Viking Age England

by Julian D Richards

  The Saxon defences follow a common pattern. The ramparts were of damp construction, initially of clay or clay and turves, with varying amounts of wooden reinforcement. They were scarped at the front and sloped at the rear; a height of 2-3m and a width of 9-12m were normal; presumably they were crowned with timber palisades. This first defensive phase is usually assumed to be Ælfredian, although the archaeological evidence usually only proves that they are post-Roman, and they could have been constructed before Ælfred’s reign. At many burhs there is a second rampart phase, in which a stone wall was added to the bank to replace the timber palisade in the late tenth or early eleventh centuries. At Cadbury (Somerset), a late burh, an earthen bank was erected over the rampart of the Iron Age hillfort and faced with a mortared masonry wall in a single operation. A substantial stone gatehouse was built at the south-west entrance; it has been suggested that a timber bridge carried a wall walk over the entrance, but there is no evidence for anything other than a monumental arch and massive timber gates. Cadbury appears to have been founded as an emergency measure between c.1010-20, designed to put at least one English mint in a place of safety. In its interior the foundation trenches were dug for a cruciform church, but the church was never built as the site was abandoned on the defeat of Æthelred (Alcock 1995).

  Beyond the rampart it is likely that most burhs were also defended by a sequence of ditches, following the Roman fashion. These have been observed at Wareham, Cricklade, Lydford, Oxford and Twynham. At Cricklade an elaborate triple ditch system comprised two smaller ditches and a wide outer ditch outside the rampart, separated from it by a 6m wide berm. This may have been the standard pattern, although excavations have rarely uncovered such an extensive area.

  Finally, it appears that the defences of some burhs were razed in the eleventh century. At Cricklade, Lydford, South Cadbury and Wareham the walls were systematically destroyed and the ditches filled in, probably at the command of Knutr in order to consolidate his position after he became king in 1016.

  Within the walls, evidence for deliberate and regular town planning has been recovered from those burhs which were established as permanent settlements. Land ownership was as much an issue in the towns as it was in the countryside; rectilinear street systems and property boundaries testify to the laying out of individual tenements under private ownership. Land was parcelled out, initially in large blocks, each representing small estates. As towns became more successful these plots were subdivided, each division retaining a valuable bit of street front, the tenements developing into long narrow strips. At first, however, many burhs may have still contained many open spaces; areas of Chicester, Cricklade, Twynham, Wallingford and Wareham retained a rural character well into the tenth century.

  At Winchester the rectilinear street plan was laid out in the 880s or early 890s. It has been calculated that there were some 8.6km (5.4 miles) of streets in Winchester, requiring some 8,000 tonnes of flint cobbles to surface them. The High Street provided a major east-west thoroughfare; a single back street running parallel to the High Street on either side of it provided access to the rear of the properties. There were also regularly spaced north-south streets at right angles to the High Street and an intra-mural wall street. This last feature is not found in Roman towns, but was integral with the laying out of the burhs. In Winchester and Lydford individual tenements were marked by ditches; in Durham, Oxford, and York, wattle fences seem to have been the norm. It has been demonstrated that the systematic division of land associated with the laying out of the burhs was frequently conducted on the basis of a 4-pole unit (where 1 pole = 5m), and these units have been observed at Chichester, Colchester, Cricklade, London, Wareham, and Wallingford as well as Winchester.

  The fortified burhs provided not only a haven for trade and industry but also a market for its products, and for materials and produce imported from the hinterland. Corn driers at Wallingford demonstrate that it functioned as an agricultural centre, perhaps a market town. Lydford may have been set up as a market centre for tin from Dartmoor. Axbridge, Langport and Watchet each developed as small defended markets for adjacent royal estates. Winchester, unlike the earlier Hamwic, was part of a ranked hierarchy of markets, although it was the only major burh in Hampshire; others may have been deliberately suppressed to remove competition. Streams running through the town provided useful resources for industry. By the end of the tenth century a number of specialised activities had developed in different sectors, reflected in street names like Tanner Street, Fleshmonger Street, and Shieldwright Street. The south-east quarter appears to have been a royal and ecclesiastical centre; a stone-built tower set in an enclosure on Brook Street may have been a residential compound of an elite group, its architecture reflecting their classical aspirations.

  The same spatial concentration of specialist crafts has been observed in York. In some cases the siting of industries may have been governed by the need for natural resources, such as water for tanning, but others may reflect an act of deliberate planning and organisation. Markets were generally held outside the walls. At Cricklade there is evidence for a market place outside the west gate; in York the Scandinavian name Bootham may represent the position of market booths outside the city walls.

  THE FIVE BOROUGHS

  There is some evidence for a well-defined group of towns in the East Midlands, within the area of the Danelaw settled by the Viking Great Army. They are listed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 942 as comprising Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford (9), although there is also a reference to Seven Boroughs, perhaps including Manchester, and Doncaster or Torksey.

  It was once believed that the Five Boroughs were specially fortified towns, established as an act of Danish policy after the partitions of 876-7, and used by Ælfred as a model for the Wessex burhs. However, they may not have become Danish strongholds until 910-20, which would mean that they were modelled upon the Wessex burhs, rather than vice versa (Hall 1989).

  The sites have a number of features in common, including their position on navigable rivers or important prehistoric or Roman land routes. Derby (Little Chester), Leicester and Lincoln had each been Roman fortifications. In Leicester the Viking Age defences probably utilised the Roman walls and ditches. In Lincoln the Roman walls continued to define a defended area, although there is no evidence for Viking Age modification. Certainly many Roman buildings were still standing in the ninth century and some were demolished when the Viking Age town was built.

  By comparison with the burhs of Wessex, the Five Boroughs were on the small to medium size. Derby may have been 29ha (65 acres); Lincoln 38ha (85 acres) if the Roman town was extended down to the river. Nottingham was 13.75ha (31 acres), and at Stamford the northern burh covered only 6ha (13 acres) and the southern one 3.75ha (8.5 acres).

  All have traces of Middle Saxon occupation, probably as estate centres. In Derby (or Northworthy, as it was known before the Vikings changed its name), St Alkmund’s Church was probably a Saxon minster associated with a royal or ecclesiastical estate centre. In Leicester, a Saxon minster church at Jewry Wall seems to have incorporated upstanding Roman masonry. In Lincoln there is evidence for activity in widely spread parts of the city from the fifth to the ninth centuries. The church of St Paul-in-the-Bail represents the continued existence of a religious centre in the heart of the Roman fortress.

  At Nottingham and Stamford there is some evidence for Middle Saxon enclosures which pre-date the Viking takeover. The Viking army is described as wintering in a fortress at Nottingham in 868. In 918 Nottingham was captured by Edward, and two years later he built a second burh on the south bank of the River Trent opposite the Viking burh, connecting the two with a bridge. The northern burh was defended by a major ditch some 6m wide by 3.5m deep. This had been recut at least once during the Viking Age, and the flattened U profile changed to a V, although it is not known exactly when.

  At Stamford there is evidence of three concentric ditches below the bailey of the Norman castle, the in
nermost with a timber palisade. They enclosed an area of 1.1ha (2.5 acres), which is only about twice the size of the Viking fort at Repton, but could represent a Saxon estate centre similar to that at Goltho (see chapter 3), a Viking temporary raiding base, or a Viking or Edwardian burh. The latter is more likely to be represented by a second defended enclosure recognised north of the Welland. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the submission of the Vikings in the northern burh in 918 and the construction of a second burh on the south bank, where another small enclosure has been found, as at Nottingham.

  Whilst the Five Boroughs may have been occupied in the Middle Saxon period, none were urban sites before the Viking Age, although it has been suggested that the urban element was created by Edward the Elder in the early tenth century within the captured Viking fortresses.

  So far there has been little success in finding Viking Age archaeological remains within Derby, although a cess pit and rubble platform have been excavated within the Roman fort at Little Chester, on the opposite bank of the Derwent, which may have been the Viking base (Hall 1974). In Leicester the Southgate Street pottery kiln of the late tenth century suggests the town was a manufacturing and commercial centre, but no other evidence has so far been found.

  The best evidence for urban activity within the Five Boroughs comes from Lincoln, where there was riverside activity and land reclamation in the tenth century, and evidence for the establishment of a new street system on the Flaxengate and Michaelgate sites some time after the Viking takeover in 874. This lacks the regularity of the Wessex burhs, but still represents a planned development. The Flaxengate site must have been under common ownership as extensive levelling dumps must represent coordinated building programmes. The earliest buildings were laid out with their long axes parallel to the street, perhaps suggesting that there was less pressure for space in Lincoln than elsewhere. Late ninth- and tenth-century buildings have also been excavated at Hungate and Michaelgate. However, sustained growth within Lincoln largely postdates the initial Viking settlement. The Flaxengate area may have received an initial boost in the late ninth century, but its real boom as an industrial centre belongs almost a century later, to the period c.960-1070, and especially c.960-1010 with the growth of the Lincoln mint. It was then that glass and copper-alloy working assumed industrial proportions with specialised workshops, and the Flaxengate development was extended into Grantham Street (Perring 1981).

  In Nottingham a number of Viking Age structures have been encountered at Drury Hill, Fishergate and Woolpack Lane, and pottery was being manufactured at Halifax Place. It has been argued, however, that urbanisation did not take place until c.925-50, and industrialization not until c.1000.

  In Stamford timber buildings have been found fronting onto the High Street, with wooden fences dividing one property from the next. Iron smelting and pottery production were important industries during the Viking Age, although both were dependent upon the rural hinterland for their raw materials. A grain-drying kiln found within the fortified enclosure beneath the medieval castle also suggests close links with the countryside. Within Stamford industrial activity was fairly loosely zoned, as at Thetford, and in contrast to Ipswich and Norwich where the potters were concentrated in one place (Carter 1978; Mahany 1982; Mahany and Roffe 1983).

  Thus, although Scandinavians may have been responsible for establishing the Five Boroughs as fortified sites which, like the Wessex burhs, would develop into trading and industrial centres, it is unclear how far they were responsible for the development of town life within them.

  There are possible Viking foundations at a number of other sites, including Thetford and Northampton. The town of Thetford was occupied from the ninth to the eleventh or early twelfth centuries. It may have been an earlier Anglo-Saxon royal or ecclesiastical estate centre, but was used as a wintering place for the Danish army in 869-70, and this appears to have provided the main impetus for its development, with the earliest dating evidence provided by a little Stamford ware of the late ninth century. Thetford is connected by river to the Wash and the North Sea, and this favoured its growth as a trading town. The first defences were constructed on the south bank of the Little Ouse. Initially the interior was not fully occupied but settlement expanded rapidly until it extended beyond the line of the defences in the late tenth century, eventually occupying an irregular area of some 60ha (135 acres) south of the river, and a further area of 15ha (34 acres) to the north. The establishment of a bridgehead to control the river crossing is reminiscent of both Nottingham and Stamford.

  The interior of the town was divided up into a number of properties demarcated by long boundary ditches, although the street frontages were not built up. Both sunken and surface buildings were erected within the properties, wells were sunk, and rubbish pits were dug along the boundaries. The dividing up or amalgamation of properties was common, but the town retained an open plan and was never fully built up. It was originally suggested that industrial activity was zoned within the town, but later work has been less conclusive, with only the pottery kilns definitely concentrated in the north-west. Thetford gained a mint but never became an international trading port, and never imported pottery from the Continent. The town had declined by the Norman Conquest; the settlement south of the river was deserted in favour of the smaller settlement to the north (Dallas 1992; Dunmore and Carr 1976; Rogerson and Dallas 1984).

  In Northampton, Middle Saxon occupation was restricted to an area of some 20ha (45 acres) around St Peter’s church where a minster and palace may have acted as the centre of a royal estate. At St Peter’s Street a timber hall was superceded by a massive stone hall of Carolingian style c.820-75. This building may have been the centre of a royal estate which was broken up during the Danish settlement, although John Blair has argued that it is a minster church, rather than a royal palace (Blair 1996). It is possible that the stone hall was abandoned, and demolished, as a direct result of Danish occupation.

  There is nothing in Northampton to imply urban status before the late ninth century. There was a dramatic intensification of activity, however, during the period of Danish occupation, between the late ninth century and the arrival of Edward the Elder in 917. An area of around 24ha (59 acres) was enclosed by a wide ditch. Within this area there is no evidence for the deliberate laying out of a street plan but a number of buildings were erected in a fairly loose settlement pattern, comparable to that at Thetford. In the tenth century the town became the base for a large number of craftworkers, including those working in iron, copper and silver, bone and antler, and textiles. Although the site may have initially been chosen by the Danes as a military base, it rapidly developed into a town (Williams 1979; 1984).

  Having examined the towns of Viking Age England, what was the Scandinavian contribution to urbanism? The ninth and tenth centuries were times of urban expansion in England, even outside the areas of Viking influence. In the Isle of Man, which was devoid of towns, the Vikings founded no urban centres. In Ireland they imported an English form of town. In York the Vikings may have contributed to the growth of the urban community, but are unlikely to have created it. Only in the case of Derby was the English name for the town changed to a Scandinavian one. Nonetheless, the Vikings did provide an indirect stimulus to urban growth both in the defended sites which they set up, and perhaps more importantly, in those maintained against them.

  The transition from wics to burhs reflects a fundamental change in the economic system. In the eighth century one means by which Anglo-Saxon kings maintained royal power was by restricting the activities of foreign traders and levying tolls on controlled exchange in wics. As power was consolidated amongst a few kingdoms there was a growing need for systems of administration and control. The role of kings in the development of towns was partly passive; royal minsters and estate administrative centres provided nuclei for settlements, markets and craftsmen. But the kings of Mercia and Wessex were also active in promoting the growth of towns. The burhs were instigated as a system of national d
efence, but they also had an economic role as market centres. Their ramparts excluded enemies, but also provided a means of regulating comings and goings. Royal attempts to control trade and channel it through these foundations were facilitated by the proliferation of a stable, royal controlled coinage. The First Law Code of Edward the Elder decreed that ‘no one shall buy or sell except in a market town with the witness of the port-reeve and of other men of credit’. Æthelstan’s Second Code stated that ‘no one shall buy goods worth more than 20 pence, outside a town; but he shall buy within the town, in the presence of the port-reeve or some other trustworthy man’. As towns developed, specialisation in crafts and trades increased, and the size of the non-agricultural population which had to be supported by the rural hinterland grew. The seizure of the countryside by Scandinavian settlers may have caused some of the rural dispossessed to seek new opportunities in towns. It may not be coincidence that the fastest growing ninth-century towns were in those areas most affected by Scandinavian land-taking.

  5

  THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

  Successive invasions of England have often led to sweeping changes in the appearance of settlements as the immigrants imported their preferred style of dwelling. For the Viking Age, however, it is difficult to identify any specifically Scandinavian-style buildings in England. There are no true long-houses with cattle byres at one end and dwelling space at the other, for example, such as have been excavated in Denmark. In York, the Viking town-houses seem no different from what we would expect of the Anglo-Saxons; indeed it is impossible to say that the Coppergate buildings were home to Scandinavian rather than Anglo-Saxon craftsmen. There was also little regional variation, with differences being mainly determined by the availability of raw materials such as wood and stone, rather than cultural differences. Rather than expecting to detect Scandinavian influence by examination of excavated buildings, it may be more realistic to look for new building forms corresponding to new socio-economic relations (Batey 1995; Richards 2000).