While the fourth century picture is one of a settlement steeling itself against an increasingly hostile political and economic climate, it is possible that the seeds of Worcester’s later importance were sown during this period. A Roman bronze chi-rho (cross) found during the construction of the Lychgate centre, and the Roman nature of the dedication of St Helen’s church in Fish Street (lying just within the northern bounds of the late Roman defences), have been used to suggest that a Christian community developed and prospered on the site.

While more evidence is required to substantiate this hypothesis, recent studies have shown that a British Christian community, controlling a large part of what later became north Worcestershire, were probably well established on the site before the Anglo-Saxon minster church of St. Peter was founded in A.D. 680. Over and above the historical evidence for this, which is primarily based on the origins and extent of St Helen’s and its rural parish, the absence of pagan Saxon burials and settlement evidence from the west bank of the Severn, and from the Worcester area generally, is unlikely to have been due to natural barriers alone. Rather than being abandoned therefore, we can envisage a fifth and sixth century settlement whose rulers, possibly minor British Kings (and possibly Christian) managed to establish control over, and defend, a large and prosperous rural hinterland until the seventh century when the area was annexed as part of the kingdom of the Hwicce.

T he fifth/sixth century community would probably have inhabited the same defended enclosure as that occupied during the fourth century - between Copenhagen Street/Pump Street, in the north, and the southern end of the river terrace - and in all probability comprised the descendants of the Romano- British population. At least one church, St Helen’s, was established in the northern part of the defended area (the adjacent church of St Alban’s, on Little Fish Street, may have been another), providing pastoral care to a large rural parish which in 1113 still comprised churches at Wick, Martley, Wichenford, Kenswick, Little Witley and Holt on the west bank, and Claines (Northwick), Hindlip, Warndon, Whittington, Churchill and Huddington on the east bank. While little concrete archaeological evidence is available for this period, two Christian burials found beneath the refectory undercroft (now College Hall) in the Cathedral Close may have been part of this community, while soil studies on sites on Deansway - outside the defences - have shown that the area was used as grazing land.