(3rd - 7th centuries)

Nobody knows when Christianity first reached England. According to a medieval legend, Joseph of Arimathea, who was given custody of Christ's body, built a church at Glastonbury in Somerset. Another legend tells of a British king called Lucius, who is said to have written to the Pope in the year 156 to obtain a conversion to Christianity.

Although there is little or no evidence to support these stories, it is quite possible that Christianity reached England not long after Christ's execution. At that time Britain and Judaea were both part of the Roman Empire. And the Empire's road and sea communications enabled new ideas to travel a long way fast.

By the middle of the third century Christianity had established a foothold here. This was noted by the African church father Tertullian and the Middle Eastern theologian Origen. According to the seventh century historian Bede, the Britons preserved the Christian faith until the Great Persecution instigated by the Emperor Diocletian in 303.

Ten years later the Edict of Milan gave full freedom of worship to Christians throughout the Roman Empire. This enabled three British bishops to attend a church council at Arles in France. Forty-five years later British bishops attended another council at Rimini in Italy.

The remains of what may have been a Christian basilica, built about the time of the Council of Rimini, were found at the ruined Roman city of Calleva Atrebatum, about ten miles south-west of Reading. Further evidence of early Christianity was provided in 1890, when the skeleton of a Romano-British priest, holding a pewter chalice, was discovered under London Road, Reading. And in 1988 a lead baptismal font dated to about 360 was found at Dean's Farm near Lower Caversham (formerly in Sonning parish). This font bears the chi-rho symbol which consists of the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ. (It looks like a letter P superimposed on an X.) The font is now in Reading Museum.

With the breakdown of the Roman Empire came a collapse of Church administration. The deacon Gildas, writing sometime about 540, described the chaos: 'Britain has kings, but they are tyrants ... Britain has priests, but they are madmen ...'

Sixty years later the pagan kingdom of Kent, based at Canterbury, dominated most of southern England. When the Kentish king married a Christian, the Pope saw an opportunity to reorganise the remnants of the Church in Britain. In 597 he sent a company of monks to England under the leadership of St Augustine. King Ethelbert of Kent was baptised and subsequently many of the Kentish people converted to Christianity. Canterbury, Ethelbert's base, and York, the former Roman military headquarters, became the two senior bishoprics of the Church in England.

Another generation was to pass before a papal missionary had a lasting impact on the Thames Valley. He was a Roman monk called Berin, better known by the Latin version of his name, Birinus. On the orders of the Pope, Birinus was consecrated bishop by the Archbishop of Milan. But instead of being given an existing diocese, Birinus was instructed to establish his own in a mission territory.

He therefore travelled to England in 634 and eventually reached Dorchester-on-Thames. This town, in the heart of the Thames Valley, had been an important walled settlement during the Roman occupation. It was protected by the Thames on two sides and by its tributary the Thame on another. On the banks of the Thame in 635 Birinus baptised Cynegils, king of Wessex. Every king of Wessex thereafter was a Christian, the last being Alfred the Great, the first king of England. And every English monarch after Alfred was also a Christian.

King Cynegils gave Dorchester to Birinus as his see, the base for his huge diocese which stretched from Hampshire to Yorkshire. A cathedral was built where Dorchester Abbey now stands.

Birinus died in 650 and about twenty years later the see transferred to Winchester. But in the ninth century Dorchester became a cathedral town again. This second see of Dorchester was later transferred to Lincoln. Hence the present Anglican dioceses of Winchester and Lincoln both derive from the church established by Birinus at Dorchester-on-Thames.

In the Middle Ages the body of St Birinus was widely believed to be at Winchester, where a shrine to him had long since stood. However, in the 1400s the monks of Dorchester argued that the saint's remains were at Dorchester and got the Pope's permission to open the original tomb. Claiming to have found the Birinus's body, the monks built a shrine of their own in a new Lady chapel on the south side of the abbey church.

At the dissolution of the abbey in 1536 the shrine was destroyed. Many of the fragments were used to block up a Norman doorway. In the nineteenth century these pieces were rediscovered. For nearly half a century they were exhibited in the Lady chapel. Finally, in 1964 they were incorporated into a new shrine of St Birinus, designed by Russell Cox. It should be noted that this does not contain the saint's relics.

The name of Birinus or Berin lives on in the Thames Valley in a number of ways. There is Berinsfield, the modern village a mile and a half north of Dorchester, and Berinshill, the steep climb up the Chiltern Hills six miles south-east of the town. The nineteenth century Catholic church opposite Dorchester Abbey, and the twentieth century Anglican church at Calcot, near Reading are both named after him. And the local National Health Service institutions for the mentally ill comprise the St Birinus Group of Hospitals.

Perhaps his name lives on most meaningfully in the St Birinus Pilgrimage. This takes place every year on the first Sunday in July. Hundreds of people of different Christian traditions assemble at Churn Knob, a hill where Birinus is said to have preached, some seven miles south-west of Dorchester. From there they walk cross-country to the abbey for a packed and joyful united service in which local leaders of the Anglican, Catholic and Nonconformist churches take an active part.

It is somehow fitting that the saint who, 1,300 years ago, brought the Gospel from Rome to the Thames Valley, should once again be the focus for Christian unity. And it is interesting that, despite tremendous difficulties, a small group of Christians in and around Dorchester remained loyal to Rome even after the Church of England rejected the authority of the Pope.