Fortifications in Wessex c. 800-1066 by Ryan Lavelle

Author:Ryan Lavelle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fortifications in Wessex c. 800–1066
ISBN: 9781782005513
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

Town and garrison life

As has been seen, many of the larger burhs of Wessex became important as towns. Within the security of fortifications, urban economies could develop as burhs became centres for the buying and selling of the agricultural produce of the neighbouring region. The control of silver within them also meant that they could flourish as centres of the production of high quality goods such as leather and metalwork. In this respect, some historians have suggested that royal authority was the guiding power here, and the increase of royal authority may even have been the real intention that lay behind the construction of the burhs and the resultant control of the population and economy (even if, paradoxically, by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, many of the larger towns had begun to develop a degree of civic independence). Of course, the Viking threat was no illusion, but it may have been in the interests of the king, specifically Alfred and his son Edward the Elder, to remind their subjects of the threat in order to ensure that the urban economy that developed under the first ‘English’ kings could be tightly controlled.

This meant that trade had to take place within the walls of the fortifications. Whether kings intended to stimulate trade in the kingdom by these means or simply ensure that they were able to gain a greater hold over the taxation of that trade remains a subject of debate; it is even possible that both were intended. However, during the course of the 10th century, the emergence and consolidation of the West Saxon Crown’s control of the urban economy can be seen. This is demonstrated by the increasingly draconian laws that were promulgated during the reigns of Athelstan (924–39), Edgar (957–75) and Æthelred II (‘the Unready’, 978–1016) decreeing the minting of coinage in urban sites and ensuring that trade was only allowed to take place within designated fortified sites.

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