Appleby History > In Focus > 3 - Anglo-Saxon Settlement
Chapter 3
The Anglo-Saxon Settlment
by Richard Dunmore
I am continuing to set the background to the establishment of Appleby parish, with its twin settlements of Appleby Magna and Appleby Parva. These settlements probably originate in the mid- to late-Saxon period.
The period following the Roman withdrawal has often been called the Dark Ages, not only because of the abandonment of the civilisation which the Romans had brought, but also because of the scarcity of surviving historical evidence. Historians have to take information from rare surviving documents and charters and piece them together with the results of modern research, usually in a local context, from different historical disciplines - for example archaeology, topography and the study of place names.
When the Roman occupation came to an end in the 5th century, following the decision for withdrawal taken in Rome in AD 409, the military and administrative props of society were removed. Many of the ‘Romans’ who were already settled on farms in the countryside (and who incidentally were not necessarily from Rome but came from anywhere in the Roman empire) stayed behind and lived alongside the British as did many soldiers discharged from the Roman army. With the withdrawal of Roman government, the remaining inhabitants were left to fend for themselves. Towns crumbled and Britain reverted to a more primitive society, lacking the order and control which Rome had brought.
Even during the Roman occupation, Britain had been vulnerable to attacks from invaders from northern Europe. While the Roman army was in place, these invasions were repulsed or contained at the Roman frontiers (Hadrian’s Wall is the famous military line of defence in the north), but following the Roman withdrawal the population was left without adequate protection and invasions of fierce ‘barbarians’ from north Germany became an annual occurrence. The terrified British population, unable to resist the attacks of these Anglo-Saxon warriors, eventually bought off the invaders with land for settlement. By the middle of the fifth century the newcomers had settled throughout the whole country and, with the arrival of chieftains, the country became divided into small warring kingdoms.
In this part of the east Midlands it was the Anglian people who settled, infiltrating the major river valleys as far as the Trent during the fifth century. By the sixth century, the kingdom in the border region along the Trent valley had become known as Mercia. The people were the Mierce, or Mercians, literally the people of the borders. Peter Foss suggests that the new settlers in the Trent valley moved cautiously up the tributary Tame and Anker valleys into the Mease and Sence valleys which were occupied by surviving Romano-British groups.
The early, pre-Mercian, Anglo-Saxon place-name ending -ham (homestead or village) survives locally in the name of Measham, a little further up the Mease valley from the Roman farm or villa at Stretton en le Field suggested in the last article. Foss thinks the proximity of an early Anglo-Saxon settlement close to the site of a Romano-British farm is not accidental. Measham may therefore originate as the local survival of a farm or homestead from the period after the Romans withdrew. This is in keeping with the frequently held view of archaeologists today that there was some continuity of settlement and farming patterns from the Iron Age through the Roman occupation to the Saxon period.
Remarkably, during this turbulent period, Christian missionaries achieved the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. The Church had already established a considerable presence during the Roman period and continued to thrive among the Romano-British population after the Roman withdrawal, but there appears to have been no attempt to convert the Anglo-Saxon invaders. During the sixth century the Celtic Church, already established in Ireland by St Patrick who himself was a Roman Briton, sent missionaries into the north of England, led by St Columba, and they spread their influence southwards. This was followed from the south, by the mission of St Augustine sent from Rome by Pope Gregory in AD 597.
By the mid-Saxon period, the small Anglo-Saxons kingdoms had been re-organised by sub-division into so-called multiple estates. The origin and significance of these is clouded in obscurity, but they may in some cases equate to divisions of the tribal regions of Romano-British times, if not earlier. By the twelfth century, the multiple estates themselves were divided into what we can recognise as administrative parishes. The existence of multiple estates is known from Anglo-Saxon charters, where they survive, but in Leicestershire generally they do not. However, the evidence of Domesday Book and consideration of other factors such as land unit boundaries (parish, hundred and county) and topography have enabled plausible attempts at reconstruction to be made where no charters survive. The nearest local example is that of Market Bosworth attempted by Peter Foss.
One of the clues to identifying these estates may be the distribution of churches and priests. Just as the later parishes were served by the Church with priests and places of worship, identification of churches and priests before the parochial system was fully established may point to the multiple estates which they served.
The Origins of Appleby Parish
Appleby is mentioned three times in the Domesday Book of 1086 with land held by Burton Abbey (Derbyshire) and Henry de Ferrers and Countess Godiva (Leicestershire). The latter was widow of Earl Leofric of Mercia - the famous Lady Godiva of Coventry. Burton Abbey had acquired its land at Appleby Magna in the will of Wulfric Spot dated 1004. The place name Appleby is a combination of Saxon and Danish elements. This is probably a modification of a wholly Saxon name, perhaps Appleton,so the settlement appears to date from Saxon times, before the Danish invasions of the ninth century.
To sort out the origins of Appleby parish, we need to see how the geographical extent of the parish fits in with its neighbours. This may give us an idea of the position and size of the multiple estate from which the parish was carved out. Saxon churches are few and far between, being limited in this area to churches (with seventh century foundations) at Breedon and Repton, the latter being the burial place of some of the Mercian kings. But we can also look at the distribution of priests and the eleventh century Domesday Book is the earliest source that we have. Assuming that Domesday Book lists all the existing priests in west Leicestershire (and that is a big assumption), these were located at Ashby, Packington, Swepstone, Norton juxta Twycross, Market Bosworth (2) and Cadeby. There was none mentioned at Appleby, so it may be that the priest at Norton catered for neighbouring parishes including Appleby.
Looking at the map, clearly the parishes of Chilcote, Stretton and Appleby were carved out of one unit of land. Their common boundaries, as I have noted before, radiate from No Mans Heath. Also, the old county boundary line between Leicestershire and the detached part of Derbyshire, radiating from the same point, separated the two manors of Appleby Parva and Appleby Magna, the constituent halves of Appleby parish from medieval times. To the south east, this group of parishes also joins smoothly on to the parish of Twycross, encompassing settlements at Norton juxta Twycross, Gopsall, Twycross and Orton on the Hill. No other contiguous parish joins smoothly to this larger group, which appears complete in itself. Each internal boundary meets the peripheral boundary in a ‘T’ junction, a feature which Jill Bourne has pointed out is ‘a characteristic indicator of being arbitrarily drawn’. The group must therefore be considered to be a serious candidate for the multiple estate which preceded the component parishes.
n terms of topography, this supposed estate stretched from the low lying lands bordering the River Mease in the north and the River Sence in the south-east and reaching up to the ridge running from No Mans Heath to Twycross, with its southern spur to Orton on the Hill. This landscape would have provided all the meadow, pastoral and arable lowland and heath upland required in farming, together with a good supply of water from the rivers and streams. The creation of the later parishes retained this upland/lowland duality with each territory stretching from the high heathland down to the rivers.
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It is not surprising that the ownership of land at the time of Domesday yields little information about the holdings of land as they existed several hundred years earlier. Estate boundaries must have changed and new groupings of land accumulated. We know that Wulfric Spot had accumulated an estate of scattered lands before his endowment of Burton Abbey in 1004. The Norman Conquest brought about the formation of large estates for the supporters of King William. According to the Domesday survey Henry de Ferrers, one of these tenants-in-chief, acquired a very large proportion of the vills (manorial territories) in this area including Stretton, part of Appleby Parva, Gopsall, Twycross and Orton on the Hill. The King himself held Chilcote (and Measham), as part of his Derbyshire estate at Repton. This may hark back to the Mercian system of collecting tribute and dues for the royal estate.
However, there is a suggestion of an earlier territorial grouping across our supposed multiple estate, in that the Saxon Countess Godiva ‘held’ Norton-juxta-Twycross and most of Appleby Parva as well as leasing part of Burton Abbey’s land at Appleby Magna (the past tense ‘held’ signifies that her land was confiscated). Her only other holding in Leicestershire was at Bilstone. This occupies an indentation in the boundary adjacent to Twycross and Gopsall (and part of the modern civil parish of Shackerstone). So perhaps Godiva’s pre-Conquest holdings represent the remnant of a Saxon multiple estate, identified by its boundaries and in which Bilstone should be included.
As we have seen, the only priest mentioned in Domesday Book for the area covered by these parishes was at Norton juxta Twycross and this location would have been conveniently central for serving the whole supposed estate. It would be fitting for the priest to have been provided by the pious Countess, who with Earl Leofric, founded and supported religious houses such as St Mary’s Benedictine Monastery and Abbey in Coventry.
Chronology
Iron Age: c. 800 BC - 43 AD
Roman: 43 AD - 409 AD
Anglo-Saxon: 5th - 11th century
Postscript
I wrote in the last article about the possible ‘Multiple Estate’ out of which the parish of Appleby and its neighbours may have been carved and speculated that Bilstone, which had been held by the Countess Godiva in 1066, ought to have formed part of this larger estate (Godiva also held Norton and parts of Appleby in 1066.) My map showed parish boundaries based on those given on the Seventh Series One Inch Ordnance Survey Maps. These indicate a united Civil Parish for Twycross which incorporated Gopsall, Norton juxta Twycross and Orton on the Hill.
I have now looked into the origins of the united Twycross Civil Parish in the Victoria County History of Leicestershire* with enlightening results. This united parish was formed in 1935 from the Ancient Parishes listed above viz. Twycross, Gopsall, Norton and Orton. At the same time Bilstone, which had been an independent Civil Parish from 1881, was transferred to Shackerstone, where it now remains. However, before 1881, Bilstone was a ‘Township of Norton juxta Twycross Ancient Parish’. In other words, it formed part of Norton parish from ancient times until 1881. This shows conclusively that Bilstone should be included within my proposed ‘Multiple Estate’.
* Victoria County History of Leicestershire, Vol III, 1955, pp180-201 ‘Population Tables’: p 183 Bilstone, p 194 Norton juxta Twycross and p 201 Twycross, footnote (j).
Sources and Background
Peter Foss, ‘Market Bosworth and its Region’ in Anglo-Saxon Landscapes in the East Midlands,ed. Jill Bourne, Leicestershire Museums Arts and Records Service, 1996, p 87 Measham and local Anglo-Saxon settlement, p 88 origins of Mercia, pp 92-93 Market Bosworth ‘multiple estate’
Peter Liddle, The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon Leicestershire in Anglo-Saxon Landscapes in the East Midlands, op cit, p7: ‘The ‘multiple estate’ is a group of parishes which appear once to have formed a large land ownership unit ... they are considered to originate well back in the Anglo-Saxon period (if not the Roman period, or even the Iron Age).’
R Millward, A History of Leicestershire and Rutland, Phillimore, 1985, Chapter IV, ‘Anglo-Saxon Colonisation and the Making of Mercia’
David Parsons, Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Landscapes in the East Midlands, op cit, p xxi (relationship of church organisation to territorial units, ie parish or multiple estate)
Jill Bourne, ‘An Anglo-Saxon Royal Estate ‘Aet Glenne’ and the Murder of St Wigstan’ in Anglo-Saxon Landscapes in the East Midlands, op cit, p 147 (multiple estates), p153 (‘T’ junctions)
Jill Bourne, Place Names of Leicestershire and Rutland, Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Information Service, 1981
Domesday Book,1086, Folios 230- 237, Leicestershire and Folios 272 - 278, Derbyshire.
F R Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’ in The Leicestershire Domesday, Alecto Editions, 1990, p 29 (royal estate of Repton)
Will of Wulfric Spot, 1004, held by Burton on Trent Library
©Richard Dunmore, September 2000
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