Ebook: The Golden Minster: The Anglo-Saxon Minster and Later Medieval Priory of St. Oswald at Gloucester

With contributions by Eric Boore, Sarah Brown, Phil Greatorex, Michael Hare, Caroline Ireland, Arthur MacGregor, Donald MacKreth, Arthur Price, Richard Reece, John Rhodes, Juliet Rogers, Alan Vince, Malcolm Watkins, Michael Webber and Felicity Wild.

A ruined arcade of 12th- and 13th-century arches in the suburbs of Gloucester is all that remains of a minster church founded c 900 AD by Æthelred, Ealdorman of Mercia and his wife Æthelflæd, daughter of Alfred the Great. The minster was established at the time of the refoundation of the town of Gloucester, and the new church was given the relics of St. Oswald of Northumbria.

This site has become a major example of the combination of standing and buried archaeology, and the recovered detail enables both the plan and elevation of this important early 10th-century church to be reconstructed. The evidence is all the more valuable because it represents a period of Anglo-Saxon architecture when information about new buildings is very sparse. After the Norman conquest it became an Augustinian priory and then a parish church, only to be pulled down in the 17th century. This report describes the excavations of the late 1970s, and incorporates detailed accounts of the preconquest documentary evidence, the spectacular collection of Anglo-Saxon and later sculpture, and other finds including medieval floor tiles, and small finds. There is a full analysis of the human skeletal remains which provide important physical information spanning more than a thousand years.

The evidence is combined to produce a full account of the site from its origin as a Roman tilery and cemetery, through the Anglo-Saxon years when the church may have been known as the Golden Minster, to its end as a ruin in an obscure corner of the town of Gloucester.