Yeovil's Virtual Museum

Yeovil's early Minster church

Yeovil's Anglo-Saxon church

 

The present church is far from the original church on this site. Alfred the Great was King of Wessex and Lord of Yeovil from 871 to 899 and, indeed, Kingston may well have derived its name from the fact that before the Conquest it had been held by the Royal Family of Wessex, including King Alfred. It was therefore known as the king's 'tun' or village. The Saxon church was alluded to in Alfred’s will of 899AD, in which he refers to seven of his estates in Somerset.

It is thought that the earliest church on this site was an Anglo-Saxon minster church; almost certainly built in timber under a thatched roof. The typical Anglo-Saxon church was small and simple, consisting of a nave and chancel separated by a timber chancel arch. This was often so small as to almost cut off the chancel from the body of the church.

This original church was first recorded around 950AD when, in her will, Lady Wynflead of Chinnock left “half a pound’s worth of soulscot” (an ecclesiastical burial due, to be paid for every deceased person of a daughter chapel, to the clergy of the mother church) that should be paid to the church at Yeovil from her Chinnock estate, indicating that Yeovil’s church was, indeed, a minster. Winflead was possibly a member of the royal household but, in any event, she was certainly a lady of some importance and great wealth.

Since it was a minster church, albeit physically still relatively small, possibly around the size of All Saints’ church, Sutton Bingham, it probably had several daughter churches in the surrounding villages. Although generally we can’t know exactly which villages had daughter chapels of the Yeovil minster, Barwick, Preston and the Chinnocks certainly possessed daughter chapels. Other likely candidates are Brympton, Chilton Cantello, Kingston, Mudford, Sock Dennis, Tintinhull, Yeovil Marsh and possibly Ashington and Limington.

As a minster church, the church in Yeovil had substantial and lucrative ancient rights of burial, which meant that parishioners of the daughter churches provided a considerable income for this service. Consequently, the Anglo-Saxon church in the nascent Yeovil was set within a large churchyard in which to accommodate the burials of the members of its daughter churches, as well as its own parishioners.

In today’s terms, the original churchyard would have stretched from Princes Street in the west as far as Silver Street in the east, and from North Lane in the north to roughly halfway between today’s Church Street and High Street in the south.