Chapter 7 - Fringes of the Kingdom: The Eastern Coastal Districts and the Landscape Context of Anglo-Saxon Colonisation

Summary

THIS CHAPTER WILL EXAMINE the eastern coastal districts of the East Saxon kingdom, beginning with the possible extent of the Dengie regio that is referred to in a charter of 706×70. These coastal districts comprise three peninsulas with lighter soils (overlying sand, gravel and brickearths) in the eastern coastal areas, heavier soils (overlying London Clay) further inland and gravel-capped hills to the west. All three are bounded by intertidal marshes, estuaries and the North Sea.

THE REGIO CALLED DENGIE

KEY INFORMATION

Possible folk name: Daen(n)ingas

Royal vill(s): ?Maldon or ?Tillingham, and ?Great Baddow

Minster church(s): Ythancaestir, Southminster, ?Maldon and ?Great Baddow

Possible meeting place: Dengie (possible meeting place of Dengie Hundred)

Great estates (into which it fragmented): ?

Area: 337km²

Successor hundreds: Witbrictesherna (Dengie) and part of Chelmsford

The Dengie Peninsula

This is a brief summary of a more detailed discussion in Rippon in press b. In Domesday the area between the Crouch and the Blackwater estuaries was described as Witbrictesherna Hundred (‘Wihtbeorht's corner’), which later became – or reverted to – Dengie (Reaney 1935, 207–8, 213). The earlier folk territory is of particular interest for two reasons: as the site of an important early monastery and because it is documented in a charter of 706×9 whereby King Swæfred of the East Saxons gave Ingwald, bishop of London 70 cassati in the ‘regio called Deningei’ (S.1787; Hart 1971, no. 7). The name Deningei includes the OE element ēġ, meaning ‘island’, and the personal name Dæni (Watts 2004, 183). It is related to the names of the forest of Danegris on the western side of Dengie Hundred and Danbury in the neighbouring Chelmsford Hundred: Danbury means the stronghold of the Dænningas (personal name Dæne + ingas + byriġ), while Danegris means the brushwood land occupied by the Dænningas (Reaney 1935, 213; Watts 2004, 178, 183). The suggested reconstruction of the regio called Deningei’ presented below fragmented into vills and manors that in Domesday were assessed as 367 hides, showing that the 70 cassati in the charter of 706×9 was an estate carved out of a much larger early folk territory.

This regio was the location of one of the earliest churches in the East Saxon kingdom, founded within the ruins of the late third-century Roman fort of the Saxon Shore that the Notitia Dignitatum calls Othona (Bradwell-on-Sea, at the north-east tip of the Dengie peninsula).