The Anglo-Saxon World by Nicholas Higham

Author:Nicholas Higham
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2013-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

5.12 Lunette-type penny of King Burgred of Mercia

Though the emporia were in decline in the ninth century, evidence from elsewhere in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms suggests urban life was in many respects flourishing. Most is known of ninth-century Canterbury, where material from the archives of Christ Church provides an unparalleled window onto urban life in this period. The eastern parts of the walled city contained a number of streets lined with narrow burgage plots. Charters reveal the existence of a set of local customs or bye-laws stipulating a minimum distance between buildings in this location – 2 feet (60 centimetres) of ‘eavesdrip’ to allow the run-off of rainwater – suggesting a densely populated area with space at a premium. Many of these plots had appurtenant agricultural lands outside of the city and were particularly valued assets, worth up to ten times as much as equivalent land elsewhere, and there was a flourishing market in general for properties in Canterbury. The western parts of the city were, by contrast, given over to agricultural uses – probably because the land here was prone to flooding and so less suitable for intensive building – with larger estates owned by a number of religious communities.

Already by the ninth century, the citizens of Canterbury were organised into fraternities and corporations. There was a guild of cnihtas, or retainers, probably those charged with managing the urban properties of important landowners. The purpose of the fraternity of mycle gemettan is obscure, but the name ‘the many guests’ or ‘many food sharers’ suggests poorer inhabitants who depended on others for their sustenance or perhaps workers entitled to food as part of their wages. There were also groups of innan and utan burhware, burgesses who lived, respectively, inside and outside of the city, the latter perhaps living in the immediate extramural environs of Canterbury.

The evidence from Canterbury is exceptional and the city itself may be a special case – having been a royal centre and an archiepiscopal see since the very early seventh century. Canterbury was also the most important and most productive of the south Humbrian mints, accounting for up to half of the coins found in that region. Given the volume and wide distribution of its coinage, Canterbury must have occupied a privileged position in the south Humbrian economy, and the decline of Lundenwic and Hamwic can only have magnified Canterbury’s importance.

If Canterbury was exceptional, nevertheless there are hints of urban growth and renewal elsewhere. Parts of Rochester, for example, were probably divided into burgage plots by the middle of the ninth century. As at Canterbury, the presence of an episcopal see and a mint, albeit on a smaller scale, may have stimulated urban development and growth here. At Winchester, if an early tenth-century poem can be trusted, Bishop Swithun had a bridge built outside the east gate of the town in 859. Such may have been designed to facilitate the flow of increasing traffic into the town, and by the early tenth century this route across the River Itchen and through the walls had become the principal market street in Winchester.

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