Colchester, Fortress of the War God: an Archaeological Assessment by Radford David Gascoyne Adrian Wise Philip

Author:Radford, David,Gascoyne, Adrian,Wise, Philip
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology
ISBN: 9781782970750
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Published: 2013-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

The late Anglo-Saxon countryside

Administrative frameworks

In the mid-10th century Colchester was the centre of an important group of administrative estates held by the ealdormen of Essex (VCH 1994, Essex IX, 19). These estates included: West Mersea and Fingringhoe, which commanded the seaward approaches to Colchester, Alresford, Peldon and Bryton (in Stanway). In the immediate countryside around the walled town were the estates of Lexden, Greenstead, Donyland and Stanway. Hart has tentatively suggested that all these properties were taken from the Danes by King Edward the Elder in AD 917 and used for the endowment of the Essex earldom (Hart 1987, 70).

Towards the beginning of the 11th century several of these estates were broken up in the wills of Æthelflaed and Ælflaed, the widows of King Edmund and ealdorman Byrhtnoth and the daughters of the previous ealdorman, Ælfgar. Æthelflaed divided Donyland into four parts and Ælflaed granted Stanway and Lexden to King Æthelred II (VCH 1994, Essex IX, 19). Ælflaed also surrendered the estates of Byrton (in Stanway) and Alresford to the king, so that, by the time of Domesday, several of the large estates had fragmented into smaller administrative units. However, at some point following Byrhtnoth’s death, this fragmentation was reversed with the formation of the large administrative block of the Colchester Hundred, which was to fall under the jurisdiction of the town’s burgesses (Hart 1993, 198) and had been established by 1066.

There is no early record of the bounds of the hundred of Colchester which eventually formed the borough’s liberty and was to include the outlying areas of Greenstead, Mile End, Lexden and West Donyland. Cooper has studied the topography of the post-Conquest perambulations of the borough (VCH 1994, Essex IX, 230) and Cyril Hart has discussed the hundred’s formation, keeping with the long-held view that it was carved out of Lexden Hundred in the late 10th century (VCH 1903, Essex I, 406; Tait 1936, 48; Hart 1993). The boundary of the Colchester Hundred was delineated on two sides by elements of the late Iron Age–early Roman dyke system: to the west of the UAD study area the linear bank and ditch earthwork of Gryme’s Dyke has survived into modern times as the borough’s western boundary and forms much of the eastern boundary of Stanway parish and the western boundary of the parish of Lexden; another dyke, recorded by Morant as ‘The Rampers’ (Morant 1768, bk I, 96) and located to the north of the study area on the former Boxted and Horksley Heaths (CAR 11, 50), formed the borough’s northern boundary. Within the parish of Lexden, a flat-topped mound known as Lexden Mount has been proposed as a possible post-Roman non-sepulchral mound (Adkins and Petchey 1984, 250). It has also been suggested as a possible meeting place for the Lexden Hundred (Christy 1928, 181). Excavation of the earthwork in 1910 failed to identify its function although small quantities of Roman pottery and tile were recovered (Laver and Reader 1913, 190; Hull 1958, 252).

Settlement and religious buildings

Of the 247 Essex

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