In this 'Stories of England' article, Professor Ronald Hutton reveals the role of pre-Christian beliefs in shaping our landscapes, landmarks and language. Typographic illustrations created by Alan Kitching.
The pagan heritage of England consists of the material remains of the pre-Christian religions which were practised in this land over 35 millennia. These remains are a precious resource for inspiring the modern imagination, to create music, art and literature of all kinds, and to define personal spirituality, either in sympathy with ancient places, images and ideas, or against them. It is perhaps the richest and most diverse such heritage in Europe.
It is also one of which our knowledge is constantly increasing – and this is especially true of the most distant periods of human activity, the Old Stone Age (or Palaeolithic) and the Middle Stone Age (or Mesolithic). Only in 2003 was it realised that the caves at Creswell Crags on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border contained one of the finest collections of Palaeolithic carvings in the world; and only in the 2010s was the true size and importance appreciated of Starr Carr, a Mesolithic settlement in Yorkshire at which offerings were thrown into a neighbouring lake, and ceremonial headdresses worn.
Really, however, the construction of impressive ritual monuments only began 6,000 years ago, with the arrival of the New Stone Age (or Neolithic) in the British Isles. This brought farming (both in the cultivation of crops and herding of livestock), pottery, and polished axe heads that could fell trees. By clearing the landscape for fields and pastures, humans seem to have realised that they could alter the land in another way as well: by raising ceremonial structures which would dominate the landscape and last as long as the land itself, if not destroyed by other people.
Detail view of the ibis bird-head rock carving at Church Hole, Creswell Crags, Holbeck © Historic England
Detail view of the ibis bird-head rock carving at Church Hole, Creswell Crags, Holbeck © Historic England
Annotated Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map of Star Carr Mesolithic site showing contours © Historic England
Annotated Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map of Star Carr Mesolithic site showing contours © Historic England
Neolithic long barrows
The first widespread class of monuments built in the Neolithic – which was also the earliest of the entire human race – consisted of chambers of big stones or timbers, usually covered with large mounds which stood out in the landscape and restricted entry to the chambers. In England those mounds are generally called long barrows. At times the chambers were left standing uncovered like great stone boxes, and these are usually known as dolmens. Most such monuments contained human bones, so were shrines of a religion at least partly mediated through the dead. Such structures were built all around the western seaboard of Europe, from Spain to Denmark, between 4500 and 3000 BC.
English Heritage cares for some of the finest long barrows, of which Wayland’s Smithy in Oxfordshire and the West Kennet one in Wiltshire are the most famous. Their mounds were made of chalk or limestone rock, so would have shone white or golden when new. Some of the most impressive dolmens, from Kit’s Coty House in Kent to Trethevy Quoit in Cornwall, are also in English Heritage’s guardianship.
Interior view of West Kennet Long Barrow © Historic England
Interior view of West Kennet Long Barrow © Historic England
Illustration depicting an aerial, cut-away view of West Kennet Long Barrow, showing the internal structure of the stone chambered tombs © Historic England
Illustration depicting an aerial, cut-away view of West Kennet Long Barrow, showing the internal structure of the stone chambered tombs © Historic England
Castlerigg Stone Circle, thought to have been raised in approximately 3000 BC during the Neolithic period.
Castlerigg Stone Circle, thought to have been raised in approximately 3000 BC during the Neolithic period.
Hurlers Stone Circles, three fine late Neolithic or early Bronze Age stone circles arranged in a line.
Hurlers Stone Circles, three fine late Neolithic or early Bronze Age stone circles arranged in a line.
In the advent of the third millennium BC, the British became fascinated by round shapes, and blocked up the old chambers to worship instead in circular enclosures made of earthen banks, timber posts, standing stones, or sometimes of all three. The stone circles are mostly what survive to this day, from Castlerigg, set majestically amid the Cumbrian mountains, to the Hurlers on the edge of Bodmin Moor, not to mention the most celebrated and spectacular of all: Stonehenge. Here, uniquely, the Neolithic builders shaped the dolmens like huge pieces of wood, with polished sides and mortice and tenon joints, to create an imitation of a timber circle in stone. These circular sanctuaries were not merely open to the sky but sometimes aligned on heavenly bodies – Stonehenge being orientated on the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunsets, so that thousands of revellers still gather there at those times today. The honoured dead were no longer put into communal shrines, but sealed, with precious goods, under smaller circular mounds – called round barrows – many of which can be seen around Stonehenge.
The sacred circles were built between about 3000 and 1500 BC, in which time metal technology was adopted, and Britain passed into the Bronze Age. When they fell out of fashion, there was a gap in monument construction of several centuries, and then people began again to gather for worship in open-air enclosures formed of single or multiple banks and ditches, which often hugged the contours of a hilltop or ridge.
Iron Age monuments
We used to call these things hill forts, and think of them as noble strongholds similar to medieval castles. It now seems that they were assembly places where farming families would meet seasonally in large numbers for fairs, festivals, legal proceedings and religious ceremonies – all those which have been excavated contained shrines. These great structures became the classic monuments of the Iron Age into which Britain moved around 600 BC, and English Heritage looks after some of the best preserved, including the largest of all – Maiden Castle in Dorset – which spans 120 acres.
In AD 43 the Romans arrived and conquered most of Britain, including all of what is now England. They introduced stone-built classical temples, the representation of gods and goddesses in carvings and statues, and the recording of offerings to them in inscriptions. These remains reveal the names and identities of many of the native deities, often with beautiful names such as Belatucadrus, Cocidius, Conventina and Ollodius. In addition, however, Roman rule introduced pantheons of divinities from all over the empire, as foreign soldiers and traders arrived in Britain.
General view of the west entrance ramparts of Maiden Castle © Historic England
General view of the west entrance ramparts of Maiden Castle © Historic England
Reconstruction drawing showing the Romano-British temple at Maiden Castle, as it may have appeared after its completion in the late fourth century © Historic England
Reconstruction drawing showing the Romano-British temple at Maiden Castle, as it may have appeared after its completion in the late fourth century © Historic England
Goddesses and gods
The goddesses and gods of Egypt, Syria, Greece, Italy, Spain and all the northern provinces arrived and were given temples, shrines and honours. Sometimes they were paired with native equivalents, so that Mercury, Roman god of commerce, married Rosmerta, Celtic goddess of abundance. Images of and dedications to these many deities can be found in forts on Hadrian’s Wall and the civilian town of Corbridge to the south of it, the city of Wroxeter, the roadside station of Wall in Staffordshire, and a set of villas in the south of England.
The Romans also brought Christianity (and some of the earliest traces of that in Britain were found as lovely wall paintings, such as those at Lullingstone Roman Villa in Kent). By the fourth century that was starting to take over Britain, but it received a check in the following 200 years when pagan Anglo-Saxon newcomers occupied most of the former Roman province and gave it the name of England. They brought their own Germanic deities such as Woden, god of war and wisdom; Thunor, deity of farming and the weather; and Frigg, goddess of love or fertility. Their shrines – where they existed at all – were small and flimsy wooden structures, but they have left their names in the days of the week, as Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, along with place names such as Wednesbury and Thundersley. When the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity in turn, in the seventh century, they enjoyed only just over 100 years of security before more pagan invaders arrived from the north.
These were the Vikings, and with them came their own Norse pantheon which was essentially the same as that of the Anglo-Saxons with slightly different names, so that to them Woden, Thunor and Frigg became Odin, Thor and Freya. Only when they were converted in turn – a process not complete until the late 10th century – could England be said to have finally abandoned paganism, leaving a powerful legacy of characters, images and monuments to inspire the creative imagination ever since.
Fresco depicting three water nymphs in niche of deep room, Lullingstone Roman Villa, Kent, UK
Fresco depicting three water nymphs in niche of deep room, Lullingstone Roman Villa, Kent, UK
The Doomsday Stone from Lindisfarne Priory. One side depicts invaders, the other has a symbolic depiction of Domesday. This relic is evidence of the continued Christian community at Lindisfarne despite a brutal Viking raid © Historic England
The Doomsday Stone from Lindisfarne Priory. One side depicts invaders, the other has a symbolic depiction of Domesday. This relic is evidence of the continued Christian community at Lindisfarne despite a brutal Viking raid © Historic England
The most significant feature of that legacy is its extraordinary complexity and variety. If you are an inhabitant of most of the rest of northern Europe, from Iceland and Ireland through Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany and the Baltic States to Finland and Russia, there is one pantheon of ancient pagan deities to whom the historical memory of your particular nation refers: respectively that of the Irish, Scandinavian, Germanic, Baltic or Slavonic goddesses and gods, according to your area. Likewise, if you are a modern Greek, it is the Olympian deities to whom your imagination turns – Zeus, Athene, Aphrodite and their fellows – and if you are a modern Italian, to their Roman equivalents, Jupiter, Minerva, Venus, and the rest. In most of these nations there are only one or two kinds of ancient ceremonial monuments that survive to be cared for by national authorities.
In England, however, we have represented on our soil the divine beings of the Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, Africans, Italians, Spaniards, Gauls, and the other ancient peoples of the Rhine and Danube valleys, plus the Germanic pantheon of the Anglo-Saxons, the Scandinavian one of the Vikings and the local deities of the Iron Age British, revealed in the Roman province. Before all these, we also have three great periods of impressive prehistoric monuments. It is an extraordinary inheritance, of which to be proud and which to preserve and augment for the future.
PROFESSOR RONALD HUTTON Professor Hutton is an authority on history of the British Isles in the 16th and 17th centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
ALAN KITCHING
Alan is one of the world's foremost practitioners of letterpress typographic design and printmaking.
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