St Catherine's pleasing chapel on the hill above Abbotsbury presents an interesting puzzle. It was St Augustine's policy that his priests, sent out to convert the heathen English, should replace pagan temples with Christian churches and chapels. He wrote from Rome in about 600 a.d.:

I have decided after much thought about the English people, that their idol temples should not be destroyed, but only the idols themselves. Take holy water and sprinkle it on these shrines, build altars and place relics in them.

For if the shrines are well built, it is essential that they should be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God. When this people see that their shrines are not destroyed they will be able to banish error from their hearts and be more ready to come to the places with which they are familiar only now worshipping the name of the true God.

The early Christian missionaries would naturally try to choose a patron saint that continued, as closely as possible, the pagan dedication of the temple.

St Catherine's chapel, Abbotsbury, was probably one of these. Her chapels are often on hills, perhaps as a reference to Mount Sinai. It is interesting that if one says 'Catherine' in Welsh, the word sounds very like 'Cader rhyn' or 'hill throne'. One can understand how merchants in the Roman period spread Christianity up the Altlantic seaboard, founding the Celtich Church in the process. Perhaps, when they mentioned 'Katerina', the pure one, to the Celts, their audience recognised the new goddess in an old one.

This chapel is built on a definite platform which could have been made originally for the pagan temple. But the chapel we see today was built in the expansionist 1300's. Wessex first became Christian around 800. It seems unlikely that a pagan temple could still be active 500 years after the conversion of Wessex to Christianity, so today's building presumably replaced an earlier Christian structure.

It would be interesting to try to guess the original pagan dedication. We suspect that Abbotsbury was the site of a Roman villa, if only because it is one of a small number of sites in Dorset - indeed in Britain - that are very fertile and have easy access to navigable water; in this case, the Fleet, a 10 mile stretch of semi-tidal water that runs behind the Chesil beach from Portland harbour. You can see it behind the Chapel in the some of the pictures below. The Roman Army in Britain depended heavily on sea borne transport for its supplies, so Abbotsbury might have been a military farm providing grain for the garrisons at Exeter, Chester, Dover and Colchester. It is possible that the visible foundations of the medieval mill in the village are Roman. The Fleet is famous today as the home of a herd of swans who used to belong to the Abbey (a swan is theologically a fish and can be eaten on Friday). They are known to have lived here for at least 600 years.

It is not hard to find a Roman goddess that is similar to St Catherine. Venus is the Greek Aphrodite who is the Middle Eastern Astarte or Ashtaroth. We think of Aphrodite now as a 'departmental goddess' in charge of sexuality, but originally she had far wider responsibilities for wisdom, learning and love in all its categories. The swan is one of her creatures. There is no reason to think that the abbey brought the swans to Abbotsbury. They have probably lived here for millennia.

If we look for a Celtic predecessor, there is the 'goddess of the silver wheel', Arianrhod.

Finding the chapel

[Click on map * Dorset is marked in green, London in yellow * Abbotsbury is located in West Dorset
between Bridport and Weymouth]

The movie above shows a series of aerial photographs of St Catherine's chapel in Abbotsbury, Dorset, England. (Photography: Francesca Radcliffe).

From 'ABBOTSBURY Songs of the Abbey Lands' by David Bushrod, a contemporary poet living in Dorset.

ST CATHERINE'S CHAPEL

More like a fortress than a saintly shrine
With massive walls and solid barrel vault,
Was it perhaps by an inspired design
Built to withstand the infidel's assault?

Long since abandoned on this windswept hill,
Like some proud outcast now it stands alone,
Defending with indomitable will
Something more precious than the crumbling stone.

For rosaries of fervent prayer have left
A presence here by which the heart is stirred:
Though lonely, desecrated and bereft,
The echo of our faith can still be heard.

ABBOTSBURY

Here where the Abbey chancel stood
The light of faith once shone,
And one must feel a certain guilt
For honest grandeur gone.
From France the Benedictines came
On weary blistered feet,
And no doubt thought they were secure
In this remote retreat.
They built; they tilled the soil; they bred
The swans that grace the fleet.
They led a life which must have seemed
Both blessed and complete.
For centuries a life unchanged:
Like bees inside a hive
With varied, patient industry
They laboured to survive.
The dissolution was abrupt.
That grim satanic deed,
That act of crafty sacrilege
By Christians was decreed.
Like jackals with a still warm corpse
They broke the Abbey's bones,
Then picked the carcase clean and built
This village with the stones.
Four hundred years have now elapsed
Since those events occurred,
Or since the bells last woke the night
And matins last were heard.
What happened to the roofless monks?
The men of faith betrayed!
Was any sympathy expressed
Or any shame displayed?
Even God would not defend the monks
Against the wrath of kings,
Though Chesil Bank defends the Fleet
And cloistered calm still brings.
The swans still congregate and breed:
Their purity and grace
Are such that they have now become
The icons of this place.
Sacred, serene, and free to roam
Where once the brothers trod,
Protected by the hand of man
If not the hand of God.