Stow Minster

The Minster Church of St Mary, Stow in Lindsey is one of the oldest parish churches in England. It originally served as the Cathedral Church of the ancient diocese of Lindsey, founded in the 7th century, and stands on the site of a much older one.

The bishop's seat at Sidnacester (Syddensis) has been placed, by various commentators, at Caistor, Louth, Horncastle and, most often, at Stow, all in present-day Lincolnshire, England. The location remains unknown. More recently Lincoln has been suggested as a possible site.

There had been a church situated in Stow even before the arrival of the Danes in 870, the year they are documented to have burnt the church down. The building remained in ruins until an Abbey was built in 1040, reputedly by bishop Eadnoth II.

Dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Stow parish church, sometimes referred to as the "Mother Church of Lincolnshire," is one of the largest and oldest parish churches in England. It is partly Saxon and partly Norman in date and is designated by English Heritage as a “Scheduled Ancient Monument” and was also included in the World Monuments Fund's 2006 list of the world's 100 most endangered sites. It has the tallest Saxon arches of its time in Britain, the earliest known example of Viking graffiti in England (a rough scratching of an oared Viking sailing ship, probably dating from the 10th century), a font that is Early English, standing on nine supports with pagan symbols around its base and an early wall painting dedicated to St Thomas Becket.

Ralph de Diceto attributes the church's foundation to Elnothus Lincolniensis, almost certainly Aelfnoth, Bishop of Dorchester, c. 975, who built the church, possibly on the site of an earlier wooden Saxon church, to serve as Minster (or mother church) for the Lincolnshire part of his large diocese, it was a second cathedral because part of the bishop's household of priests (which later became the cathedral chapter) lived in Stow and administered this part of the diocese. The memory of this period gave rise to the tradition that Stow is the Mother Church of Lincoln Cathedral.

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