Bardney Lincolnshire

History

Bardney was once a slight island in the marshy ground around the river Witham. The "ey" part of the name means island, and it was named after Saxon landowner or chief, Bearda - hence Bearda's"ey" (Bearddanig), from which the name Bardney evolved. Before the River Witham was straightened in 1812 the abbey site would have been close to the river, and would have made an ideal spot for a monastery combining the isolation necessary for the religious life with the access to markets needed for economic survival.

There is little remaining of the Abbey, if you visit the site at the bottom of Abbey Road, but there are many interesting artifacts in St. Lawrence's Church located on Church Lane.

The Witham Valley is remarkable for the number of medieval monasteries along its course. On the east bank, there were six (Barlings, Stainfield, Bardney, Tupholme, Stixwold and Kirkstead) with three more (Nocton, Catley and Kyme), on the west bank. The reason for the unusually high concentration of Abbeys was presumably the river itself, which served as a busy trade link between Lincoln and the port of Boston. The major income of the monasteries came from wool production and access to the river ( and to the trade and wealth that flowed up and down it) was vital.

The first monastery at Bardney was built in Anglo-Saxon times and endowed by King Ethelred, King or Mercia, and his wife Osthryd. It housed a shrine to Asthryd's uncle, King (and later Saint) Oswald. He was killed in battle in 642AD and his body (minus head and arms) was brought to Bardney in 675AD. Oswald's head went to Lindisfarne Abbey and his arms to Bamburgh. The shrine to St. Oswald made Bardney an important place of pilgrimage and a prosperous religious centre.

The story of the arrival of the bones of St. Oswald at the monastery has given rise to a well-known Lincolnshire saying. On the night that St. Oswald's bones arrived, the monks shut the Abbey gates and refused to allow the coffin in but, during the night, a "pillar of light" shone skywards from the cart and convinced the monks that St. Oswald was indeed a saint and they had been wrong to shut the coffin out. Ever after, so the story goes, they left their gates wide open - hence the saying "Do you come from Bardney?" meaning that you have left a door open.

Very little is known about the early monastery. It is possible that the whole of the small island was consecrated, with several buildings, constituting the early "monastery", scattered around it. Bardney Parish Church was once also on the site, alongside the monastery. The church fell into ruins in 1434 and, as the parishioners annoyed the monks by coming into the Abbey precinct, the Abbot agreed to build them a new church. The church, with its unusual medieval brick chancel, is still in the village centre.

When St. Lawrence's was 500 years old, in 1934, there was a great celebration in the village and a pageant was played out about the abbey and St. Oswald. Arthur Willett from Wragby Road, Lincoln painted Saints and Bible scenes on the walls of the church with a text running around the top of the walls. Unfortunately the interior of the church was not well cared for over the intervening years and during the year 2000 restoration work was undertaken to return the walls to their former beauty.

The saints are an interesting collection of Lincolnshire dignitaries including St. Oswald, St. Hugh (a Bishop of Lincoln in the twelfth Century), Bishop Remigius (the first Bishop of Lincoln) and St. Dunstan who brought the Bendictine monks to Bardney.

The Abbey was destroyed by Viking raiders in 870AD and the bones of St. Oswald were taken to Gloucester in 909AD for safe keeping. Bardney was refounded as a monastery in 1087.

Location

Bardney is in Lincolnshire, situated about 10 miles south east of the city of Lincoln. A major river, the River Witham flows alongside the village between the city of Lincoln and the town of Boston, which is beside The Wash and the North Sea.