St. Anne’s Church, Catterick

I found myself in Catterick with ten minutes to spare. Grand plans of a leisurely stroll quickly shrank to a brisk glance around.

The village tries very hard to be charming, with its oversized green and a stream obligingly flowing by. One would not expect such rural pretence given its awkward position—wedged between a military sprawl and a motorway. An army, it seems, has been lurking here since Roman times, when the place went by the name Cataractonium, which sounds more like a digestive complaint than a town. The name allegedly comes from cataracta, Latin for waterfall, though the River Swale is more rapid than romantic.

After the Romans abandoned the place—presumably bored stiff—King Edwin of Northumbria is thought to have lounged about in a summer residence here. He had a bishop in tow, Paulinus, who busied himself converting the locals by the thousand. According to the ever-dramatic Bede, ten thousand people were dunked in the river on a single day, which earned the Swale the ridiculous nickname “The Jordan of England”¹Parkinson, T. “Yorkshire legends and traditions” Vol. I. 1888. A triumph of marketing over geography.

Catterick continued its flirtation with royalty into the eighth century. Kings and queens were apparently married here, which has been taken to mean it was a royal vill, though perhaps it was just conveniently located and no one looked too closely at the décor.

As for St. Anne’s church, it is not the original one for these royal marriages, naturally. But there is a surviving contract from 1412 in which a certain Richard de Cracall promises to “make the Kirke of Katrik newe als Workemanschippe and mason crafte will”. For his trouble, he was promised the tidy sum of ”eght score of markes“ and given three years. The Victorians, of course, could not leave it alone and saw fit to make their usual improvements centuries later²Historic England Research Records Hob Uid: 52341https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=0aaff09e-1f67-45cf-b79f-ebd3d6bee316&resourceID=19191.

And that, in essence, is Catterick: a village clinging to layers of borrowed importance, surrounded by roads, soldiers, and stories.

• 1
  Parkinson, T. “Yorkshire legends and traditions” Vol. I. 1888
• 2
  Historic England Research Records Hob Uid: 52341https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=0aaff09e-1f67-45cf-b79f-ebd3d6bee316&resourceID=19191