A short history Britains Anglo-Saxon Settlements.

Much has been written of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors and our association with them. I would like to bring further reading to your notice and hoping that it will interest you. There has been several encouraging contacts regarding my writings on ANCIENT MEOLS, some saying that it is not usual for them to read of such things, but I suppose that it is all down to the fact that it is `something different' to read, if you know what I mean. The recipient can make additions to this as long as it is relevent to the script. It also can be used for a school project keeping alive as to where we are originally from.

 

Some of us today have Saxon blood in us, somewhat diluted but nevertheless our forbears were never expelled from the island. Geologically, Britain presents two distinct parts; that is a line drawn from the mouth of the Tees to the mouth of the Exe. This divergence explains the different course of development in each region until the Industrial Revolution, which exploited the minerals and altered the traditional economic balance. In the prehistoric age of Britain it formed part of the northern plain of Europe, and it was a geological accident that had turned a river bed into the English Channel, the lowlands of Southern England have their counterpart in the lowlands of Northern France and, historically speaking, they have never been separated.

Far from being a serious barrier, although it was always useful to repel any would be invaders, the channel has always been easy means of communication, far simpler to cross than mountain ranges or forestlands or swamps. It must be borne in mind that, to those who came from the eastern shores of the North Sea, the channel gave access equally to the lands on either side. The successive waves of Celtic peoples crossed the narrow seas, as before them some of the Neolithic peoples had done. On both sides of the Channel the Belgic Celts had made their settlements before Caesar made his two armed invasions in 55 and 54 b.c. To the Germanic tribes who occupied the northwest provinces of the Roman world, both north and south coasts of the Channel were similarly exposed.Many Britons, who had been driven from Britain, found shelter in Armorica, and the language spoken in Brittany was basically that which was spoken in Cornwall until the eighteenth century.

 

It is not surprising that the Romans should look beyond the channel to the lowlands of England. In the event this gently undulating country with very few hilly districts no more than six hundred feet, accessable in most parts, very fertile soil, was no obstacle to the Roman armies after the Claudian invasion of 43 a.d. Resistance was overcome very quickly and work on the pacification completed they built forts that were were constructed in the first stages of conquest which must have been abandoned at an early stage, there are only now slight traces seen of their existence. So the lowland zone became an area of civil occupation, in which the process of romanisation could be exerted to its fullest. The mountain chain from Cornwall to North Scotland presented a very different problem, to which a very different answer had to be given. Probably Claudius, so the history books tell us, and certainly Agricola, had thought that the subjugation of the whole of Britain was feasable, and for a time it must have seemed that success would have been possible.

The Dumnonian peninsular of Devon and Cornwall gave no trouble and, as we know, the Romans did not hesitate to establish villa estates around the coast, though they left the hills and moorlands to the Celts. Wales had been brought under control by the time Agricola became governor in 77 a.d and on the hole remained so thereafter, and a score of forts were erected to keep it under supervision. It seems that these were abandoned during the second century. The Pennine Dales did not escape their attention, once the hill fortresses of the native tribes hadbeen overcome the surrounding countryside could no longer offer resistance. The advance along the Cheviots, however, met with vacillating fortune. Agricola in 83 marched into Perthshire, defeated the Caledonians at Mons Graupus, and constructed garrison-forts at those strategic points where the Grampian passes came upon the Scottish plain.

 

Whatever plans he had made to further conquer Caledonia, as Wales had been conquered before it, we can only surmise, as imperial politics brought about his recall to Rome. No succeeding period proved to be so suitable and favourable for such an enterprise, and the northern frontier of Roman Britain swayed back and forth between later constructed walls; it retreated from the Scotish lowlands in 122 a.d.to Hadrians wall,which formed a seventy three mile cordon from the Tyne to the Selway Firth; it went forward again in 139-142 a.d to the Antonine Wall, stretching thirty-seven mlies across the other slender waist of Britain between the Forth and the Clyde; it returned about 180-185 a.d.to Hadrians Wall, where it remained until that line of defence eventually collapsed, or, more probably,was abandoned on strategic grounds in 383 a.d.

 

The absorbing interest of the Roman Occupation lies in watching the Roman political genius at work in shaping the provincial government, we seem enclosed in its effect to this day, for it is the impact of their coming that reaches out in most of which we hold sacred. There must have been some influence in the way in which the Roman Empire was administered which molded itself into the British way of life. We only need to look around us to see the legacy they encumbered upon us. From the political point of view the northern military zone can be left out of the argument. It is not that romanisation did not take place there. A certain measure was inevitable, for the army bases and depots attracted many hangers-on and called for a busy commerce, which was evidently not restricted to the south side of the wall alone.

As the practice of drafting troops from abroad was dropped gradually from the beginning of the second century in favour of local recruitment, the native soldiery on their discharge from service carried their knowledge of Roman ways with them to the farms on which they were settled outside the forts. The urban life proper did not flourish, and only as late as the 1930's had there been found near Durham the remains of a Roman villa beyond the neighbourhood of York. Romanised life remained necessarily superficial and, associated as it was with the army; it also disappeared with the army. Rome could be no more than an intruder in a predominantly Celtic environment.

The position was quite different in the civil zone of Southern Britain. We cannot appreciate the principles that directed Roman policy unless we first ask ourselves how many foreiners were imported into the country and what proportion of the total numberof inhabitants did they form. Obviously this question cannot be addressed except in its broadest sense; still, however much the more learned ones may vary in their estimates, the general conclusion seems to be beyond cavil. Including the soldiers, who were early drawn away to guard the northern frontier, and the administative and financial officials of the central government, and the traders, the immigrants did not exceed 100,000 in an area whose native population had been placed at around a million. The Romans were too wise and experienced to believe that they could remain simply a ruling class for too long, holding down resentful subjects by force.

 

That could be no more than an initial stage if their regime was to endure. Therefore, after they had, as it were, advertised' their wares by showing the Britons four examples of of romanised life on a level comparable with that of other parts of the Empire by building the 'coloniae' of Colchester, Lincoln,York and Gloucester, they set themselves to seek the co-operation of the Britons. Roman influence had been strong in the south of Briton before the invasions, and the rapid development of Roman civilisation would have been impossible except on the basis of co-operation, and this co-operation, accepted for their part by the Britons, permitted them to make their own contributions so that the final result was not pure Roman but Romano-British.The relative distribution of population and romanization was settled by geography, and the Romans made no determined effort to become the masters of their physical environment.

When the sites of excavated villas are plotted on the map, it can be shown that they appear as a U-shaped tract, extending from Lincolnshire through Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex to Kent, westwards along the counties between the Thames and the Channel coast as far as Dorset, and northwards through Somerset and along the Cotswolds into the Severn valley. Within this tract lay the Midlands, which at that time was covered in forest lands and marshlands, which naturally was the most thinly populated part of the lowland zones.It is evident that, though these lands already laid under contribution in pre-Roman times were more intensly cultivated to meet Imperial demands, little attempt were apparently made to extend the acreage of arable and pasture, and the long and arduous fight against nature was left to be the unspectacular and magnificent achievement of the Anglo-Saxons Centuries later. Apparently only in the fenlands did the Romans apply their engineering skill to construct great catchwater drains to reclaim land for the plough? The region of Norfolk and Suffolk, isolated by the Fens; the forest of the Weald in Kent; the swamps of the lower Ouse and Upper Trent around the Humber estuary; such continued always to repel settlement.