Early Christianity in England

This is "The Round Church" which is like one in Jerusalem which the Crusaders saw in the 1000s. It is still standing in Cambridge, England. The minister here knows everything about religious history in England. He helped us very much to find things we wanted to see. The round church is very old, small, and interesting inside.

This Norman church was built at Stokesay right after 1060 AD. The windows are small, the church is not high like cathedrals. It is one of the best old churches we saw. Everyone wanted to be buried by the church when they died, so the grounds are full of tombstones all tilting this way and that. Remember Harry's visits to graveyards in some of the books? They might have looked like this.

In very old times, when many people could not read and write, the walls of churches were painted and frescoed (paint mixed in plaster) with many scenes from the Bible. These were all painted over during the English Civil War. Some people then did not believe you should make paintings of the Bible or Christ. This church also had the Ten Commandments on the wall. These were not painted over. Next to the Ten Commandments you can see something that was painted over but still shows through.

Benches in old churches had high ends and sides. Each family would rent their own bench, or "pew." They could have their name put on it if they wanted. The pews had beautiful wood carvings on them.

This is a beautiful, sort of spooky old church in Glen Coe. There was a horrible killing at Glen Coe and the whole place still feels gloomy and sad, but this is a beautiful stone church. Notice the bell tower up at the top with the bell hanging in it. People are still buried around this church. We saw some new tombstones and some very old ones.

Here is an organ in the Norman Church at Stokesay. It was not built in 1160, but it is still very old. I wish I could have played on it, but no one was there to give me permission. It is up in the back of the church, not in the front like in our churches. Many very old churches have the organ in a loft in the back like this one. The loft is over the front door where people come in.

In the middle ages, people who wanted to have the Priesthood had to go live in a monastery and study for many years before they could get the Priesthood. This is Fountains Abbey. It is a World Heritage site. Once it was a very great abbey with hundreds of "monks." You could join an abbey when you were a boy and would spend your whole life here. These are doors into some of the bedroom wing of the abbey.

Here we are inside the bedroom wing. It was a big dormitory where everyone had cots to sleep on. They kept their robes, their sandals, and a lantern by their beds. Seven times a day and night they would go into the church and sing the praises to God. Sometimes this would be in the dark.

This is the ground floor. It was all built with Roman arches. The arches held up the floor above it where there were study rooms and meeting rooms. Most of the monasteries were destroyed during the Civil War. But parts of this one are still standing. That is why it is such a great place to visit. You can see more of what it looked like.

This was once the beautiful cathedral of the monastery. Between the big pillars are aisles for people to walk. In the middle people sat or stood or knelt down and heard the service. The roof and windows are gone, but the arches and pillars were too tough to knock down.

Here is the bell tower of Fountains Abbey. It was against monastery rules to spend money on things like bell towers when there were poor people to feed and sick people to help. But some of the church leaders didn't believe in following rules. This tower was built on the side of the church because they could not find another place where the ground was hard enough to hold up such a heavy tower.

Look at the beautiful arch in the doorway of the bell tower. The builders always did their best work when they were building things for God. The monastery owned many farms. They raised sheep and sold the wool. They feed the hungry and poor people. When the Black Plague came, so many people died that the monastery could not do all it had done before. Nearly half the people in Europe died during the Black Plague in the 1300s. People thought God sent the plague to tell them to repent. But it was rats off ships that spread the plague around. People in those days did not know about keeping things clean or washing their hands before they ate, so they got more diseases. Doctors did not have good medicines to use on bad diseases. Today people can still get plague, but not very many die from it.

This abbey was called Fountains because there were waterfalls and lakes nearby. But workmen were fixing the lakes and waterfalls, so we could not get good pictures of them.

I am really glad that young men in our church can get the Priesthood when they are 12 and still live at home with their families. The monasteries became family for the boys who went there. Some of them were taught to read and write and went to school at the monasteries. Monasteries had great libraries and kept learning alive during the Dark Ages. England had a tradition of sending children to boarding schools, where they lived during the school year like at Hogwarts, and only went home for Christmas, Easter and summer vacation. In America families needed their children at home to help with farm work or work in their businesses, so they built schools in the neighborhoods close to home. So our school system is quite different from this one.