Previous Work
The importance of the church of St Peter, in the study of architectural history, was recognised by Thomas Rickman, during his search for authentic examples of Anglo-Saxon architecture in the early part of the nineteenth century.
St Peter's church underwent major
restorations in 1858 and 1898, and as part of the latter campaign
the first trenches were dug for the purposes of archaeological
research. They successfully located the demolished foundations of
the Anglo-Saxon chancel,
beneath the floor of the present nave. It was thereby established that
the pre-Conquest church was a three-celled structure, comprising a
tower-nave with small squarish adjuncts to the east (the chancel)
and west (the annexe, now known to have been a baptistery). The first
reconstruction drawing of the original St Peter's church was
published by Baldwin Brown in 1903, and the various theories
concerning the history of the building were rehearsed by Robert
Brown in 1906.
Further small-scale excavations were carried out in 1912–13, 1945 and 1951–54, but they failed to shed fresh light on the architectural history of the early building. Meanwhile, various scholars published their views on the form and date of the late Saxon turriform church and its possible antecedent, for which it was thought evidence had been found. The seminal importance of the church, and in particular the tower, to later Saxon archaeology and architectural history is plainly evidenced by the prodigious number of citations which it has received in academic literature since 1819.
Nevertheless, even in the later 1970s, many fundamental questions remained unanswered, while others still awaited the asking. For example, scarcely any attention had been paid to the history and archaeology of the large medieval church that succeeded the small but elaborate Anglo-Saxon one. How and when was the transition between them effected? Then there was the seminal but unaddressed question of the relationship between St Peter's and the equally large St Mary's. There was, and always had been, only one ecclesiastical parish in Barton, and St Peter's was the parochial church. St Mary's was – remarkably in view of its size, grandeur and close proximity – still only a chapel-of-ease.