History Visits
Places
Here are the notes from the research I have done into the history of some of the places I've been asked to visit.
Index:
Bedford
Bradwell
Burgh Castle
Catfield
Coltishall
Corton
East Harling
Great Yarmouth
Hickling
Horsford
Hoveton
Kirton
Lowestoft
Ludham
Martham
Ormesby
Poringland
Repps with Bastwick
Somerleyton
Sprowston
Walsingham
Bedford
Bedanford 880 Laws, 918 ASC, Bydanford c 1000 Saints, Bedeford DB. 'B(i)eda's ford'
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, Eilert Ekwall, fourth edition, 1991.
From the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum [Laws] (c. 886AD):
Ærest ymb ure landgemaera: up on
Temese 7 ðonne up on Ligan, 7 andlang
Ligan oð hire æwylm, ðonne on
gerihte to Bedanforda, ðonne up on Usan
oð Wætlingastræt.
First about our boundaries: up the
Thames and then up the Lea, and along
the Lea to it's source, then in a
straight line to Bedford, then up the Ouse
to Watling-street.
Bedford is mentioned 6 times in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
571:
Here Cuthwulf fought against the Britons at Bedford and took four towns, Lenbury and Aylesbury and Bensington and Eynsham ; and the same year he died.
918:
And earl Thurcytel sought him [king Edward] for lord, and all the holds and nearly all the chief men who owed obedience to Bedford and also many who owed obedience to Northampton.
919:
Here in this year, before Martinmas, king Edward fared with the fyrd to Bedford and got possession of the town; and nearly all the townsmen, who formerly dwelt there, submitted to him; and he sat there four weeks and commanded the fortress to be built on the south side of the river before he fared thence.
921:
And they [the host - king Edward's army] fared forth until they arrived at Bedford; and then the men, who were within, fared out against them and fought with them and put them to flight and slew a good deal of them.
971:
Here died archbishop Oskytel . . . And abbot Thurkytel, his kinsman, carried the bishop's body to Bedford, because he was at the time abbot there.
1010:
And the Danes had possession of the place of slaughter and there were horsed; and afterwards held sway in East-Anglia and harried and burnt the land for three months; and they even went into the wild fens, and they slew men and cattle and burnt throughout the fens. And Thetford they burnt and Cambridge. And after that they turned southward again to the Thames, and the men who were horsed rode towards the ships; and after that very speedily they turned westward into Oxfordshire and thence into Buckinghamshire and so along the Ouse until they came to Bedford, and so onwards to Tempsford; and burnt ever as they fared. Then went they again to their ships with their booty. And when they dispersed' to their ships, then ought the fyrd to have gone out to oppose them if they should land; but the fyrd fared home.
From [Saints] (c. 1000AD):
Þonne resteð sancte Æþelbyrht on þam
mynstre þe man hateð Bydanford neah
þære éá Usan.
Then rested Saint Athelbert in the
monastery, which one calls Bedford near
the river Ouse.
Laws = The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, F.L. Attenborough, Llanerch Publishers 2000
ASC = Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Saints = The Saints of England. In Die Heiligen Englands. Ed. Liebermann. Hannover, 1889.
DB = Domesday/Doomsday Book (c. 1086)
Burgh Castle - Roman Fort to Manor House
The Roman Period
-
On this spot over sixteen hundred years ago, Carausius, Count of the Saxon Shore, built one of a string of forts which were to protect the Roman colony from assaults by saxon raiders from across the North Sea.
-
This fort was called Gariannonum.
The Early Saxon Period
-
In 631AD, King Sigbert gave a portion of land within the North East corner of the abandoned fort, to the Irish missionary named Fursey, upon which to build a monastery.
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The monastery survived until the middle of the seventh century when it was attacked by King Penda, a Mercian king who had little sympathy for Christians.
-
King Sigbert and many of the monks were killed.
The Late Saxon Period
-
Around the middle of the eleventh century, in the reign of King Edward the Confessor, the fort was held by the Saxon Bishop Stigand. At the time of William the Conqueror's Survey (1086), it had passed into the hands of a Norman, one Ralph the Engineer and was now known as Burch, simply meaning 'fort'.
-
At this time there may have been a rural community of about eighty to a hundred people living in this area. Most of the land was arable, but there would still have been large areas of woodland in which pigs roamed, and a considerable amount of pasture for sheep, providing wool for clothing as well as meat.
-
There would also be salt pans somewhere near the river, where the salt water could first be evaporated before the brine was boiled to produce the essential salt needed for preserving meat and fish for the winter.
The Norman Period
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Ralph the Engineer passed the now categorised Manor of Burch on to his son Roger de Burgh. Burc (1168, Pipe Rolls) was granted to Gilbert de Wesenham on Roger's death, on condition that his widow should be allowed to remain and retain her previous style of living. Gilbert de Wesenham passed it over to Henry III (1207-1272), who granted it to Vincent, the Prior of Bromholm in Norfolk in 1245.
The Medieval Period
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From 1245 to 1534 Burgh Castle remained in the hands of the Prior of Bromholm. It was known as Borough-Castell (1281, Calendar of Charters and Rolls in the Bodleian Library. Oxford, 1878).
The Manor from Tudor to Winsdor
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In 1534 it was surrendered to the Crown at the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII (1491-1547). It was sold in 1560 by Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) to William Roberts, Town Clerk of Yarmouth who held it until 1612 when it passed to Sir Owen Smythe. In 1651, Alice Smythe was Lady of the Manor followed by Judith Smith in 1745. Subsequent Lords and Ladies of the Manor were: Elizabeth Baret (nee Smith) (1765-1808); Lydia Baret (1808-1845); William Killett (1845-1846); Richard Ferrier (1846-1847); William Reynolds (1847-1848); Richard Seaman (1871-1874); Charles Diver (1875-1877); James Hargreave Harrison (1877-1896); Sarah Harrison (1896-1898); William Martens Fison (1906).