Iken: Site of St Botolf's Minster

Iken: Site of St Botulf's Minster

The spectacularly positioned church of St Botulf at Iken is built on a hill on a former island overlooking the Alde estuary and within sight of the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery across the river at Snape.

Iken Church is the likely site of the saint’s original foundation noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 654, alongside the reference to the death of King Anna.

654. Her Onna cyning wearþ ofslægen; ond Botulf ongon

minster timbran æt Icanho.

654. Here [in this year] Onna King was slain; and Botulf began

[his] minster to build at Iken Hoo.

Curiously, Bede makes no mention of the once highly venerated St Botulf, even though his mentor St Ceolfrith visited "Abbot Botwulf" in East Anglia around the year 670. This we know from The Life of St Ceolfrith (4), which describes Botulf as "proclaimed on all sides to be a man of unparalleled life and learning, and full of the grace of the Holy Spirit" (ibid., 4).

St Botulf still has over sixty churches dedicated to him, as well as a town and city (Boston) and several villages (such as Botesdale, Suffolk) named after him. St Botulf appears to have been regarded as a major early pioneer of Benedictine monasticism in England by the church and as something of a guardian of travellers and exorcist by the people. In Denmark, where his cult was probably introduced in the reign of King Cnut [King of England, 1016-1035], he is still held to be the patron saint of travellers. As St Christopher has recently been de-canonised, perhaps St Botulf should once again become the patron saint of travellers in England.

Inside the church, a large carved stone cross-shaft can be seen. This wonderful find was discovered incorporated into the wall of the later tower by Dr Stanley West during his excavations at Iken Church in 1977. The shaft formed part of a large decorated stone cross, the style of which associates it with an East Mercian sculptural style and so datable to perhaps the ninth or early tenth century (see S.J.Plunkett & S.E.West, A Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Material from Suffolk, East Anglian Archaeology 84 [Suffolk 1998], pp.328-344-45). Such a rare standing stone cross in this location marks out the site as one of great importance at that time.

The heads of dogs or wolves are incorporated in the zoomorphic design still recognisable on the cross-shaft. Although these forms are found elsewhere in Mercian sculpture, the fact that the dog or wolf was St Botulf’s emblem in medieval church art suggests that the cross could have been erected here as a memorial to this famous saint. Perhaps it was intended as the successor to the cross raised by St Botulf himself in order to exorcise the place of his first minster, said to haunted by marsh-demons, (Folcard's Life of St Botulph, 8).

St Botulf died on 17^thJune 680 and was buried at Iken. His tomb appears to have survived the probable destruction of the minster by the Danes for in 970 his bones were moved with the consent of King Edgar. The intention appears to have been to divide his potent relics for use in the more famous minsters of the day, but for some reason they only got as far as the spot where the church of St Botolph at Burgh-by-Woodbridge now stands.

Burgh church is built on a hill overlooking the marshy valley of a tributary of the Deben and inside a mysterious late Iron Age double ramparted earthwork enclosure also containing Roman evidence. Here is a fine aeriel view of the church looking north-east with the outline of the the western section of the double ramparts visible in the ploughsoil (photographed by Cliff Hoppitt):

This is another site said to be haunted by a demon with a liking for marshes, in this case the valley which the church overlooks (see E.Moore, Suffolk Words and Phrases [London 1823; repr. New York 1970], pp.141-142).

Perhaps St Botulf's bones were brought here because his reputation as an exorcist of marsh-monsters might help the locals overcome their fear of the place. It does appear that it had not been settled at all in the Anglo-Saxon period, and that it was not until after this time that there was any settlement in or immediately around the earthwork (E.Martin, Burgh, p.74 - full ref. given below).

Whatever the reason, St Botulf's relics were housed at Burgh for around fifty years until the time of King Cnut, who granted permission for his relics to be divided between several minsters, including Bury St Edmunds, Ely, and Thorney. It was Abbot Folcard of Thorney who later in the eleventh century wrote The Life of St Botulph. At the west end of the great abbey of St Edmund at Bury, St Botulf’s relics were venerated in his own shrine, the remains of which can still be seen.