Somerset, Bannaventa Tabernae, and the Dates of St Patrick

Abstract

St Patrick is a figure unique in the culture of late antique Britain, because his writings are almost the only British literary texts of the fifth century. Their interpretation has yet been hamstrung by uncertainty on where Patrick was born, and when he lived. But research in the 1990s convincingly showed St Patrick’s home of Bannaventa to be Banwell, North Somerset, in a region west of Bath and with many Roman villas. Further analysis now offers dates for him, putting his letter to the tyrant Coroticus in the 450s, so that Patrick will have died in (it seems) 461 and not (as claimed by some) 493. His writings are evidence for Britain up to the 450s. They thus tell us nothing about later periods, which were dominated by the Saxon invasions of 449 and later, but are never mentioned by Patrick.