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London and the Grim's Ditches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

R. E. M. Wheeler
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Extract

In considering the question whether London did or did not survive as a substantially intact administrative unit throughout the Pagan Saxon period, Sir Laurence Gomme and others have laid stress upon the supposedly Roman origin of the wide territorial rights of the medieval Londoners. These rights, it has been claimed, take us ‘behind the Norman conquest, and behind the Anglo-Saxon rule also, for there is nothing in Anglo-Saxon institutions to which [they] can be referred’: they represent the old ‘territorium ’ of Roman London and are good evidence, therefore, of an unbroken civic tradition from Roman times. The doubtful details with which enthusiasm or fantasy have tended to enrich this theory do not necessarily deprive it of essential validity; and I venture to think that it is in fact rather more securely founded than Gomme's own statement of it would lead us to infer.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , July 1934 , pp. 254 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1934

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References

page 254 note 1 Laurence Gomme, The Governance of London, p. 106 ; The Making of London, pp. 70 ff.

page 254 note 2 W. de G. Birch, Hist. Charters of the City of London, p. 4.

page 254 note 3 C. L. Kingsford, Stow's Survey of London, ii, 228.

page 254 note 4 Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. 1846, i, 111 ; Stenton, F. M., Norman London (Historical Association, 1934), p. 6Google Scholar.

page 254 note 5 Stenton, op. cit., p. 6.

page 255 note 1 H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions, p. 236.

page 256 note 1 The dyke to the south, or rather west, of the Thames at Streatley is anomalous in facing away from London. It lies, however, nearer to London than the Grim's Ditch on the other side of the river, and is reasonable if regarded as a reinforcement of riparian claims by the Londonward inhabitants. It may be significant that it is situated just to the London side of the important point at which the Icknield Way (or Ridgeway) crosses the Thames, so that the Way lies in a sort of no-man's-land between the opposing frontiers.

page 256 note 2 At its south-western end Mr. O. G. S. Crawford has lately (1933) observed a short continuation beyond the end as marked on the current Ordnance maps. Acknowledgement is due also to Mr. H. J. W. Stone, who is making the long-wanted detailed survey of the Middlesex Grim's Ditch.

page 257 note 1 Antiquity, 1931, v, 161 ff. I am also greatly indebted to Sir James Berry, who is preparing a detailed survey of the Chiltern dykes, for help in examining them.

page 258 note 1 A good example of the delimited occupation of stream-valleys by the Saxon farmers has been observed by Dr. Cyril Fox in his exploration of Offa's Dyke and its environs. Where Offa's frontier crosses the Herefordshire plain, at one time thickly forested, his dyke is intermittent, but it recurs regularly across the shallow re-entrant valleys at short distances below the heads of their streams. In other words, the Saxon farmers had cleared the floors of these valleys until they had reached a point at which the water-supply became insufficient. At the heads of these cleared valleys (which here run at right angles to his frontier) Offa fixed his boundary, building such stretches of dyke as were necessary to bar the actual clearings. (See Arch. Cambrensis (1931), pp. 49 and 51 ff.)

page 259 note 1 Cf. Sir Charles Oman on the Wansdyke: ‘The name Woden's Dyke is a testimony to great antiquity, and must have been bestowed in the heathen period.’ Arch. Journ. lxxxvii, 63.

page 259 note 2 Hughes, W. M. in Antiquity, 1931, v, 294Google Scholar.

page 260 note 1 Exploitation of the forested plateaux did come, but only in the late Saxon phase—probably because the available valley-lands were then all occupied. Compare, in the Cambridge region, the distribution of pagan Saxon Cemeteries (which give us a picture of early settlement) with that of the Domesday vills (which give a picture of the later development). Fox, Personality of Britain, figs. 32 and 33.

page 261 note 1 Mr. W. M. Hughes (Antiquity, v, 291 ff.), without considering either the Pinner dyke or the physiographical setting of the Chiltern dykes, regards the latter as the consummation of Cuthwulf's conquests in the year 571 of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In that year Cuthwulf and his Saxons took four towns: Lygeanbury or Limbury in south Bedfordshire, Aegelsburh or Aylesbury in Bucks, Baencsington or Benson in south Oxfordshire, and Egonsham or Eynsham in the same county. Thereafter a frontier through the Chilterns is a feasible, but certainly not an inevitable, hypothesis; these events cannot have marked the first Saxon occupation of the district, and it is only less dangerous to attach political than cultural phenomena to the gangster episodes recorded in the earlier sections of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

page 261 note 2 It has been claimed by Mr. G. E. Cruickshank (Earthworks Committee's Report, Congress of Archaeological Societies, 1919, p. 9) that the Pinner dyke actually continued eastwards to Potter's Bar, but both Mr. H. J. W. Stone and I have failed to confirm this assertion on the ground. Nor, if we recall the almost complete absence of evidence for pagan Saxon settlement in central and southwestern Essex, need we expect (on the present hypothesis) to find extensive early Saxon boundaries on this side of London.

page 261 note 3 Cf. H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions, p. 277.

page 261 note 4 Geoffrey de Mandeville, pp. 347–73.

page 262 note 1 W. de G. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, i, no. 346. This dyke was included in a sketch-map published (in another context) in Arch. Journ. xxxviii, pl. I, facing p. 404, and in a fresh survey by Col. O. E. Ruck in the Royal Engineers Journal, iv, no. i (July 1906). But the significance of the dyke in relation to the Saxon charter was first recognized recently by Mr. A. H. A. Hogg, to whom, through Mr. O. G. S. Crawford, I am indebted for the information relating to it. I am also indebted to Mr. Hogg and to Mr. M. D. V. Holt for help in visiting the dyke. For full publication, see now Antiquity, June 1934.

page 263 note 1 It even begins to look as though Gomme's guess, that the battle in 457 between the Britons and Hengist at Crecganford, which was probably (though not, I understand, certainly) Crayford, was fought by Londoners ‘defending the territorium of London at its furthest point’, might not be entirely wide of the mark ! (The Governance of London, p. 97).

page 263 note 2 The ‘Fullinga die ’ : see Birch, Cart. Sax. i, no. 34.