5 - Society and population 600–1300

Summary

proto-urban populations

In the early middle ages only a few rudimentary urban societies were to be found in Britain. Bede could describe eighth-century London as a market well frequented by its many visitors arriving by land and by sea – the reference is presumably to Lundenwic, to the west of the Roman city – and it is also known that there were extensive trading settlements or wics at other sites. By 800 Hamwic, Southampton's predecessor which was perhaps half the size of contemporary London, had streets laid out in a regular grid over a considerable area of some 100 acres (40 ha); it was fairly densely settled by a population living by trade and commodity manufacturing that could have been reckoned in thousands. Whether this was a settled community of permanent residents capable of evolving a distinct social structure, however, remains uncertain, and the casual manner in which the dead were disposed of may point to a society in which many inhabitants were transients and social bonds remained undeveloped. Other proto-urban centres existed in places with a range of central-place functions. Many of the former civitas capitals and coloniae of the Roman period became the setting for major public buildings such as royal palaces or important early churches, and in some cases an appreciable population composed of thegns, priests and their many retainers and servants would have gathered. Although at this distance impossible to measure, such city populations presumably totalled some hundreds of individuals; at a small number of central places the resident population could have considerably exceeded that size.