The origins of Old St Oswald Church, Fulford

Many a church guide claims that their present building sits on the site of a more ancient structure. But how accurate are these claims? Recently the Fishergate, Fulford, and Heslington Local History Society (FFH) – a community group with a long-standing and very active interest in their historic landscape – decided to try to find out whether this was true of the deconsecrated medieval church, dedicated to St Oswald, that sits on the east bank of the River Ouse, in the village of Fulford, some 2km south of York. Chris Catling reports.

Today, Fulford is a suburb of York located along the present A19 – originally a Roman road that ran into the city centre – but once it was a separate village. It is remembered by medieval historians as the site of the Battle of Fulford (20 September 1066), the first of three battles fought by claimants to the English throne following the death of Edward the Confessor. (The second was the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September and the third the Battle of Hastings on 14 October.)

The village has two churches: a large Victorian building dating to 1866, and Old St Oswald, declared redundant in 1973 and converted into a private dwelling in the 1980s. Like many English churches, Old St Oswald is a post-Conquest building, but was there an earlier church? One that might have witnessed that hard-fought battle against an invading army led by rival claimants to the throne, Tostig and Harald Hardrada? One that might well have been replaced after the Norman Conquest as part of a campaign of cultural hegemony that led to many an existing church being replaced by Norman versions after 1066? Those earlier churches were probably of timber, which makes finding archaeological evidence all the more difficult – but the Fishergate, Fulford, and Heslington Local History Society (FFH) has risen to the challenge.

OPPOSITE Old St Oswald from the west bank of the Ouse, depicted by George Nicholson in 1826. Well House can be seen behind the church (to the right). The artist has exaggerated the proximity to the river, where a landing stage projects into the river at the point where the ‘ford’ in Fulford might have been. The landing stage may also be a relic of a later ferry. BELOW Part of Sheet 174 of the Ordnance Survey 6in/mile map of York, published in 1851. It shows Fulford Road to the right originally a Roman road and the River Ouse some 400m to the west (left), with Church Lane running at a right angle, past orchards and gravel pits, to Old St Oswald’s Church and Well House. — Old St Oswald from the west bank of the Ouse, depicted by George Nicholson in 1826. Well House can be seen behind the church (to the right). The artist has exaggerated the proximity to the river, where a landing stage projects into the river at the point where the ‘ford’ in Fulford might have been. The landing stage may also be a relic of a later ferry. BELOW Part of Sheet 174 of the Ordnance Survey 6in/mile map of York, published in 1851. It shows Fulford Road to the right originally a Roman road and the River Ouse some 400m to the west (left), with Church Lane running at a right angle, past orchards and gravel pits, to Old St Oswald’s Church and Well House. IMAGES: York Art Gallery YORAG R2446.29; reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.

To investigate this question, FFH launched a project drawing together the results of various excavations undertaken prior to the conversion of the church into a private house, and supplementing this with a new geophysical survey and landscape study. This work was then presented to a conference on ‘The Historic Mystery of Old St Oswald’s’, held in Fulford on 10 June 2017 with a distinguished panel of archaeologists and speakers. The results have just been published as the paper ‘St Oswald’s Church, Fulford: origins and significance’, by Jon Kenny, Ailsa Mainman, and Christopher Rainger, in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal (vol.91, 2019).

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