History
CHRISTIANITY was brought to Britain in the time of the Romans. When the Romans left, invading Jutes, Saxons and Angles drove Christianity out to the more remote regions, where it survived until Irish missionaries reintroduced the faith to England and established monasteries for prayer, worship and teaching. One such monastery was founded here in LASTINGHAM in AD 654. EARLY HISTORY In AD 563, Columba set out from Ireland to found the monastery of Iona, off the coast of Scotland. Seventy years later, Bishop Aiden of Iona was appointed to bring Christianity to Northumbria. He established his See at Lindisfarne in 634, and set up a school there for Anglo-Saxon boys to be trained as priests and missionaries. Among the pupils at this school were four brothers: Cedd, Cynebil, Caelin and Chad. All four brothers eventually became bishops. There is mention of these brothers by the Venerable Bede in his ‘History of the English Church and People’, completed in 731 when Bede was a monk at Jarrow monastery. He writes about the founding of a monastery in Lastingham by St Cedd, who was later succeeded as abbot by his brother Chad. EXTRACT FROM BEDE’S HISTORY
The bishop bequeathed the abbacy of the monastery to his brother Chad. St Chad was not at Lastingham for long, before becoming Bishop of Lichfield; it was while Chad was Abbot of Lastingham that St Ovin joined the monastery, renouncing a life of privilege and influence in favour of prayer through manual work. The stone church mentioned by Bede replaced Cedd’s original wooden structure and was built on the site of the present church. Some of the original stones, and possibly the altar, are still here in the Crypt. In 1078 Stephen, abbot of the recently rebuilt monastery at Whitby, got permission from William the Conqueror to take some monks to restore the monastery at Lastingham as a Benedictine house. Stephen first built the crypt as a shrine to St Cedd over the place where he was thought to have been buried. Above the crypt he began a new abbey church, but the monastery was abandoned in 1088 when Stephen and his monks moved to York, and built St Mary’s Abbey. Their reasons for going are not clear, but the move may have been caused by roving bands of outlaws in the area making life impossible for the monks. So Stephen’s abbey at Lastingham was never completed, but the work he began formed the basis of the church we see today. After 1088 the monastery remained the property of St Mary’s Abbey in York, who would have supplied a priest to serve the needs of the people of Lastingham and the surrounding area. From 1228 a full time priest was appointed and this has been the foundation of the parish church ever since. Various modifications over the centuries have formed the present church of St Mary here in Lastingham that we know and love today. A major restoration was undertaken in the late 19th century under the direction of Dr Sydney Ringer, a London physician, who had married Ann Darley, the daughter of the Lord of the Manor. The work was done in memory of their daughter Annie who had sadly died of an intestinal obstruction on her seventh birthday in 1875. Although she died in London, her body was brought to Lastingham, where she was buried, and her parents are also now buried in the churchyard. The architect for the work was JL Pearson RA.
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