Norwich Cathedral - a Minster site?


I am intrigued by my reading of Blair The Church in Anglo Saxon Society,


i)  re minster sites and the vallum or septum  monasterii and how lost features in the landscape might be reconstructed from the road system as at Bisley p197





ii) And on p 199  several churches in an enclosure and aligned churches















Could it be that the Close Norwich (and Great Hospital) are the fossil of an earlier minster?   Occupying an area on as bend in the river?

The original site of St.Helen's is in line with the Cathedral, but the churches within the imagined vale are widely dispersed. On the plus side - the site does seem to tick the boxes that Blair suggests for a minster site !



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