Archaeologists find exiled Anglo-saxon hermit king’s lair
ABritish cave dwelling has been identified as the refuge of an exiled Anglo-saxon king. Anchor Church, located by the River Trent in a secluded part of the countryside in central England, was long considered to be an 18thcentury ‘folly’, an extravagant building made solely for ornamentation or as a joke.
But a recent study has revealed that the cave house is the real deal. The 1,200-year-old structure was built during the tumultuous life of the Northumbrian king Eardwulf, who was hounded from his throne to live as a hermit, and later became a saint. Local legend said Eardwulf, or St Hardulph as he was later known, lived inside the cave dwelling after he was deposed and exiled for mysterious reasons in 806 CE. A fragment from a 16th-century book states that Eardwulf “has a cell in a cliff a little from the Trent,’’ and the banished king was buried in 830 CE at a location just five miles from the cave.
Edmund Simons, an archaeologist at the Royal Agricultural University in England, is convinced that Eardwulf lived in the caves under the watchful eyes of his enemies. “The architectural similarities with Saxon buildings, and the documented association with Hardulph/ Eardwulf, make a convincing case that these caves were constructed, or enlarged, to house the exiled king,” said Simons.
Eardwulf lived and ruled during a time of persistent political instability in medieval England. During the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, seven key kingdoms and over 200 kings intrigued, murdered and warred against each other in a fervent, constant scramble for supremacy. Eardwulf took the throne in 796 CE after the killing of his two immediate predecessors, and ruled Northumbria for ten years before he was chased from power – possibly, according to some scholars, by his own son – to spend his remaining years in exile in the rival kingdom of Mercia. With all of this civil strife, hiding in a cave with the remainder of his disciples was far from the most abnormal idea Eardwulf could have come up with. “It was not unusual for deposed or retired royalty to take up a religious life during this period, gaining sanctity and in some cases canonisation,” Simons said. “Living in a cave as a hermit would have been one way this could have been achieved.”
The researchers reconstructed the original plan of the caves, which includes three rooms and an easterly facing chapel, using detailed measurements, a drone survey and a careful study of the architectural features, which closely resemble other Saxon architecture. Despite having been overlooked by historians until recently, cave dwellings may be “the only intact domestic buildings to have survived from the Saxon period,” Simons said. The team has identified over 20 other cave houses in westcentral England that could date back as far as the fifth century.
The Anchor Church caves were later modified in the 18th century, when it was written that the English aristocrat Sir Robert Burdett “had it fitted up so that he and his friends could dine within its cool and romantic cells”. Burdett added brickwork and window frames to the caves, as well as widening the openings so that welldressed women could enter.
Did you know? Anglo-saxons were farmer-warriors