For many years people knew that there had been a church at Langar which had disappeared. 

But nobody knew where it was.

Nottinghamshire's famous historian, Robert Thoroton wrote in 1667 about 'an ancient Church in the Fields of Langar called St Æthelburga's or St Aubrey's which was given to Thurgarton Priory.'  

In the days of Queen Victoria, Andrew Esdaile's job was making clocks and watches in his shop at Bingham, but his spare time hobby was finding out about the history of the local area. One autumn day in 1849 Andrew Esdaile was watching a farmer ploughing up potatoes in a field near Hall Farm when he noticed bones coming to the surface - the bones were human.

The farmer told him that this field had always been used for grazing livestock and this was the first time the field had ever been ploughed. Andrew went back a number of times to collect more bones. He realised that the bones must be from the graveyard of the lost church of St Ethelburga. 

'I have been on the field and gathered many human bones of all ages, for it never was disturbed before.' wrote Esdaile, 'What a pity! There are potatoes growing amongst the remains of humanity.'

Somewhere beneath the soil lie the remains of an ancient church.

However, he did write a letter to the Ordnance Survey mapping organisation explaining something of what he discovered so they could mark it on their maps. He said he was digging trenches in a mound that was 80 feet long (25 metres), about 96 feet wide (30 metres) but only 3 feet high (1 metre). Here he found a human skeleton near the footings of a stone wall. Parts of other skeletons were also found. And he discovered pieces of stone from a building, one of which may have been a window sill. 

Mystery - Herbert Houldsworth's excavation seems to have stopped rather suddenly. One day in 1962, after a day's work digging in the field, he left his excavating tools at the farmhouse and never came back.

Nobody knows why.  And we can't ask him now - he died in 1977.

David Bate has been studying the lost church of St Ethelburga for over 25 years. He has researched old documents, walked across the fields looking for clues, studied electrical and magnetic surveys which show what might lie beneath the ground and has has looked at discoveries by metal detectors.

David Bate published what he found out in 2016.

From the evidence, David believes that the church was quite small - only 16 metres long and 6 metres wide.

It may have looked something like Elston Old Chapel near Newark, though the evidence suggests that St Ethelburga's church had a tower. 

We know that pilgrims used to come to St Ethelburga's church. During the Middle Ages, Christians believed that if you went on a journey (a pilgrimage) to a holy place where a saint was buried, God would forgive your sins. 

On 2 September 1405, Pope Innocent VII, the head of the Church, wrote to the Archbishop of York saying that St Ethelburga's church was one of those holy places. ;He said that the church was 'juxta Langar in campis in valle' (Latin = near Langar in the fields in the valley) and that it was a place where great multitudes of people go. 

St Ethelburga's was run by the monks of Thurgarton Priory, a very wealthy monastery 10 miles north of Langar on the road to Southwell. At St Ethelburga's church the monks provided food and drink for the pilgrims who may have travelled many miles to get there. And pilgrims would give money to the church in honour of the saint. 

So, it seems certain that there was the body of a saint here and that the saint was St Ethelburga. 

But who was St Ethelburga?

In the past there have been three St Ethelburgas! 

● St Ethelburga of Kent ● St Ethelburga of Barking ● St Ethelburga of Faremoutiers in France. But their bodies are in other churches. 

So our St Ethelburga is not one of them. 

However, there was an Anglo-Saxon St Eadburh, the Abbess of nearby Repton, who died about 700 AD and was buried in Southwell Minster. Her name in Latin would have been Eadburga. When the French-speaking Normans came after 1066, they had difficulty pronouncing Anglo-Saxon words and may have confused the name Eadburh or Eadburga with Ethelburga? They had little respect for the Anglo-Saxon language.

 How did Ethelburga get to Langar?

Nobody knows, but -when the Normans began to rebuild the Anglo-Saxon church of Southwell Minster, they did not want a female Anglo-Saxon saint in their new Norman church, so St Ethelburga was removed. However, the bones of saints attracted pilgrims and pilgrims brought money to the church. Holy bones were not to be wasted.

The prior of the monastery of Thurgarton had a seat in the chapter at Southwell Minster - he was on the committee that ran the cathedral. It is may be that the prior took the unwanted bones of St Ethelburga from Southwell to the little church in the fields near Langar to attract pilgrims to earn money for the church and for his monastery.

It's a sensible guess, but the fact is  . . .  nobody knows.

All fall down!

St Ethelburga's church became a popular place for pilgrimages. David Bate found evidence in the fields that people ate and drank here - large numbers of animal bones, broken jugs, pots and mugs are scattered round the site.

But all this came to end in 1535 when Henry VIII closed the monasteries. Three years later Thurgarton Priory was closed, the buildings were sold and the monks were given pensions and sent away.

That same year King Henry passed a law closing down all the holy places visited by pilgrims. If they had any treasures or money, Henry kept these for himself. 

And so, after 500 years, no pilgrims were allowed to visit St Ethelburga's church and there was no-one to look after the building. The church fell out of use and gradually fell into ruins. St Ethelburga's church was lost.

Nobody knows what happened to St Ethelburga's bones. Maybe they are still there in the farmer's field.

Nigel Wood is a local historian who has been working with others to raise money to investigate the site properly. On 1st April 2019 the news came that Project SEAL had received funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Project SEAL = St Ethelburga's Archaeological Landscape Project.

The plan is for local people to work with professional historians and archaeologists to learn about the area in the past and to rediscover the lost church of St Ethelburga.