Over 70 English churches and 5 towns and villages are dedicated to St Botolph, indicatin the great respect in which this most influential 7^th century missionary, priest, abbot and saint has been held. These churches extend from East Anglia westward to Warwickshire, northward through Lincolnshire into Yorkshire and southward through Essex and London into Kent and Sussex. In medieval times and later he was also venerated in what is now Germany and Denmark.

St Botolph’s patronage is linked to favourable weather, fruitful crops and poultry and travelling. He selected previously uncultivated land for habitation and perhaps because his remains travelled far and wide after his death he became the patron saint of travellers in England (the cult of St Christopher flourished more on the continent) and hence his churches are near main roads. Quarrington lies near routes to the south, London Road and Grantham Road. Two boundary stones or pilgrims’ crosses were formerly in the parish.

Botulf may have been of royal Irish descent whose name was later saxonised into Botwulf and then normanised to Botolph or he may have been a native Saxon, a name applied to inhabitants of Sussex, Wessex and Essex.  Early biographers differ as to his place of origin and early education.  His brother Adolf was consecrated a bishop in Frisia (The Netherlands) by St Willibrord, a Benedictine who usually chose Benedictines as his helpers and who himself had been educated in an Irish monastery. Botolph travelled in Europe, staying and studying in monasteries and before returning to England in 647 visited Farmoutier – en – Brie monastery or nunnery in Saxonia (now France) where he met the two sisters of King Ethelmund to whom he owed his introduction to the East Anglian court.  He waited until he was granted untilled land on which he could build and found his own monastery at Ikenhoe (Ox Island) in 654 and pioneer Benedictine Rule in England.

Boston, Lincolnshire has claimed to be Ikenhoe, also Wikanford near Lincoln and Hadstock in Essex but the most probable spot is Iken in Suffolk where there is a partly thatched church dedicated to St Botolph to this day, which is not unlike St Botolph’s Quarrington in style and lay out.  Permission to build the monastery was granted by an East Anglian whose jurisdiction in 654 cannot have extended into Lincolnshire. The ancient Saxon Chronicle for 654 says Botolph began to ‘timber the minister at Ikenhoe’ meaning a more durable building of timber was erected in place of a temporary structure of mud and wattle. The site had been occupied by British Christians at an even earlier date.

Botolph journeyed from Iken to the Thames where he built a church in honour of St Martin either at Northfleet or Tempsford and in 667 he needed a rest after a snake bite so he went elsewhere in East Anglia and built churches to St Peter and St Paul with grants of land and money from the same King who financed Iken.  In 670 St Ceolfrid, later Abbot of Wearmouth, paid Iken monastery a long visit after his ordination at Ripon, Yorkshire, since Botolph’s fame had spread as a man of remarkable life and learning and full of the Holy Spirit, ‘illustrating by his example what he preached from his mouth’, according to one early chronicler. Ceolfrid was inspired by Botolph, the missionary bishop without see or promise of succession but often referred to as Pontifex Almus, Kindly High Priest.

In old age Botolph suffered ailments but not lack of faith and he died in 680.  His monks continued the Benedictine traditions of worship, work and service till the Danes destroyed his monastery in 870.

King Edgar granted Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, permission to remove St Botolph’s bones from his grave at Ikenhoe. They were divided into three parts by royal edict: the head went to Ely, the body to Westminster and the rest to Thorney. Writers mention various resting places en route including Grundisburgh and Botolph Bridge near Peterborough. Various keepers of St Botolph’s relics are recorded, gilds founded in his name in London and elsewhere and a shrine was built at the Abbey of St Edmund at Bury. Miracles were claimed for him during and after his lifetime. The three days ending 17^th June were called Botolmass and the last day has been his feast for over 1,000 years.

This article is taken from 'St Botolph, Quarrington: A short history by Christopher Micklethwaite'
A copy can be obtained by contacting peter.mander@btinternet.com, price £3.00

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