Narrative History
of the Royal County of Berkshire
by Brenda Ralph
Lewis & David Nash Ford
B E
R K S H I R E
Dark Age &
Anglo-Saxon Times
Once the
Roman Administration had departed
Britain, probably around AD 410, town
life in Berkshire, as elsewhere, barely
lasted out the century. Calleva survived
for a while and the citizens constructed
a series of defensive banks and ditches
around the town's northern borders in
Padworth parish. Presumably they were
attempting to keep out pagan Anglo-Saxon
invaders who were crossing from Denmark
and Northern Germany and moving up the
Thames. Sadly, Dark Age tales of King
Arthur refortifying an ancient hillfort
at Windsor can be dismissed. Life in
Berkshire reverted to its former
comparatively primitive state. As
excavations at Ufton Nervet, Theale
Green, Long Wittenham and the
Maidenhead/Wargrave area have revealed,
people returned to living in farmsteads
or simple round-houses, surrounded by
embankments, possibly for protection
against marauders. The Anglo-Saxons, of
course, lived no differently and traces
of their farmsteads, as well as more
high-profile settlements, have been
uncovered throughout Berkshire, for
example at Radley and Sutton Courtenay.
These Germanic people, as mercenaries in
the Roman army, appear to have settled in
the Abingdon area from a very early date,
but they soon gained political ambition
and, in time carved, out kingdoms for
themselves. One of these, Wessex,
eventually covered Berkshire, Hampshire,
Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon.
The north of Berkshire was particularly
associated with the early Wessex kings
and it was probably at the Royal Palace
of Cholsey that St. Birinus sought out
King Cynegils, in AD 634, and gained
permission to convert his people to
Christianity. The ancient Abbey of
Abingdon was founded only forty years
later. There were nunneries at Reading
and Cookham and elsewhere minsters soon developed, from which to send priests out into the countryside, at Kintbury, Lambourn, Thatcham and White Waltham. Saxon architecture is
still extant in the county at churches like Wickham and Boxford. The
power of Christian Wessex was so
extensive that by AD 829, its king,
Egbert, became effective ruler of all
England.
There was
great rivalry between the Anglo-Saxon
kings, and areas of Berkshire changed
hands several times particularly between
Mercia and Wessex before a greater enemy,
the Norse Vikings arrived from
Scandinavia to challenge all of them. By
AD 860, when the name of Berkshire was
first recorded, as Berrocshire, the
Vikings were penetrating deep inland.
Berrocshire was composed of two areas,
one in the north and west, and
'Sunningum' in the east. According to
Asser, biographer of Wantage-born King
Alfred the Great of Wessex, the name was
Celtic, deriving from the 'Berroc Wood,'
possibly in the south-west of the county,
where box trees flourished in large
numbers. Modern opinion is undecided, but
a Saxon meaning of 'Sacred Grove of the
Oak Tree County' is one interpretation.
It refers to the worship of the Celtic
god, Cernunnos, and his associated Oak
Tree in Windsor Forest. Most of
Berkshire's present-day place-names are,
indeed, Saxon in origin. Several use the
suffix '-ingas' denoting the family and
followers of a particular individual:
Sonning, with Sunninghill and
Sunningdale, are in the areas claimed by
the Sunningas; Wokingham and Wokefield
belonged to the Woccingas and Reading to
the Radingas.
Reading,
in fact, became the Vikings' headquarters
camp and an important base from which
they waged war on the English over a
number of years. Though Wessex victories
included King Alfred's famous triumph at
the Battle of Ashdown (probably in
Aldworth), the Saxons were eventually
forced to partition England, in AD 886,
between their own Southern territory and
the Danelaw. Berkshire remained under
Saxon rule and served as the site of two
of Alfred's defensive burhs or
fortresses: one at Wallingford, another
on Sashes Island in Cookham. At
Wallingford, the defences comprised an
enclosure of 100 acres ringed by a high
bank and a ditch. The burh walls
consisted of 5-metre long perches, each
defended by four men.
By the
10th century, Berkshire, till then mainly
a county of small villages and
farmsteads, began to acquire the nucleus
of towns as some places rose in
importance through the government
activity that happened to be centred
there. Kintbury, Thatcham and
Lambourn, for instance, were local
administrative and legal centres for the surrounding Hundreds. Some places also acquired lustre as
the sites of Royal palaces at the centre of large estates.
Here, the Saxon kings occasionally consulted with
their Witan-gemot, a council of
advisors (and parliamentary precursor).
King and advisors met, for example, at
Abingdon in AD 989, Wantage in AD 995, Cookham in AD 997 and Sutton Courtenay in 1042.
There were other notable palaces at Cholsey, Old Windsor and Faringdon.
Sonning was made the joint-focus of the
diocese of Ramsbury and Sonning in AD
909, with both Cathedral and Bishop's
Palace. Berkshire's first true towns,
however, were sited at Wallingford and
Reading. Both later acquired their own
mints. Wallingford was the seat of the
county's ruling Ealdorman and his
administration, while Reading developed
as a trading centre. Meanwhile, in the
countryside which covered most of the
county, the small holdings of earlier
Saxon times had become much larger
fields, each of which was strip-farmed by
local villagers while other areas of land
remained as unused heath, forest and
marsh.
Next:
Norman & Medieval Times
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