Anglo-Saxon Churches and the Origins of the English Parish

Dr Steve Bassett (Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Head of Department at the University of Birmingham) delivered the Autumn term History Society Lecture on Friday 17th October to a large and appreciative audience.

Today's English parish system has been in continuous existence for over 1000 years, and many of our earliest surviving churches are even older. The Lecture followed on from last term's lecture on the parish and rural identity, by exploring the earliest origins of the English parish. In the first part of the lecture, Dr Bassett examined how and why this familiar system, and the majority of the churches associated with it, originated in the late Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods. He then went on to look at what the parish system replaced: how was pastoral care delivered before King Alfred's time? And what survives today - churches and land-units - of that even earlier system?

Dr Bassett is one of the country's leading experts on land use and settlement patterns in post-Roman and medieval England, and he certainly lived up to his reputation as a lively, forthright and entertaining lecturer.