normans came, and because of this it is likely they decided to build a much grander church on the site. There is the possibility that St. Bees Priory served as a "Minster church" for the Western Lakes. This is suggested by the the ancient parish boundaries and the juristriction of the Monastic Church later on. This would have been a "mother church" for the area. Again, there is an excellent article by John Todd, which explores this subject in detail. See "