Some time in the late seventh century St Æthelthryth, alias Etheldreda, left her husband King Egfrith of Northumbria to return to her native East Anglia. On the way she is said to have crossed the Humber to Wintringham (Lincs) and then, breaking her journey, repaired 'to a hamlet situated on an island almost surrounded by fen called Alftham (ad viculum divertens, in modum insule paludibus fere circumdatum Alftham nominatum)' some ten furlongs (stadiis) away. She stayed there some days and then founded a monastery there (ibique) before resuming the journey that was to take her to Ely (Cambs). The story comes from the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis, but the compiler seems to have drawn on an Old English life of Saint Æthelthryth, There is, however, no independent evidence to substantiate the existence or location of this supposed foundation, and the authenticity of the tradition has recently been questioned. In a penetrating analysis of the material Professor Fell has argued that it was invented at Ely sometime after its refoundation in the late tenth century. Bede's account of Æthelthryth, the only near contemporary source, which draws on document and witness, is economical. It is confined to the fact of her two marriages, her continued virginity, the foundation of a monastery at Ely, and the incorrupt state of her body at her translation by her sister and successor Sexburga. Much of the story is vague and Fell observes that it owes more to Bede the hagiographer than Bede the historian. Thereafter, there is no contemporary evidence, historical, archaeological, or otherwise, for a continuing community at Ely until Ælfric's account of Bishop Æthelwold's refoundation in 963 dating from c.1000. Fell concludes that the Liber Eliensis' account of Æthelthryth's life, and the descent of her foundation at Ely from her sister Sexburga to her niece Ermenhild, and great niece Werburg is a pious myth created as propaganda by and for the new foundation. Whatever grain of truth lies in the story of the foundation of Alftham must relate to a period postdating 963.

Although largely based on negative evidence, the argument is an attractive and forceful one. After a century of social upheaval in the East Midlands and East Anglia, the refounded houses of the late tenth century were often forced to create a past in the absence of documentation. There is precious little evidence to demonstrate that a community at Crowland (Lincs), for example, survived much after the death of St Guthlac, and its supposed history was largely concocted in the two centuries after its refoundation in the 960s. Nevertheless, a kernel of authentic material is probably preserved in the house's later writings, notably in its record of its first endowment. There are likewise characteristics of the Alftham story which suggest that the Ely tradition is not completely lacking in historicity. The refounded house is not known to have had any estates in Lincolnshire or indeed claims thereto; Æthelwold its founder had purchased the estate of Barrow on Humber (Lincs), to the east of Wintringham, in 971, but that had been associated with St Ceadda and Æthelwold had given it to the newly refounded Peterborough (Northants). And yet the Liber Eliensis displays a remarkable sense of place in its account of Alftham. Its site can be localized with some precision. Until late medieval and early modern land reclamation, Wintringham itself was situated on a peninsula in the Humber estuary, but this was evidently not the site referred to, for a journey was made from there to Alftham. Rather the reference seems to be to the only other promontory in the area which, defined by the Trent, Humber, and what is now the Winterton Beck, encompassed the Lincolnshire parishes of Whitton, Alkborough, West Halton, Burton on Stather, and Flixborough, and was some twelve statue furlongs to the west. There seems to be no apparent context for such first-hand knowledge, unless the period before refoundation, for the nearest Ely estates were some eighty miles to the south in Norfolk and Huntingdonshire.

A similar intimacy with local topography is also apparent in the episode that follows the founding of the monastery at Alftham in the Liber Eliensis, and here the tradition receives some sort of independent corroboration from an early source. After leaving Alftham, en route to Ely Æthelthryth is said to have rested in a desolate spot where her staff took root and sprouted leaves during the night. Thereafter the place was known as Ædeldreðestowe and a church was built there in the saint's honour. From various sources the site can be identified with Stow Green in South Lincolnshire where an annual fair was held on her feast day (23rd June) next to the church dedicated to her in the early Middle Ages. It was in the same foundation, identified as Threekingham in the Vita Sanctae Werburgae, that St Werburg, Æthelthryth's great niece, is said to have died. Werburg's cult is clearly earlier than the refoundation of Ely, for it is attested in 958 with the first notice of the church of St Werburg in Chester, and that section of her Life which records her demise is probably drawn from an earlier source still. Her body is said to have been first been translated to Hanbury (Staffs) and to have remained incorrupt until it spontaneously dissolved in the late ninth or early tenth century to prevent it falling into the hands of the Danes. This account was clearly not a sound basis on which St Werburg's, Chester, could rest its claim to house her relics, and it therefore seems likely that the passage comes from a Life written at Hanbury before the subsequent translation to Chester between 907 and 958. If the Life of St Werburg authenticates the cult of St Æthelthryth at Stow Green before the refoundation of Ely, then there seems no ground for rejecting the authenticity of the monastery at Alftham.

If such is the case, it is perhaps worthwhile to speculate on the site of the monastery. Given the late form, it is difficult to be certain of the meaning of the name Alftham. If the viculus of the account is to be taken as an accurate description of the place as opposed to a literary device (the wildness of the area may be a topos designed to emphasize the saint's heroism), then the suffix is likely to be the OE hamm, 'land hemmed in by water or marsh', rather than OE ham, 'estate'. The first element is probably OE elfitu, ælfitu, 'a swan', and Alftham would thus translate as something like 'island frequented by swans'. Ælfetee, 'swan island' or 'swan stream', appears as the name of monastery in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 763 when Pehtwine was consecrated bishop of Whithorn there. The place is now usually identified with Elvet Hall in County Durham, but a case has recently been made for a site within the Don, Trent, and Humber system. Alftham itself is only directly paralleled by Altham in Lancashire and Elvetham in Hampshire, and it cannot be identified with any place-name or by-name in the Wintringham area. Nevertheless, the site has long been identified with West Halton where the church is dedicated to St Æthelthryth. The discovery of a high status site of the seventh to ninth centuries in the parish of Flixborough suggests an alternative location.

In 1988 industrial quarrying a mile to the south-east of the village of Flixborough brought to light several Middle Saxon burials and an extensive pre-Conquest settlement. Subsequent excavation of the site revealed a number of timber halls, with a wide defining ditch at an early phase of the complex, and a rich material culture dating from the seventh to the ninth centuries. The site was clearly an aristocratic one of some importance, but archaeologically it was not possible to determine its nature and function. A large collection of styli and an inscribed lead plaque indicate that literacy characterized the site and, taken with the burials, the fact might suggest that the complex was a monastery. However, a secular use is not necessarily ruled out thereby. Reading and writing were not unknown in the higher ranks of society at this time, and it is therefore possible that the Flixborough site was a royal palace of some kind. Although no less problematic in their own way, the onomastic and historical sources provide a wider context for the site which allows a tentative identification with st Æthelthryth's monastery of Alftham.

Today the site is in the parish of Flixborough, but it is situated fifty yards south-west of the now ruined mortuary chapel of North or Little Conesby and is presumably in what was formerly the territory of the now deserted village of that name. The settlement seems to have been depopulated in the course of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, probably as a result of emparking, but before that date was a hamlet in the township of Flixborough. The ecclesiastical status of North Conesby is complex, but there is little to suggest any foundation of more than local status. In the fifteenth century there were institutions to two manorial chapels at 'Conesby' by the rector of West Halton. That to Holy Cross was to a benefice which was also associated with Crosby and Gunness and was presumably located in South Conesby a mile and a half to the south-east. St John the Baptist's chapel, to which concurrent institutions were made, may thus have been situated in North Conesby. At Stow Green a similar dedication in the later Middle Ages seems to attest the adoption of a well-recognized patron saint whose feast day fell closest to the time of the annual fair following the decline of the earlier cult of St Æthelthryth, for the feast of St John the Baptist (24th June) follows that of St Æthelthryth (23rd June). There is, however, no unequivocal evidence for a cult of St Æthelthryth at Conesby. At the same period, tithes were rendered from 'the wood of Conesby' to the rector of Halton. Nevertheless, there is a medieval reference to a church in North Conesby. In 1274 Ralph de Bokesford was presented to the rectory of North Conesby by Isabella, widow of Philip Darcy. Local tradition has maintained that institutions made to Flixborough were in fact made to this church. However, the advowson of Flixborough was in the gift of a cadet branch of the Darcy family, and in 1274 the living was held by Master William de Montfort. There were clearly two churches in the late thirteenth century, and that at North Conesby may have occupied the site of the mortuary chapel. The church of Conesby was apparently an ordinary parish church when it first appears in the historical record.

The tenurial status of North Conesby from the late eleventh century was more exceptional. Throughout much of the Middle Ages the settlement was one of the main estates of the Darcy honour. The fee is first recorded in Domesday Book in a complex series of entries. In 1086 Norman Darcy held four manors in 'Flixborough' with inland in Thealby. Comparison of the entry with the corresponding one in the Lindsey Survey indicates that the estate included North Conesby, and this makes sense of a further entry in Norman Darcy's Domesday breve. Towards the end of the description of his lands in Lindsey it is recorded that he held 9½ bovates in Crosby and 'Conesby' which was inland of 'Conesby'. The land was clearly in South Conesby, which throughout its history was joined with Crosby to form a vill, and the Conesby to which it belonged was therefore North Conesby. The principal manorial centre of Norman Darcy's estate would thus appear to have been in that settlement rather than Flixborough. Indeed, it was North Conesby which was kept in demesne into the fourteenth century when the rest of the fee was enfeoffed. The identifying name of the Domesday manor was evidently that of the twelve-carucate hundred, the Lincolnshire equivalent of the vill from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, rather than that of the estate.

In 1066 the manor, with its berewicks of Thealby and Crosby and South Conesby, was held by a certain Fulchric, Norman Darcy's principal antecessor from whom he probably derived title. Fulchric also held a manor in Walcot to the north and Winterton with a berewick in Roxby to the east, and may have had rights in Normanby in Burton on Stather, for Norman Darcy had a claim on land there in 1086 which had been in the possession of three unnamed brothers before the Conquest. Fulchric can probably be identified with individuals of the same name who conferred title to various estates in north Lincolnshire on the archbishop of York, Geoffrey de la Guerche, and Siward the priest. He is not otherwise known, but he would appear to have been not one of the great king's thegns of the shire, but a holder of land, probably often from such magnates, of some local importance.

Neither are there earlier references to his four estates in North Conesby and its environs, but their pre-Conquest tenurial context can be reconstructed from the interrelationship of their various elements in the eleventh century with surrounding estates. The structure of Fulchric's manors mirrors that of the soke of West Halton which was held by Earl Hugh of Chester in 1086 in succession to Earl Harold (Table 1). The West Halton estate comprised inland in Walcot and soke in Winterton, Coleby, Haythby, Thealby, Crosby, and South Conesby. It probably also included Burton upon Stather, for although the settlement is not fully described in Domesday Book, the earl of Chester appears to have held it as parcel of the manor of West Halton in the later Middle Ages and it therefore seems likely that it was an integral element of the estate in 1086. Norman Darcy's holdings also find an echo in the composition of the abbot of Peterborough's manor of Walcot and Erneis de Burun's fee in Coleby. In the light of the complexity of tenurial structure in the area, recurring tenurial structures of this kind suggest a common origin for the estates. Although all four were apparently independent in the historic period, it seems clear that they had formerly constituted a single organization. Such patterns of estate formation are well-attested in the Northern Danelaw, and indeed their formation is occasionally documented, and it would appear that in the present case the rights that the church of West Halton retained in the manors of South Conesby, Crosby, and Walcot were a vestige of the former organization.

Table 1

Alkborough and Whitton, to the north, may also have come within its bounds. The settlements were held by William Malet and Siward Barn in 1066, and they were clearly independent manors in the eleventh century, for both lords were important king's thegns. But tenurial links with Walcot and Winterton raise the possibility that they too had formerly belonged to the larger estate. With the single exception of the Winterton element, the area so identified is coterminous with the promontory of the Middle Ages. Rising to almost 200 feet at it highest point above the surrounding low land and water, it dominates the Isle of Axholme and the Humber levels. It was evidently not coincidental that Earl Harold, Siward Barn, and William Malet held land there in 1066, and it was probably the strategic importance of the area that moulded the earlier estate.

Something of its composition and antiquity is revealed by the processes of fragmentation. The mechanism was clearly not a simple one of booking, the creation of independent estates by royal charter, for that almost invariably involved discrete parcels of land. If it played a part at all, it was probably confined to the granting of Alkborough and Whitton, the only discrete manors in the area. Rather the division of the estate element by element suggests that tribute and dues were initially taken in a central court and were only subsequently territorialized. The evolution of the Domesday estate structure was evidently a protracted process in which the rights of the lord were only slowly eroded. Nevertheless, it is clear that fragmentation of the primitive estate was already under way in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. At that time the area was settled by the Danes, and it seems likely that Danish kings took over primary estate centres. However, the occurrence of distinctive place-names formed from a personal name compounded with ODan -by, 'settlement', a generally early Anglo-Scandinavian place-name element, suggests that individuals were beginning to acquire several rights on the ground. Thus, in the Halton complex six of the dependent settlements exhibit -by names, of which four are compounded with a Scandinavian personal name. Coleby incorporates the name Koli, Crosby Krókr, Roxby Hrókr, and Thealby þjóðulfr. The complex, at least in some form, is almost certainly as early as the Middle Saxon period.

Something of the status of Conesby within it can be suggested. In 1066 Fulcheric its lord may have been tenurially independent of Harold in Halton, but it cannot be doubted that he came under the influence of the earl. West Halton was the most substantial estate in Manley Wapentake and its lord as king the most powerful man in England after the death of Edward the Confessor. Whether he held the estate as earl or otherwise cannot be determined with certainty, but it seems likely that it was a comital manor with wide administrative functions. Most eleventh-century soke centres of the type appear to be of great antiquity: they typically have early OE names forms and are closely related to pagan Saxon cemeteries. The antiquity of the sokeland associated with them in 1086 is not always so easy to determine. Although the freedom of the sokeman was clearly limited, lords could transfer tributary lands to others at will. It is often clear, though, that an inner core of elements indicated by interlocking pattern of tenure, frequently grouped in sixes and twelves, was related to the estate centre from an early date. The West Halton complex of estates conforms to this pattern. The name Halton, seemingly connoting 'settlement on alluvial land by a river', is not from the earliest stratum of English place-names, but the type is represented in pre-Danish estate names (albeit Scandinavianized) such as Kirton in Lindsey and Ruskington, and early burials are found within the estate in the parish of Burton on Stather. Nevertheless, there is nothing to demonstrate unequivocally that it had always been a central place, but the vills associated with it were probably primary, for there are close to twelve elements within its putative pre-Conquest confines.

Whatever the earlier estate centre, Conesby was probably subordinate to it at the time when it was named. Unlike most of the surrounding -by names, its specific is not a personal name. The first element is derived from ODan kunungr, 'king', and the name signifies 'king's settlement'. The OE equivalent is Kingston, and there the settlements so named do not appear to have been primary estate centres. Conesby was apparently a similar type of name. At a time when other settlements were acquiring a distinct identity of their own, it indicates a subsidiary element that remained in the hands of the king along with the estate centre. The philologically-identical Coningsby in the South Riding of Lindsey appears to have been similarly subordinate, there to the ancient estate of Horncastle. Given the absence of earlier evidence, the status of the Middle Saxon settlement on the Conesby site can only be a matter of speculation, but its apparent dependence in the late ninth or early tenth century may suggest an equally auxiliary position at the earlier period.

Such an analysis, then, would suggest that the Flixborough site is less likely to be an estate centre and thus a secular establishment. An identity with Æthelthryth's foundation at Alftham is therefore a distinct possibility. The settlement was probably not exclusively known as Alftham before it received its new name in the late ninth or early tenth century. North Conesby is situated at about 160 feet above the surrounding wetlands and remote from them and the hamm element is therefore inappropriate. It is perhaps not impossible that the name Alftham referred to the whole promontory, for the type was used of topographical features. More significantly, however, the location of the site within the same tenurial context as the viculus suggests a looser interpretation of the ibique of the Liber Eliensis. If Flixborough site is not the monastery founded by Æthelthryth it must be an unrecorded foundation of the same kind.

© David Roffe, November, 2000.

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