St Bees circa 1855
St Bees circa 1955
St Bees Village
St Bees is undoubtedly an ancient place, but how ancient is it? Anyone who has flown over the Cumbrian fells on a frosty morning will have observed how the hilltops are covered with Neolithic dwellings resulting from habitation over five thousand years. However the high block of land incorporating St Bees Head, which I call ‘Preston Island', is singularly devoid of signs of ancient remains. There is little doubt that in prehistoric times this was a tidal island, and it must have been of great significance to food gatherers who would have trekked to its cliffs from the well-populated western fells to gather the first foods of the year: birds eggs. In the valley which separates ‘Preston Island’ from the mainland a Viking anchor was discovered far beyond where the tide has lapped in living memory.
St Bees Head and Preston Island
St Bees Church circa 1905 - On Preston Island ?
This block of land between St Bees and Whitehaven mirrors the tidal island at Lindisfarne on the east coast of England with its early Christian religious foundation.
As a major western landmass it also bears great similarity to Brandon Mountain, the holy mountain on the extreme western coast of county Kerry in Ireland, the site of Gallarus Oratory, an early Christian church. Additionally with its position at the 'end of the world' Brandon Mountain had a pre-Christian significance.
St Bees too has long had a religious association. Seeking a reason for the existence of the village, especially as a ‘Priest Town’, and for an explanation of its name, I was impressed by the theories of the archaeoastronomer Gerald Hawkins. In his detailed astronomical examination of areas around ancient edifices, Hawkins listed occurrences that might have led to places becoming ‘holy’. One event that he outlined was the double dawn, or the apparent entrapment of the sun allowing it to emerge a second time.
BC 100 The Snettisham Baugre Hoard
Hawkins work led me to believe that St Bees might be associated with an event, such as a double dawn, which would have led to the adoption of the island as a holy place with a holy symbol: the incomplete circlet, a torc or baugre. We do know that the circlet was an important symbol, as a golden torc was an offering at coronations in very early times, and is found in many important graves.
There are several words associated with the curved shape of the incomplete circlet : bay, bandy, bangle, baugre. bagel.
Is ‘ bega’, therefore, the word for the revered symbol which gave its name to the village? Certainly the characteristic St Bees cross is formed from four of these symbols, and the design appears on many tombstones.
The curved field wall on the top of the hill
So where or what was the St Bees baugre?
On Preston Island at St Michael’s Chapel, between the Whitehaven road and the Byerstead road, you will find a field wall which follows a curious semicircle for no apparent reason. From there looking east you will see a skyline that includes an almost spherical depression. Was it observed, about five thousand years ago that at dawn, perhaps on an equinoctial or Lammas day, the rising sun would lie within this skyline feature, only to emerge a second time? To Neolithic man observing the disk of the sun being held in the torc of the skyline would have been sufficiently spectacular to be of religious significance.
It is important to note that few people would subscribe to this theory that St Bees was a revered place before Christian times.
Pronunciation
Reflecting successive settlement by different peoples from early times the written village name has suffered changes, from pre Norse ‘Kirby Begoc’, to the latinised ‘Sancta Bega’ of the mediaeval monks, to the ‘Saint Beysse’ of 1530 at the time of the dissolution of the monastery. However, the spoken name of the village may not have changed a great deal. This is because word ‘Bega ‘ would originally have been written using a letter we have now lost : the ‘yogh’.
The letter yogh was introduced by Irish scribes in the eighth century but was replaced in the Middle ages with ‘g’ in Old English and later with ‘z’ in Old Scots. (Hence it occurs in my name - Dalzell).
As a yogh was pronounced as a ‘y’ , and the 'c' would be pronounced as an 's' (as the 'c' in the football team name: Glasgow Celtic) you can see how the change from Begoc (in my mind 'Beg'-'ok') to Beysse ('Bey'-'os') is only an attempt by the scribes of a different age to represent the spoken language. It leads us to believe that 'Bega' should probably be pronounced 'Baya'.
The loss of the yogh letter affects the pronunciation of many modern instances of words using the letter 'g'. We continue to have conflicts between hard and soft pronunciation of the letter 'c'.
Place names
The earliest written names of the locality are in the Register of the Priory Church of St Mary and St Bega which was transcribed by the Surtees Society.
Even with a wide variation in spelling the names are recognisable as those we are familiar with today. The names have changed so little in nine hundred years one wonders just how old the names were when they were first written down by the monks of the Norman Priory
Field names.
Field names are complex, deriving from description, use and ownership. Most words describing fields are still in common use but certain archaic word are of interest. An example is the Old Norse word 'flasse'. This was naturally drained land which did not have to be cleared before cultivation. Cleared land became a 'thwaite', a word element in many family names.
On the map the red areas to the south of the village are flasses on hilltop ground. The red area to the north is sloping ground following the old road to Hensingham: 'Slattery Lonnin'.
Family names
Of great interest are family names. In the eleventh to fifteenth centuries, covered by the Surtees Society publication, it is not possible to adequately link family names to particular landholdings except on very specific occasions . Outstanding is the dominance of the name 'Dickinson' in the nearby village of Hensingham from the twelfth century onward. However, from 1560 there is increasing detail and some surprising statistics. For instance, less than a third of the names appearing in St Bees in the 1711-1714 Tithe Book also appear in the 1838 Tithe Roll, though it is not surprising that two thirds of these are landowners. It suggests that there was much movement of families over the locality.
To find your ancestors browse: -
St Bees - Priory Register NamesSt Bees 1535 to 1538 Dissolution of the Monastery
St Bees 1560 and 1561 Sir Thomas Chaloner LeaseholdsSt Bees 1586 St Anthony's Orchard
St Bees 1586 to 1842 Various School Documents 1586 to 1842St Bees 1607 to 1842 Various St Bees School Leases
St Bees 1609 St Bees School Leases and QuitclaimsSt Bees Tithe Book 1711 to 1714
St Bees 1790 to 1810 Enclosure Tithes and Field Names
St Bees 1790 to 1810 Enclosed Estates Field Names 1
St Bees 1790 to 1810 Enclosed Estates Field Names 2St Bees 1790 to 1810 Enclosed Estates Field Names 3
St Bees 1838 Township Tithes Map
St Bees 1838 Tithes ID 1 to ID 100
St Bees 1838 Tithes ID 101 to ID 200St Bees 1838 Tithes ID 201 to ID 300
St Bees 1838 Tithes ID 301 to ID 400St Bees 1838 Tithes ID 401 to ID 500
St Bees 1838 Tithes ID 501 to ID 630
