England's Christian Heritage How Parish Churches Evolved This video tells the story of one of the most familiar of all our historic landmarks, the parish church, covering a period of 1,400 years starting with the conversion of the AngloSaxons to Christianity in AD597. We see how churches were used and how developments in architectural style and design provide a wealth of evidence for historical change in social and religious attitudes. Little survives of the very first Anglo-Saxon parish churches, but using new archaeological information from Raunds in Northamptonshire, we see a reconstruction of what they looked like. The video goes on to compare the style and structure of a typical Norman church with its Anglo-Saxon predecessors. It explains how and why church buildings became more complex by the end of the Middle Ages and how they changed after the Reformation, when many chapels and meeting houses were built. Finally, the video considers the Victorian Gothic Revival, which led to the building of many of the churches we see around us in towns today. This is one of a series of videos introducing the study of churches, chapels and cathedrals presented by Dr Roberta Gilchrist, Reader in Archaeology at the University of Reading who is the archaeological consultant for Norwich Cathedral.

• published: 06 Nov 2013
• views: 29