Sockburn Hall, Darlington: an archaeological ... - English Heritage

Scandinavian lordship
Sockburn disappears from the chronicles at the end of the 8th century, not to re-
emerge in documentary form until about the year 1000 following a period of immense
political and social upheaval. In the wake of sporadicViking raids and civil war within
Northumbria, the turmoil intensified with the capture of York by the Viking Great
Army in 866, and continued through the remainder of this century and the first half
of the next as southern Northumbria (Deira) fell under the control of Danish then
Hiberno-Norse warriors. These changes in lordship, however, need not have been
comprehensively disruptive to the Church. We have no information related directly
to Sockburn, but modern scholarship suggests that many churches maintained at least
a low level of continuity through these turbulent times, reflecting a rapid process of
acceptance and conversion as the new lords sought to acquire status and legitimacy (i.e.
Barrow 2000; Hadley 2000; Blair 2005 292-323). Continuity, however, does not mean
a complete absence of change. The estate to which the church at Sockburn formerly
belonged is likely to have been overthrown, and the community, if it survived, would
have operated in very different ways under Scandinavian patronage. This change is most
apparent in the remarkable assemblage of sculptured stones residing at the church.
In the pre-VikingAnglian tradition religious sculpture was mainly used to decorate large
crosses serving as liturgical stations near the more important churches and monasteries.
Sculptured crosses as individual burial markers,and indeed burial covers in general,are
rare and,on the basis of present evidence,only used for the resting places of saints and
highly regarded members of the religious community. The sculpture which emerged
under Scandinavian control in 10th-century Deira consisted mainly of small crosses
and grave covers, and these, in a complete departure from earlier usage, appear to
commemorate the individual burials of members of a secular elite as they placed their
authoritative stamp on society (Lang 1972, 248; Cramp and Wilson 2003). Stocker
(2000) goes a step further, using the distribution of such monuments to argue for the
presence of a second wave of important individuals,appearing alongside an established
Anglo-Scandinavian aristocracy across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in the early to mid
10th century. His model implies that abnormal concentrations of memorial stones,
as at Sockburn, go beyond the need to demonstrate the foundation of a new local
dynasty at a particular church. Instead, such concentrations indicate the presence of
fresh arrivals, Hiberno-Norse in origin or in cultural affiliation (given the sculptural
styles) either adopting existing churches in which to bury their dead or establishing
new ones for this purpose. In each case Stocker postulates a relationship between a
church with an exceptional number of 10th-century memorials, and a market place.
The new arrivals were, in his view, part of a mobile merchant elite, attracted by urban
centres such asYork and Lincoln, but equally content to establish themselves at beach
markets alongside other convenient moorings or strands. Stocker’s most notable
Yorkshire examples are at York itself,Whitby, Brompton by Allerton, Stanwick, Lythe,
along theTees atYarm and,by virtue of its inclusion in theViking-controlledWapentake
of Sadberg, at Sockburn. Although the Sockburn loop is some distance upstream
ENGLISH HERITAGE Sockburn