The significance of the formation of a network of local proprietary churches across western Europe has long been recognised. On the continent it is often associated with the ‘feudal revolution’, as lords extended their seigneurial power, monopolised violence through castles and knights and exercised private justice, producing encellulement – the formation of local estates and nucleated settlements with a castle, church and peasant dwellings. Ultimately, this may lie behind the crystallisation of a parochial system, with proprietorial churches exercising authority over the population of local estates and controlling parishes coterminous with those estates. Yet the dynamics, chronology and regional characteristics of this process are debated. As Stephen Baxter has argued, in England encellulement began within a strong framework of royal lordship and justice, before the Norman conquest preserved that framework but accelerated the extension of seigneurial power and encellulement. As Richard Morris and John Blair have observed, the development of local churches and the crystallisation of the parish occurred within the context of a network of minsters with mother-parishes and monopolies on burial rights, probably over the course of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, but the chronology requires refinement. In a typically memorable turn of phrase, Richard Morris compared the emergence of local churches to the growth of mushrooms in the night. This is even truer for regions of Scotland, where the first records of local churches belong to the twelfth century and there are relatively few extant medieval churches, even if the excellent Corpus of Scottish Medieval Parish Churches has revealed much more than was previously recognised (<http://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/corpusofscottishchurches/>). Hence this excavation report on the local church and cemetery at Hirsel, Coldstream, on the English–Scottish border, is very welcome.

The lords of Dunbar, the owners of Hirsel, were embroiled in the politics of the developing border. Gospatric, once earl of Northumbria, but removed from office for treachery, received Dunbar with surrounding lands from Malcolm iii, king of the Scots, around 1072. Gospatric ii received further lands from the kings of England and the kings of the Scots, holdings that dominated the route between Corbridge and Berwick, controlling the border. Gospatric iii, earl of Dunbar, founded the convent at Coldstream c 1160–5 and granted Hirsel to the nuns. Prompted by the discovery of grave stones during ploughing in a field adjacent to Hirsel House in 1977, there was a geophysical survey of the field, followed by excavations between 1979 and 1982. This volume sets the results within their wider landscape context, publishes the limited evidence for Neolithic, Roman and sub-Roman activity, but concentrates on the evidence for the origins and development of the church and cemetery. The church developed in four phases corresponding to the historical context. In Phase i it was a single-celled rectangular cobble-built structure 4.5×4.6m internally, with a western doorway. There was no hint of an earlier timber phase and the foundation trench of the north wall contained a sherd of Coarse Gritty Ware dated to between the tenth and twelfth centuries. In Phase ii this cell became the nave through the addition of a semicircular eastern apse, cut into natural sands and gravels. The introduction of a semicircular apse reflects new aspirations, perhaps connected with England, in the late eleventh or early twelfth century, coinciding with the documented introduction of a Northumbrian family to the lordship of Dunbar. In Phase iii the existing structure was demolished to its foundation level for construction of a new church in dressed stone, transforming the cell with apse into a chancel through the addition of a western nave 11.5×5m internally. Though this was cut into natural sands and gravels, in places it cut contexts with radiocarbon dates suggesting an eleventh- or twelfth-century date. Surviving Romanesque stonework is consistent with a date in the third quarter of the twelfth century. The western end of this nave preserved a bell-casting pit and copper-alloy smelting pit from the addition of a bell. This fits neatly with the grant to Coldstream and is plausibly connected with the granting of full parochial status and rebuilding under the patronage of the convent. In Phase iv the western wall of this nave was strengthened, cutting a burial with a radiocarbon date and pottery suggesting a thirteenth-century date. The first church seems to have preceded the cemetery because no evidence was found for foundations cutting burials, the burials do not change alignment to reflect the establishment of a church, the radiocarbon samples suggest 1140–1275 for the earliest burial and surviving carved stones begin in the eleventh century. With a total of more than 330 burials, probably stretching from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, this represents the burial ground of a small community. Osteoarchaeological analysis suggests that it was a relatively poor agricultural community, with a 1:1 male:female ratio, smaller in stature than some contemporaries, showing the wear and tear of physical labour, exhibiting a lower life expectancy than urban or monastic communities and with a high probability of death in childhood.

Rosemary Cramp and her collaborators have done us a great service in bringing these excavations to publication. The publication meets the high standard of the Society for Medieval Archaeology’s monograph series, with exemplary plans, diagrams and photographs. There is a wealth of particular evidence and analysis in the reports on the environmental, skeletal, sculptural, numismatic, ceramic, metal, bone and glass remains. To an extent, the history of Hirsel church can be read as another example of the relationship between lordship and parochial development. Indeed, as Rosemary Cramp argues, the development of Hirsel church finds parallels in other well-known excavated churches such as Raunds, Northamptonshire, or Wharram Percy, east Yorkshire. But, as she also rightly says, its biography is sui generis, and all the more valuable for it, because we require a lot more light to be cast on individual mushrooms in the night.