Wulfhere of Addingham

Addingham is a pretty little village between Skipton and Ilkley, and is place from which worshippers at Salem Chapel have been drawn. It is also a place at which my ancestors worshipped and from where a number of children I used to teach travelled.

The church is old but not ancient, and among its relics it claims a Viking comb, bizarrely. Well might it hark to that era, for it was here that Archbishop Wulfhere, Anglo-Saxon churchman and figurehead, fled after York’s capture by the Danes in 867. An 11th century monk of Durham Abbey, called Symeon, writes:

“while these bloody struggles were going on, Bishop Wulfhere kept aloof, residing at Hatyngham, a valley in the Western part of Yorkshire which is called Hwerverdale, upon the bank of the River Hwerf between Otley and the Castle of Sciptun”.

Addingham, to use its modern spelling, and Wharfedale, would have been remote places in the ninth century, quite different to the relatively cosmopolitan city of York.

Whether Wulfhere was a true man of God or just a secular-style princeling with the ability to read and argue, we cannot say. Assuming he was a real believer, he might have found his little exile to Wharfedale a frustrating and unsatisfying demotion. Yet often the Lord demotes His ministers that they might better promote Him; His people are humbled that they might be exalted in due time.

Curiously, Archbishop Wulfhere is listed as Addingham’s first rector. He might be much forgotten in York, but not here.