Lissingleys, the meeting-place of Anglo-Saxon & Anglo-Scandinavian Lindsey, and the antiquity of Ogilby's 1675 road from Lincoln to Grimsby

The focus of this post is on two important yet lost elements of the pre-modern landscape of Lincolnshire, namely a large area of common land named Lissingleys—very probably the meeting-place for the whole of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian Lindsey—and the road running north-eastwards from Lincoln to the coast at Grimsby. The latter routeway is first recorded in 1675, but is believed to have originally run along the northern border of this common pasturage and meeting-site, and other place- and field-name evidence suggests that this road may well be of a similar antiquity to the meeting-place itself.

(a) Lissingleys in 1820, before its enclosure in 1851, as depicted in Henry Stevens' drawing for the Ordnance Survey (image: Wikimedia Commons); (b) A map of the three ridings of Lindsey set against the pre-Viking landscape of the region, showing the location of Lissingleys at the point at which the three ridings met (image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, fig. 27). Click here for a larger version of both maps.

The common pasturage known as Lissingleys, located approximately ten miles to the north-east of Lincoln, is interesting for several reasons. First, it was an extraparochial area that was considered to lie outside any single ecclesiastical or civil parish until its enclosure in 1851, with the rights of intercommoning here being shared between eight surrounding parishes. Second, there was a concentration of multiple important estates belonging to key landholders within Anglo-Scandinavian Lindsey surrounding the site in 1066, implying that access to it was of some importance, although this centrality seems to have evaporated by 1086, when a similar pattern is conspicuous by its absence. And third and most importantly, the land itself lay at the exact point where the boundaries of the three ridings of Viking-era Lindsey met. Indeed, the eight vills that had common rights in Lissingleys were distributed across all three ridings, and the boundaries of these three ridings and their constituent wapentakes moreover look like they have been deliberately adjusted to meet at Lissingleys, suggesting that the site was important even prior to the creation of the ridings (which were probably in existence by c. 900, if not before). All of this strongly suggests that Lissingleys was a place of considerable importance to the organisation of Anglo-Scandinavian Lindsey and probably pre-Viking Lindsey too, and it has been credibly identified as the meeting-place for the whole community of Anglian and Anglo-Scandinavian Lindsey. Support for this conclusion is offered by both the archaeology of the immediately surrounding area and the name Lissingleys itself, as I have argued at length elsewhere. In particular, a strong case can be made for this rural meeting-site having been an important focus in both the Early Anglo-Saxon and Romano-British periods too, with the name arguably containing Late British/Archaic Welsh *liss-, the root of Welsh llys, meaning ‘court, hall’ or ‘parliament, gathering of nobles’ (compare the name Liss, Lis/Lissa, in Hampshire, which also derives from this element).(1)

Two maps showing the parish (red lines), hundred (green line) and riding-and-hundred boundaries (yellow lines) in the immediate area around Lissingleys extraparochial area, shown in purple. The first map shows the villages with rights of common at Lissingleys and the second shows the web of manors and sokes held by key lords around Lissingleys in 1066, both being based on Roffe 2000 and using a base-map from the Historic Parishes of England and Wales: an Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 project. Click here for a larger version of these maps.

Looking at the site itself, when it was mapped in 1820—prior to its enclosure in 1851—it covered around 1.58 km² or 390 acres and was criss-crossed by a number of paths with a stream running through its centre. Whether it was always this size or perhaps slightly larger in extent is open to debate; Henry Stevens' draft map for the Ordnance Survey shows a number of old enclosures immediately to the north and south of Lissingleys which might conceivably have originally been parts of it that were lost after its apparent decline in centrality/importance post-1066—if so, then the total original area of Lissingleys could have been up to around 3.1 km² or 765 acres. It is perhaps worth noting in this context that the extent of Lissingleys as mapped by the Historic Parishes of England and Wales: an Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 project, based on the 1851 enclosure map, seems to be missing an area on the eastern side that is depicted as a definite part of Lissingleys on the 1820 map, so there were clearly alterations to its borders taking place in the modern era. Furthermore, in 1807 Lissingleys was described as comprising 'between five and six hundred acres of very wet land', suggesting that even greater losses of land from Lissingleys may have taken place in the late eightheenth to early nineteenth centuries.(2) As to what occurred here, such meeting-sites as this were a fundamental element of government and society in Anglo-Saxon England, where the free men from across the region (here the three ridings of Lindsey) met to discuss, arrange and decide the judicial, administrative, financial and other business of the region, hence the apparent importance of access to this site that is implied by the clustering of manors of key figures within the region around Lissingleys in 1066. They also frequently became sites of fairs and occasional markets, sometimes associated with scatters of metal-detected material, and in this context it is worth noting that there is indeed a very extensive multi-period scatter of material found immediately to the south of Lissingleys. 

Another notable characteristic of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian meeting sites is an association with major routeways, reflecting the need for the site to be accessible to all who had to attend it. Unfortunately, Lissingleys nowadays lies away from the major roads of the region. However, there are good reasons for thinking that one of the key highways of pre-modern Lincolnshire actually ran either immediately next to or even across the northern edge of Lissingleys, prior to the remaking of the medieval Lincolnshire landscape by enclosure and the turnpike acts. The road itself, which ran from Lincoln to Grimsby, is first attested by John Ogilby in his 1675 Britannia road atlas, where it was one of 100 major British routeways drawn by Ogilby as strip-maps at a scale of 1 inch to the mile:

A coloured version of John Ogilby's 1675 strip-map of the route from Lincoln to Grimsby, on the right side of the page; click here for a larger version of this map (image: John Ogilby, Britannia, 1675, Public Domain).

Ogilby's road follows the current Lincoln–Market Rasen road, the A46, north-east from Lincoln for a couple of miles, crossing a 'rill' (Nettleham Beck), a cross-roads with the Old Drovers' Road from Horncastle to Doncaster (mentioned in the early fourteenth century and mapped in the eighteenth), and a heath (Nettleham and Scothern Heath); however, at the point that the present A46 turns eastwards to Dunholme, Ogilby's 1675 road carried on into Welton before turning east and running through the hamlet of Ryland. From here it runs east before rejoining the A46 to cross Snarford Bridge (originally a ford, to judge from the place-name), passing the now-demolished Snarford Hall and Snarford Park, and then runs north-east to Faldingworth Ings and Shaft Wood. At the point the A46 turns north and runs into Faldingworth village, with a minor road running south to Friesthorpe, Ogilby's road then seems to have instead crossed the fields of the southern part of Faldingworth parish directly to Buslingthorpe parish (as the road is indeed depicted as doing on Armstrong's map of 1779 and Cary's map of 1787). After this, its route is open to some question; it may have turned north just around the north-west corner of Lissingleys and gone via Buslingthorpe along the bridleway to meet up briefly with the A46, before continuing along the Green Lane and then across what are now fields to join up with a footpath running south from Market Rasen at the time of its enclosure, something that might fit Ogilby's route measurements and turns quite well. Alternatively, both O. G. S. Crawford and Brian K. Roberts consider that Ogilby's road instead continued to run to the south of Buslingthorpe village and effectively across the northern boundary of the Lissingleys meeting-site and common pasture, separated from it only by the c. 200 metre wide old enclosures mentioned above. At the eastern end of Lissingleys, the seventeenth-century road would then have turned north and run along the present-day minor route to Middle Rasen (which is present on early mapping), before turning eastwards onto a 'Green Lane' and across what are now the fields south of Market Rasen to join Mill Road and thus enter the town proper.(3) 

A map of the first half of Ogilby's 1675 road from Lincoln to Grimsby as far as Market Rasen, after O. G. S. Crawford and Brian K. Roberts, showing the proximity of Lissingleys to the road; note, it deviates from the current A46 in two places, first when it goes through Welton and Ryland before returning to the A46 route just before Snarford Bridge, and second just before Faldingworth, when it carried on across the old open fields to run just to the north of Lissingleys before turning sharply north along a present-day minor road—it carried on along this until just before Middle Rasen, when it turned right along a 'Green Lane' and then across present-day fields to meet Mill Road, Market Rasen. Click here for a larger version of this map; note, the extent of Lissingleys in 1820 is mapped by the thick dark purple line and hashing, whilst the old enclosures mentioned above to the north and south of Lissingleys are depicted with dotted lines and stippling (image: Caitlin Green, drawn on a base-map from OpenStreetMap).

For the second half from Market Rasen to Grimsby, the route deviates completely from the current A46 main road. Leaving Market Rasen north of the River Rase (here named 'Ankam', i.e. the Ancholme, of which the Rase is a tributary), it crosses Tealby Moor eastwards to the south of Hamilton Hill before crossing a brook to enter Tealby village. There is no single road following this route nowadays, but there are footpaths and tracks on this route are thought to represent it, although which water-mill is the one mentioned by Ogilby is uncertain. Passing through Tealby with the church on the right, the seventeenth-century main road then followed Caistor Lane through Tealby Vale, but rather than continuing that road as it nowadays turns left, it instead carried on north-eastwards along what is now a track and then a footpath up to and across the ancient (probably pre-Roman) Caistor High Street before meeting up with the modern road to Stainton le Vale. Passing through Stainton le Vale via both the modern road and a former track, it then continued north-eastwards along another track/road to Thorganby—the latter half of this route is is depicted on maps through to the 1940s, but has since been erased by RAF Binbrook. From Thorganby, Ogilby's 1675 road is believed to have largely followed the line of the modern B1203 and the late eighteenth-century turnpike road through East Ravendale to Ashby, crossing the prehistoric Barton Street, and then to Brigsley, Waltham (with the church on the left), Scartho and finally Grimsby.

A map of the second half of Ogilby's 1675 road from Lincoln to Grimsby, from Market Rasen onwards; note, it deviates completely from the current A46 road from Market Rasen to Grimsby and only follows the B1203 minor route in its second half, which much of its route from Market Rasen to Thorganby being either no longer passable or preserved only as tracks or footpaths. Click here for a larger version of this map (image: Caitlin Green, drawn on a base-map from OpenStreetMap).

Having established the probable route of the 1675 road from Lincoln to Grimsby, what then can be said of its antiquity? The proximity of this route to the meeting-site at Lissingleys, whatever its exact route from Lissingleys to Market Rasen, is certainly suggestive of its existence prior to 1066, given that the political import of the site seems to have declined after this, but it is not the only such indication. For the southern half of the route, one can also note the following. First, the local name Rennestihge occurs in the twelfth century in Dunholme parish. This is a Scandinavian compound *rennstígr meaning 'a supraregional road used for rapid travel, usually by horse'. The medieval 'Old Drovers' Road' ran to the south of Dunholme parish based on the historic parish bounds and its route as mapped by Andrew Armstrong in the eighteenth century (the earliest detailed county map), so isn't what is meant here, and no other major routeways that we know of ran or run through Dunholme parish other than the Lincoln to Market Rasen road.(4) As such, this name can be credibly associated with the 1675 route described by Ogilby and strongly suggests that at least the initial parts of the route were in existence in the Anglo-Scandinavian period (the later ninth to eleventh centuries) and were recognised then as a key cross-regional routeway, which is a point of considerable interest. 

Second, after travelling through Welton and Ryland, the 1675 route then passes across Snarford Bridge into Snarford parish. The bridge here is first mentioned in 1316, but there must have been a ford here prior to its construction to explain the parish name, and there is no other likely location for this ford aside from where the Lincoln to Market Rasen road crosses the Barlings Eau river. As such, the name evidence again would seem to suggest considerable antiquity and importance for this routeway, such that it would give its name to a pre-Norman parish. Certainly, the name Snarford is first recorded in 1086 as Snerteforde and similar, and this is a compound of the Old Norse personal name Snǫrtr with the Old English place-name element ford, indicating that the current name was once again coined in the Anglo-Scandinavian era and could, moreover, represent a renaming of a pre-Viking crossing site. Indeed, Arthur Owen has suggested that this name indicates that the roadway passing across the ford and later bridge at Snarford must have been 'an ancient line of communication between the Lincoln area and the Wolds'.(5) 

A topographic map of the Dunholme and Snarford area, showing how Ogilby's 1675 road (the purple dashed line) follows the most credible landscape route across the Barlings Eau valley, keeping to the higher ground except for the ancient crossing at Snarford. Note, the rivers are based partly on the modern river routes and partly on the 1820 and 1880s OS maps for now-lost channels. Click here for a larger version of this map (image: Caitlin Green, drawn on a topographic base-map). 

Third, the name Stret'deyl, 'share of land by a strǣt, a paved road', is recorded in the southern field of Faldingworth parish in c. 1300. The name-element strǣt in Lincolnshire is usually only used in the medieval period for major roads and, as such, its appearance in the southern fields of Faldingworth parish is notable, particularly as the route of Ogilby's road crossed the southern fields of that parish on its way to Buslingthorpe and Lissingleys. Moreover, another reference in the same document relating to Faldingworth's southern field mentions land in the south near to the king's highway (ex parte australi iuxta regiam viam de Faldingwrth'). As Arthur Owen points out, the term via regia had a legal implication, being the king's highway where the king's peace held good, and its appearance here again indicates that there was an important road in the southern part of Faldingworth parish, presumably the routeway under consideration here, given that no other significant routeways are known in this area.(6) 

In sum, when taken together, the above names all suggest that the portion of Ogilby's road from Lincoln through to Lissingleys was indeed an ancient route, as its proximity to the probably meeting-place of the whole of pre-Norman Lindsey might imply. It was very probably a 'king's highway' in the medieval period and a *rennstígr, 'a supraregional road used for rapid travel', in the Anglo-Scandinavian era, with its origins going back at least as far as the ninth to eleventh centuries, if not before, in light of the name Snarford and the likely antiquity of the meeting-site at Lissingleys.

Herman Moll's 1724 map of northern Lincolnshire that depicts Ogilby's 1675 road from Lincoln to Grimsby, highlighted here in purple, from Moll's A New Description of England and Wales (London, 1724). Click here for a larger version of this map (image: David Rumsey).

North of Lissingleys there is less direct evidence for the antiquity of Ogilby's route to Grimsby. The name 'Rasen' does not derive from the River Rase, but instead probably derives from Old English æt Ræsnum, 'at the planks', in reference to a plank bridge across the tributary of the River Ancholme here, with this tributary then receiving the name Rase as a back-formation from the bridge-/place-name 'Rasen'.(7) Unfortunately, whilst the name Rasen is first recorded in the late tenth century, it is unclear as to where this plank bridge was actually located—in particular, three modern parishes now include Rasen in their name (West Rasen, Middle Rasen and Market Rasen) and there are multiple potential river crossing points that might have been where this obviously important plank bridge was located. It could well have been at Market Rasen, as Kenneth Cameron suggests, and so imply an Anglo-Scandinavian or probably pre-Viking origin for this part of Ogilby's route, but it has to be admitted that it might not have been. 

More certain is the name that occurs at the opposite end of the 1675 road at Brigsley, Brigeslai in 1086. This is an Old English name brycges-lēah, meaning 'the wood/glade of the bridge', with a Scandinavianised first element; as Kenneth Cameron points out, the only really plausible place for this bridge is the crossing-point of the Waithe Beck in this parish, where Ogilby's 1675 road—preserved here by the B1203—comes down off the Wolds and heads on through Brigsley to Waltham.(8) Needless to say, this suggests that at least this section of the route was in existence in the pre-Viking period and had a bridge by that point that was significant enough to give rise to a parish name, all of which implies that it was then a route of some importance. Indeed, in this context, it is may also be worth noting that the parish immediately to the north on this road is Waltham, which has been considered a major and early Anglo-Saxon royal estate centre with authority over part of the Lincolnshire Wolds.(9) 

Captain Andrew Armstrong's map of Lincolnshire, published 1779, the first truly detailed county map; click here for a larger version of this map (image: British Library).

If the road from Lincoln to Lissingleys seems almost certainly to have been an ancient and important route, and the remainder of the road from Lissingleys through to Grimsby was potentially so too, what then of the decline of this routeway? With respect to this, Ogilby's route seems still to have been current in 1724, when it was mapped by Herman Moll, and it was repeated by William Morgan in his Pocket-Book of the Roads published in 1732 and by John Senex in his Ogilby's Survey Revised of 1759.(10) On the other hand, whilst the majority of the Lincoln to Grimsby route depicted on Emanuel Bowen's map of Lincolnshire from 1751 seems to be broadly the same as Ogilby's, his road doesn't seem to go through Welton by Lincoln, instead being drawn between that village and Dunholme, and looks to have gone via Faldingworth village rather than passing it to the south, although neither point is entirely clear. However, by the time of the first truly detailed map of Lincolnshire, published by Andrew Armstrong in 1779, there do seem to have been notable changes to the perceived main road routes from Lincoln to Market Rasen and Market Rasen to Grimsby.(11) 

For example, Armstrong shows multiple routes between Lincoln and Snarford, and two major routes through to Buslingthorpe. One of these is the route via Snarford shown by Ogilby, but the other is more northerly, going north from Welton to Cold Hanworth, Oldfield (Faldingworth Grange), Faldingworth village and finally Buslingthorpe. Armstrong also shows a different route from Buslingthorpe to Market Rasen to that of Ogilby as reconstructed by Crawford and Roberts, which turns north at Lissingleys to go through Buslingthorpe itself and thereafter following what is now a track north past Buslingthorpe Grange to meet the modern A46, although this is the same as the alternative Ogilby route mentioned previously. Beyond Market Rasen there are significant alterations—the route south of Hamilton Hill to Tealby is not shown at all, and there is instead a route through to Stainton le Vale that is probably that which survives today as the Market Rasen to Stainton le Vale via Walesby road (although Armstrong doesn't show the slight diversion along the Caistor High Street that is required). The road from Stainton le Vale to Thorganby across the modern RAF Binbrook is certainly shown, but from there the road is shown as going via Hatcliffe to Barnoldby le Beck in order to reach Waltham, and no road is shown joining Thorganby to the newly established turnpike from Wold Newton/Ravendale to Grimsby that seems to have preserved the last part of Ogilby's route. Perhaps most importantly, Armstrong also shows what seems to be a version of the modern A46 going north from Market Rasen to Caistor and then across to Grimsby, although the latter stages beyond Caistor are different. 

John Cary's 1806 map of Lincolnshire, showing that the primary road from Market Rasen to Grimsby followed its modern route by this point, whilst the main route from Lincoln to Market Rasen now avoided Snarford; click here for a larger version of this map.

These changes seem to be confirmed by John Cary's maps from the 1790s and 1800s. His detailed 1794 New Map of England and Wales depicts Armstrong's multiple routes almost exactly, whilst his smaller scale county maps from 1792 and 1806 show only the perceived major routes indicate that the apparently ancient Ogilby route had been largely replaced as the major Lincoln to Grimsby road by this point.(12) In particular, Cary's county maps show that the current A46 main road route from Market Rasen to Grimsby via Caistor and Laceby was apparently already in existence and the major route between these places then, something that makes sense given that the latter part of this was an eighteenth-century turnpike route established in 1765. Furthermore, between Lincoln and Market Rasen, the only road shown now avoids Snarford and instead goes via Welton, Cold Hanworth and then Oldfield (Faldingworth Grange), before following what looks like Armstrong's route from Buslingthorpe to Market Rasen. Subsequently, the primary Lincoln to Market Rasen route seems to change again. For example, in Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England of 1835 the main route north-eastwards follows the old Roman road to Langworth before turning north via Wickenby and Lissington. Likewise, on Henry Stevens' 1820 draft Ordnance Survey map, the only main routes shown (tinted yellow) are the modern A15 Ermine Street north to Caenby Corner and the A631 from Caenby Corner to Market Rasen, although all the modern roads that make up the current A46, including the diversion through Faldingworth village (the old Ogilby 'king's highway' across Faldingworth's southern fields to Buslingthorpe seems to have been removed at or by Faldingworth's enclosure in 1795), appear there for the first time.(13) Interestingly, both Lewis's and Stevens' main road routes continued to be marked as the primary routes through to Market Rasen into the early twentieth century, when both are depicted as such on the relevant sheet of Bartholomew's Half Inch Maps of England and Wales of 1902, with the modern A46—which borrows significant elements from Ogilby's 1675 road—only being definitively established as a 'main road' in 1922–3, when it became Class I road number 46.(14)

The various main routeways from Lincoln to Market Rasen and beyond indicated by cartographers from Ogilby (1675) through to Lewis (1835), mapped against the modern road network, including the A46 from Lincoln to Market Rasen that was established in 1922; click here for a larger version of this map. Note, only the major modifications of the routes are shown, so the deviations from Ogilby's route (as reconstructed by Crawford and Roberts) in Armstrong 1779 are mapped in blue, whilst Cary's route appears in green where it differs from the Armstrong/Ogilby route, i.e. the diversions through Cold Hanworth and Faldingworth south of Market Rasen and a new 'primary' route northwards to Grimsby via Caistor; Stevens' and Lewis's routes follow the Cary green route to Grimsby via Caistor beyond Market Rasen (image: Caitlin Green, drawn on a base-map from OpenStreetMap).

In conclusion, there is a good case to be made for the rural meeting-place of the three ridings of Anglian and Anglo-Scandinavian Lindsey having been located at Lissingleys, with this meeting-site probably having even earlier roots that this too. Although no modern major roadway passes close to this important element in the early medieval administrative landscape of the region, it is notable that the Lincoln to Grimsby road mapped by Ogilby in 1675 did do so. An investigation of this route suggests that it was probably a major road of some antiquity, perhaps originating as far back as the Anglo-Scandinavian period or even earlier, and the fact that it seems to have gone close to or skirted the northern boundary of Lissingleys is thus unlikely to be a coincidence. This routeway appears to have remained important right through to the middle of the eighteenth century, but after that it rapidly declined in significance and alternative routes began to supersede various elements of it, in some cases only temporarily but in others permanently, especially between Market Rasen and Grimsby. Maps from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries suggest that there was considerable variation in the perceived main route between Lincoln and Market Rasen in this era prior to the establishment of the modern A46 in 1922–3, which reinstated large elements of the Ogilby route as a primary cross-county road. 

Footnotes

1.     See further on all of this C. Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650, 2nd edn (Lincoln: History of Lincolnshire Committee, 2020), pp. 140–5, and D. Roffe, 'Lissingleys and the Meeting Place of Lindsey' (2000), available at the author's website, www.roffe.co.uk/lindsey.htm.

2.     For the quotation, see J. Britton, The Beauties of England and Wales; or, Original Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and Descriptive, of Each County (London, 1807), vol. 9, p. 694. For Henry Stevens' draft 1820 map of the Hackthorn district for the Ordnance Survey, see British Library OSD 282, digitised here, and for the boundaries at enclosure see R. J. P. Kain & R. R. Oliver, Historic Parishes of England and Wales: an Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata, data collection, UK Data Service, first published 17 May 2001, updated 24 April 2020, and accessed 30 December 2020, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-4348-1.

3.     The exact route described here is essentially that of O. G. S. Crawford, A Map of XVII Century England (Southampton: Ordnance Survey, 1930), who traced and plotted the routes of John Ogilby's 100 road-maps published in his Britannia, Volume the First: or an Illustration of the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales: By a Geographical and Historical Description of the Principal Roads thereof (London, 1675) onto a modern OS map, with this map being then scanned and georeferenced by me so that Crawford's proposed route can be followed in detail; Crawford's plotted roads have also been used by the Creating a GIS of Ogilby's "principal roads" of England and Wales c. 1675 project at the University of Cambridge, which shows the same route as described here (from plate 78 of Ogilby's volume). Brian K. Roberts also shows this route in B. K. Roberts, 'Woods, fens and roads: where are the Fens?', in Through Wet and Dry: Essays in Honour of David Hall, ed. T. Lane & J. Coles (Heckington, 2002), pp. 78–86 at p. 83 (once again scanned and georeference by me). The alternative route, that turns north at Buslingthorpe along the bridleway, would arguably fit Ogilby's measurements better, and is essentially what Captain Andrew Armstrong seems to show in 1779, see below, but the entry into Market Rasen may well fit Crawford and Roberts's route better, see the Historic Urban Character Types Map no. 3 from N. Grayson, Lincolnshire Extensive Urban Survey: Market Rasen, Historic England/LCC Project Number 2897 (Lincoln, 2020); my thanks are due to Max Satchell for discussing all of this with me. Note, the presence of a ford before the church at Market Rasen may be a mistake on Ogilby's part, but it need not be—it may well rather reflect the former stream that ran to the south of the church and along the line of Dear Street, see Grayson, Market Rasen, pp. 5, 6. For the 'Old Drovers' Road', see F. M. Stenton, 'The road system of medieval England', Economic History Review, 7 (1936), 1–21 at p. 18.

4.     K. Cameron, J. Insley & J. Cameron, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Seven, Lawress Wapentake, Survey of English Place-Names LXXXV (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2010), pp. 45–6; A. Armstrong, Map of Lincolnshire, published 20 January 1779, British Library Maps K.Top.19.19.5 tab.end; R. J. P. Kain & R. R. Oliver, Historic Parishes of England and Wales: an Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata, data collection, UK Data Service, first published 17 May 2001, updated 24 April 2020, and accessed 30 December 2020, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-4348-1.

5.     A. E. B. Owen, ‘Roads and Romans in south-east Lindsey’ in A. R. Rumble & A. D. Mills (eds), Names, Places and People (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1997), pp. 254–68 at p. 265, supported by Cameron, Insley & Cameron, Place-Names of Lincolnshire 7, pp. 109–10, and K. Cameron, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 1998), p. 112.

6.     C. W. Foster (ed.), The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, Volume III, Lincoln Record Society vol. 29 (Lincoln: Lincoln Record Society, 1932), pp. 381–2; Cameron, Insley & Cameron, Place-Names of Lincolnshire 7, pp. 51–2; Owen, 'Roads and Romans in south-east Lindsey', p. 259.

7.     K. Cameron, J. Field & J. Insley, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Three, The Wapentake of Walshcroft, Survey of English Place-Names LXVI (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 1992), pp. 94–6; Cameron, Dictionary, p. 100.

8.     K. Cameron, J. Field & J. Insley, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Four, The Wapentakes of Ludborough and Haverstoe, Survey of English Place-Names LXXI (Nottingham: English Place-Names Society, 1996), pp. 60–2; Cameron, Dictionary, p. 21.

9.     Cameron, Field & Insley, Place-Names of Lincolnshire 4, p. 183; Cameron, Dictionary, pp. 134–5; D. Hooke, 'Old English wald, weald in place-names', Landscape History, 34 (2013), 33–49 at pp. 39–40; R. Huggins, 'The significance of the place-name wealdhám', Medieval Archaeology, 19 (1975), 198–201.

10.     H. Moll, A Set of Fifty New and Correct Maps of England and Wales, &c. with the Great Roads and Principal Cross-Roads, &c. (London, 1724), p. 28; W. Morgan, Ogilby's and Morgan's Pocket-Book of the Roads, 7th edn. (London, 1732), p. 34; J. Senex, The Roads Through England Delineated, or Ogilby's Survey Revised, Improved, and Reduced to a Size Portable for the Pocket (London, 1759), p. 86.

11.     E. Bowen, An Accurate Map of Lincolnshire; Divided into its Wapontakes. Laid down from the best Authorities, and most approved Maps & Charts, with various additional Improvements (London, 1751), British Library Maps K.Top.19.18; Armstrong, Map of Lincolnshire, 1779.

12.     J. Cary, Cary's New Map of England and Wales (London, 1794), pp. 43, 52; J. Carey, Cary's Traveller's Companion, or, a Delineation of the Turnpike Roads of England and Wales (London, 1792), Map of Lincolnshire; J. Cary, Cary's Traveller's Companion (London, 1806), Map of Lincolnshire.

13.     For Faldingworth's enclosure map, see E. Russell and R. Russell, Making New Landscapes in Lincolnshire: the Enclosure of Thirty-Four Parishes in Mid-Lindsey, Lincolnshire History Series No. 5 (Lincoln: Lincolnshire Recreational Services, 1983), pp. 44–7. For Samuel Lewis's map, see S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England (London, 1835), p. 93, digitised by the British Library here; for Henry Stevens' draft 1820 map of the Hackthorn district for the Ordnance Survey, see British Library OSD 282, digitised here. Another mapped route from the early nineteenth century is that of William Faden from 1801, which follows the Langworth road through to Snelland, then seems to turn north to Buslingthorpe (via the road to Friesthorpe shown by Armstrong and Cary) and then to Middle Rasen before turning east to Market Rasen: W. Faden, A map of England, Wales & Scotland, describing all the direct and principal cross roads in Great Britain, drawn 1801 and published 1811, digitised here.

14.     Bartholomew's Half Inch Maps of England and Wales, sheet 10, 'Lincoln Wolds' (1902), digitised here; Ordnance Survey, Ministry of Transport Road Map (1923), digitised here. 

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2021, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Second Edition, 2020)

I'm pleased to announce that the second edition of my Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 has now been published and is available to buy as both a paperback (401 pages, ISBN 978-0-902668-26-3) and a PDF ebook.

Britons and Anglo-Saxons was first issued in 2012 and represents the published version of my Oxford DPhil thesis. It offers an interdisciplinary approach to the history of the Lincoln region in the post-Roman period, drawing together a wide range of sources. In particular, it indicates that a British polity named *Lindēs was based at Lincoln into the sixth century, and that the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindsey (Lindissi) had an intimate connection to this British political unit. The picture that emerges is also of importance nationally, helping to answer key questions regarding the nature and extent of Anglian-British interaction and the origins of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

This new second edition of Britons and Anglo-Saxons includes a brand new, 52-page introduction discussing recent research into the late and post-Roman Lincoln region, consisting of sections on 'Romano-British pottery in the fifth- to sixth-century Lincoln region', 'Archaeology and the British ‘country of *Lindēs’', 'Place-names and history in early Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire', and 'Territories, central clusters and persistent places in the pre-Viking Lincolnshire landscape'.

Britons and Anglo-Saxons is the third volume in the Studies in the History of Lincolnshire, a peer-reviewed academic project published by the History of Lincolnshire Committee (established 1966). Click here to buy the paperback from Lulu and here to buy the PDF ebook. Alternatively, the paperback of Britons and Anglo-Saxons can also be purchased from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

A selection of reviews of Britons and Anglo-Saxons:

“Britons and Anglo-Saxons is an impressively interdisciplinary book that combines linguistic, historical, literary, and archaeological evidence into a coherent narrative for the post-Roman fate of Lincolnshire... [the] central contention that “the Britons based at Lincoln in the fifth and sixth centuries left a political, administrative, cultural, and even potentially a symbolic, legacy for succeeding centuries” (153) is amply borne out by [the] thorough interdisciplinary methodology, and [Green's] findings are sure to have an impact on the wider historiography of early-medieval British history... a major accomplishment by a promising young scholar...”  (Speculum: the Journal of the Medieval Academy of America, 2013)

“This book, based on the author’s doctoral thesis, explores the relationships between British and Anglo-Saxon populations in post-Roman Britain and the formation of kingdoms, using Lincolnshire as a case study... As an exploration of the aftermath of Roman Britain, the relationships between native populations and immigrant communities, and the mechanisms behind the development of subsequent administrative units, this book makes for a very thought-provoking read... It is a welcome addition to our understanding of the early centuries of post-Roman Britain.” (Medieval Archaeology, 2013)

“This book should recommend itself to the introductory reading lists of history and archaeology students but will also serve the general reader well... This study draws upon the combined application of history, archaeology, place-names, and early literature to reconstruct its narrative —approaches that one would wish to see duplicated across the country... This book not only provides a narrative for Lincolnshire but also reinforces the potential value of similar approaches elsewhere in Britain while at the same time offering a compelling introduction to the challenges of studying this period of Britain’s past.” (Midland History, 2013)

“[F]ully engaged with up-to-date scholarship and operating assuredly across all relevant disciplines... Not only does it offer a sophisticated study of Dark-Age Lincolnshire but it also makes an important contribution to wider debates about the ending of Roman Britain and the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon England... This inter-disciplinary exploration of *Lindes offers a new standard for regional work. It also provides a model capable of explaining how Roman Britain transmuted into Anglo-Saxon England... this book makes an important contribution to the central historical debates and will provide an important point of reference as to how we model the British/Anglo-Saxon interface for the next generation.” (N. J. Higham, Lincolnshire History & Archaeology, 2015)

Ludford, Tealby and the Taifali: a major Late Iron Age to early post-Roman settlement on the Lincolnshire Wolds

The following post is intended to offer a brief introduction to the archaeology and early history of Ludford, Lincolnshire, along with some thoughts on its Late Roman and post-Roman significance. Although Ludford is nowadays simply a village on the road from Louth to Market Rasen, sitting atop the Lincolnshire Wolds, in the Late Iron Age, Roman, and possibly early post-Roman eras it appears to have been a site of some considerable significance.

The major Late Iron Age settlements of northern Lincolnshire and their suggested territories, after May, 1984 (image: C. R. Green)

A Late Iron Age gold coin of the local Corieltavi tribe, South Ferriby type, dated c. 45 BC–10 BC, found at Ludford (image: PAS)

The earliest evidence for significant activity at Ludford comes from the Late Iron Age, with a large number of brooches and other items recorded from here on the Portable Antiquities Scheme and elsewhere, including 80 gold, silver and copper-alloy coins, all of which were mostly found just to the east of the current village in fields near to Ludford Grange. The impressive concentration of Late Iron Age coinage in particular has led Jeffrey May to identify Ludford as one of a small number of major Late Iron Age settlement found spread fairly evenly across the landscape of northern Lincolnshire, each probably controlling a substantial territory 15–20 miles or so across, the suggested extent of which is depicted on the map above.

This first phase of occupation at Ludford continued into the early Roman period and was followed by a second, even more intensive phase of occupation in the third and fourth centuries. Extensive finds of Roman pottery, coins, burials, building materials and other artefacts from the area around Ludford Grange and the head of the River Bain indicate that Ludford was probably functioning as a 'small town' in that period and, as such, is likely to have continued to control a significant territory all around it, something supported by the fairly wide and even spacing of such major Roman-era settlements in Lincolnshire (see the map below). These indications of a significant degree of activity at Ludford in the Late Iron Age and Roman eras are reinforced by extensive cropmarks observed in this area by the RCHME and the results of fluxgate gradiometer surveys, which demonstrated that there was intensive activity in several phases at the site even in areas where no cropmarks are now visible.

The major settlements and forts of Roman Lincolnshire, set against the probable late/post- Roman landscape and certain major Roman-era routes (image drawn by C. R. Green after Green, 2012, fig. 4, with additions). Note, both Caistor and Horncastle were Late Roman forts with impressive stone walls, and linguistic and historical evidence combine to suggest that there may well have been another Roman walled fort at Skegness that was destroyed by the sea around 500 years ago. Also shown are the locations of three earthen fortifications that are thought to date from the late/post-Roman periods, at Yarborough, Yarburgh and Cun Hu Hill (Grimsby); these are depicted by an 'open square' symbol.

A late fourth-century Roman adjustable silver bracelet from Ludford (image: PAS). Another Roman precious-metal item of jewellery from this site is a gold and garnet earring of the second or third century. 

It is thus clear that Ludford was a locally important settlement and 'central place' within Lincolnshire in both the Late Iron Age and Romano-British eras, and it seems likely that this local importance was maintained into the very late Roman period and potentially a little beyond too. Perhaps the most interesting evidence in this regard comes in the form of a later fourth-century gold coin and three Late Roman spurs that have been found at Ludford 'Roman small town'. Such artefacts have a very similar distribution within the Lincoln region and have been considered indicative of the final stage of official Roman military activity in this region, which was arguably focused on creating a defensive 'ring' around the Late Roman provincial capital and episcopal see of Lincoln, with troops apparently primarily stationed not in the walled forts of the region, but instead at rural strategic sites close to major routeways and/or the coast. Certainly, such a scenario accords well with the fact that the Late Roman field army appears to have been normally billeted in civilian towns rather than assigned to specific military forts, and Ludford was clearly both a civilian 'small town' and a strategic site, being located on top of the Lincolnshire Wolds on a Roman road that ran from the east coast to Lincoln (Margary 272) and also very close to the crossing point of this road with the north–south road linking the Roman walled forts of Caistor and Horncastle (Margary 270).

As to who these cavalry troops potentially billeted and losing spurs at Ludford might have been, one reasonable possibility is that they were members of the very late Roman Equites Taifali. This cavalry unit was probably established between 395 and 398 from the Taifali of northern Italy and Gaul and is known to have been in Britain under the command of the Comes Britanniarum ('Count of the Britains') in the very late fourth to early fifth centuries. Perhaps most significantly, however, it just so happens that a neighbouring parish to Ludford, Tealby, actually bears an originally Old English name that almost certainly derives from the continental tribal-name Taifali and means '(the settlement of) the Taifali', to which the Old Norse for village, -bȳ, was added in the Anglo-Scandinavian period (Tealby < Tavelesbi/Teflesbi < Old English *Tāflas/*Tǣflas + Old Norse bȳ, with *Tāflas/*Tǣflas being the Old English form of the tribal-name Taifali). Needless to say, such a coincidence is highly suggestive, and it has furthermore been argued that the presence of this tribal-name in Lincolnshire is difficult to explain in a convincing manner without recourse to the Equites Taifali.

The location of Tealby in relation to Ludford and key Late Roman sites & routeways; fortified sites are indicated by an open square around a filled square. Image: Green, 2014, fig. 1, with additions; the latter being the two probable earthen fortifications at Yarburgh, near Louth, and Cun Hu Hill, Grimsby, that potentially date from the late/post-Roman period (depicted as open squares).

If Ludford at the very end of the fourth century and beginning of the fifth potentially played host to at least elements of the Equites Taifali, what then of it in the post-Roman period? With regard to this, several points can be made. First, the nature of the place-name evidence from neighbouring Tealby is such that, if the name does derive from members of the Equites Taifali (as seems most most likely), then it would require that descendants of former members of the Equites Taifali were still living on the Lincolnshire Wolds in the post-Roman era and retained a separate identity for at least part of that period. This is, needless to say, intriguing in itself, and it is worth noting here that the idea that some members, or former members, of the Equites Taifali might have stayed in this region rather than returning to the continent in the early fifth century could well find an explanation and context in the evidence for the Late Roman provincial capital of Lincoln being able to defend and maintain a significant territory all around itself into the sixth century. In other words, it is possible that the apparent presence of Taifali in the area around Ludford in the post-Roman period resulted from the clear need, apparently successfully met, of those in charge of the provincial capital at Lincoln to employ defenders for their territory as official Roman military activities in Britain drew to a close.

Second, there are two deserted medieval villages named East and West Wykeham that lie within Ludford parish and near to the site of the Romano-British town. This place-name derives from Old English wīchām, which in turn comes from Latin vicus + Old English hām. Such names are generally considered to derive their Latin first element from their close proximity to a significant Romano-British settlement that was known as a vicus in the Late and post-Roman periods, with vici in this context being probably Romano-British settlements that functioned as local administrative centres, a description which would seem to fit Ludford well. Most important of all, however, is the fact that names in wīchām have often been plausibly considered both to date from the fifth or sixth centuries and to be indicative of some sort of administrative continuity between the Late Roman and 'early Anglo-Saxon' periods, a point of considerable significance in the present context.

Taken together, the above points suggest that the Romano-British small town at Ludford and its immediate surrounding area may have continued to be of some local significance into at least the early part of the post-Roman era, that is into the fifth century and perhaps also the sixth. However, when we look beyond this, into the 'Anglo-Saxon' period proper for Lincolnshire, the situation looks somewhat different. For example, Ludford lies not at the heart of one of the recorded Anglo-Scandinavian wapentakes of Lincolnshire, but instead at the junction of three separate wapentakes (Louthesk, Wraggoe, and Walshcroft), suggesting that by the later Anglo-Saxon era any local administrative role and territory for Ludford had been lost and divided. Similarly, whilst the archaeological material recovered from the site of the Romano-British 'small town' and its immediate environs indicates that there was probably a degree of activity hereabouts in the pre-Viking period, there is nothing to really make us think that the site retained any of its earlier importance at that time.

A copper-alloy annular brooch of the seventh century, found in Ludford parish to the south- east of the small town (image: PAS)

The territorial context of the South Elkington-Louth early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery. Shown here are the cemetery, the later wapentake boundaries of Louthesk (in grey), relevant place-names, and the suggested extent of a pre-Viking territory focused on the Louth cemetery (image: Green, 2012, fig. 43).

As to both when and why Ludford's apparent Iron Age–early post-Roman local administrative role and territory ended and was divided, this is open to debate. It has been argued that many of Lincolnshire's Anglo-Scandinavian wapentakes had their ultimate origins in the pre-Viking period, and a study of Louthesk wapentake certainly indicates that this wapentake could well have had its roots in a territory associated with the important and massive fifth- to sixth-century cremation cemetery at South Elkington–Louth. This cemetery probably functioned as a funerary, social and sacred 'central place' for the surrounding region in the early Anglo-Saxon period, and was established at a site overlooking the Lincolnshire Marshes and the east coast by 'Anglian' immigrants to the region in the fifth century, who, like the Taifali, were arguably initially used by the post-Roman Britons of Lincoln for the defence of their territory (indeed, they may well have been somehow associated with the possible late/post-Roman coastal fortification at nearby Yarburgh). Furthermore, the Old English place-name 'Ludford' is suggestive too, as not only does it appear to be, in type, a potentially early pre-Viking coinage, but it is also probably best interpreted as meaning 'the ford belonging to Louth', indicating that Ludford had actually come to be under the control of Louth in this period, perhaps lying on the very western edge of its territory.

On the basis of the above, it seems likely that the process of Ludford losing at least some of its local centrality and any associated administrative role/territory that had survived into the post-Roman era was already begun by the end of the sixth century. Moreover, it can be suggested that this loss of centrality and division of its probable administrative territory could have been a direct result of the foundation of a new, Anglo-Saxon 'central place' at a strategic site only a few miles to the east of Ludford in the fifth century. In this light, an acceptable hypothesis that accounts for all of the material discussed above might be that Ludford and its immediate environs retained a degree of local centrality into the fifth and sixth centuries, so long as the Britons were still in at least nominal charge of the Lincoln region. However, when the 'Anglo-Saxon' immigrant groups gained control of the region in the sixth century, Ludford's status and centrality precipitously declined in favour of the immigrants' own, already-established regional centre a few miles to the east at South Elkington–Louth.

Tealby All Saints' church (image: Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0)

If Ludford itself and the eastern parts of any territory it administered in the late and post- Roman periods may thus have come under the control of the early 'Anglian' immigrant group that was seemingly based a few miles to the east at South Elkington–Louth in the sixth century, what then of the rest of Ludford's 'territory' and, indeed, the Taifali? With regard to this question, it is worth noting that the whole area to the north and west of Ludford lay within the Walshcroft wapentake by the Late Saxon period, with this district including within its bounds not only the modern village of Tealby—'(the settlement of) the Taifali'—but also its neighbouring village of Walesby. Given that there is a case to be made for both the place-name Walesby (DB Walesby) and the wapentake-name Walshcroft (DB Walescros) having derived from Old English Walas, 'the Britons, the Welsh-speakers', it might well be wondered whether Walshcroft wapentake could not have somehow derived from a portion of the territory associated with Ludford that remained, at least nominally, in British/Taifali hands, for a period at any rate? Of course, such a suggestion can only be very tentatively made, but it is an interesting possibility nonetheless.

In sum, the archaeology, history and place-names of Ludford and its immediate surroundings suggest that it was of some considerable significance in the past. It was clearly once the site of a major Late Iron Age settlement and Romano-British 'small town' that probably functioned as a local administrative centre for the surrounding region. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that at the very end of the Roman era the small town here was home to cavalry troops of the Late Roman military, quite possibly of the Equites Taifali, some of whom may have stayed on in this area to help protect the territory of the former provincial capital of Lincoln into the fifth century, their continued presence arguably underlying the name of a neighbouring parish, Tealby. Finally, it can be cautiously argued that Ludford and its immediate environs may have retained a degree of local centrality into the fifth and sixth centuries, but with this perhaps only lasting so long as the Britons were still in at least nominal charge of the Lincoln region. Certainly, it seems likely that Ludford itself had lost its centrality at some point in the early Anglo-Saxon period to the new Anglo-Saxon 'central place' of South Elkington–Louth, a few miles to the east, although it can be tentatively suggested that the later wapentake of Walshcroft could represent a surviving rump of Ludford's territory that remained nominally under British and Taifali control, at least for a time.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2015, 2016, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

A note on the evidence for African migrants in Britain from the Bronze Age to the medieval period

The degree to which pre-modern Britain included people of African origin within its population continues to be a topic of considerable interest and some controversy. Previous posts on this site have discussed a variety of textual, linguistic, archaeological and isotopic evidence for people from the Mediterranean and/or Africa in the British Isles from the Late Bronze Age through to the eleventh century AD. However, the focus in these posts has been on individual sites, events or periods, rather than the question of the potential proportion of people from Africa present in pre-modern Britain per se and how this may have varied over time. The aim of the following post is thus to briefly ponder whether an overview of the increasingly substantial British corpus of oxygen isotope evidence drawn from pre-modern archaeological human teeth has anything interesting to tell us with regard to this question.

Map of the British Isles, showing drinking-water oxygen isotope values and the 16 British archaeological sites (including three in York) with evidence for pre-modern people whose results are consistent with an early life spent in North Africa (image: C. R. Green, using a base-map image © BGS/NERC, reproduced under their non-commercial licence, as detailed on the BGS website).

Proportion of investigated sites from each period with at least one oxygen isotope result consistent with an origin in North Africa (image: C. R. Green).

The rationale for using oxygen isotope evidence as a tool for identifying people from Africa in pre-modern Britain was set out at some length in a previous post—essentially, tooth enamel oxygen isotope values reflect those of the water that was drunk by an individual in childhood, with drinking-water values varying markedly with climate and related factors. As such, it should be possible to identify first-generation migrants to Britain in the archaeological record by measuring their tooth enamel oxygen isotope levels, so long as they grew up in a region with significantly different drinking-water values to those found in Britain, a criteria North Africa fits comfortably, with many parts of it possessing levels notably higher than those found anywhere in Britain or, indeed, Europe.

In order to make a first pass at trying to assess whether isotopic data can help answer the question of the potential number of African people in medieval and earlier Britain and the variations in this number over time, I pulled together a rough corpus of 909 oxygen isotopes results taken from individuals buried at 79 Bronze Age–Medieval sites across Britain published up to the start of 2016, and then sorted these into four broad chronological periods: Bronze Age–Iron Age (22 sites), Roman (15 sites), Early Medieval (29 sites) and Medieval (14 sites), with one site in use across two of the periods.(1) I then went through this material to identify individuals whose results are sufficiently elevated so as to be both clearly indicative of a non-local origin and most consistent with a childhood spent in North Africa, rather than anywhere in Britain or Europe.(2) Needless to say, taking such an overview of the entire period from the Bronze Age to the Medieval era via a single dataset produces some interesting results, as well as some pitfalls. The former can be summarized as follows:

• 20.3% of the 79 surveyed Bronze Age–Medieval sites contained at least one person who has results consistent with a childhood spent in Africa (n=16). As can be seen from the map included above, these sites are spread across Britain, with the majority coming from what is now England, although not exclusively so. Note, some of the 'gaps' in the resultant distribution may well be more apparent than real, stemming from a lack of published sites in some areas, such as north-western England and Norfolk. 
• Sites possessing isotopic evidence consistent with the presence of first-generation immigrants from North Africa are found in all periods looked at, although there is a clear peak in the Roman era. The Roman era—the mid-first to early fifth centuries AD—has the greatest number of sites with such evidence, namely seven, these being Winchester (Lankhills), Gloucester, York (three sites: Trentholme Drive, The Railway & Driffield Terrace), Scorton near Catterick, and Wasperton. Furthermore, nearly 47% of all Roman sites where isotopic analysis has occurred have produced evidence suggestive of the presence of people who grew up in North Africa, a significantly higher proportion than is found for any other era. The next highest raw totals of sites with such isotopic evidence belong jointly to the 'Early Medieval' and 'Medieval' eras (four sites each), although it is important to note that the Early Medieval total results from over twice as many sites being isotopically investigated than is the case for the Medieval era—as such, whilst 28.6% of the Medieval-era sites in the corpus have isotopic evidence consistent with the presence of North African migrants, only 13.8% of the Early Medieval sites do. Finally, the Bronze Age–Iron Age is represented by only a single qualifying site on the Isle of Thanet, Kent, equivalent to 4.5% of all Bronze Age–Iron Age sites where isotopic analysis has taken place, although this Late Bronze Age–Middle Iron Age cemetery has multiple people with such results buried within it.
• In total, 3.7% of the 909 Bronze Age–Medieval individuals surveyed from these 79 sites have results consistent with a childhood spent in Africa (n=34). This percentage reflects the fact that the majority of the sites looked at here only contain one or two individuals with values high enough for inclusion in the present study.
• A small number of results are elevated to such a degree that they strongly indicate a childhood spent in the Nile Valley or Delta. Around 11.8% of the individual oxygen isotope results that were highlighted here were exceptionally elevated to above 21.0‰ δ¹⁸O_p (n=4), a level that is probably indicative of a childhood spent in or around the Nile Valley, where equivalent values have been recorded from the ancient burial site at Mendes in the Nile Delta, Egypt, and other sites up to the third Nile cataract at Tombos. Interestingly, these results come from individuals spread across the chronological range: one from a Late Bronze Age burial at Thanet, Kent (ninth century BC); one from a Middle Iron Age grave at the same site (fourth century BC); one from Roman York (the Driffield Terrace site); and one from the medieval cemetery at Whithorn, Scotland (late twelfth to thirteenth century AD).

With regard to explanations for such a potential presence of people who grew up in North Africa in Britain from the Late Bronze Age through to the medieval period, several possibilities can be identified. For example, the peak in sites with isotopic evidence consistent with the presence of such people in the Roman era is perhaps unsurprising, given the significant epigraphic, textual and archaeological evidence for people from Africa and/or of African descent in Britain at that time, and a major research project has, in fact, recently been completed on the topic of diaspora communities in Roman Britain. Indeed, at York around 11–12% of the individuals buried in two of the large Roman-era cemeteries there are considered to be very likely of 'African descent' on the basis of anthroposcopic/craniometric analysis, whilst yet more are thought to have potential 'mixed' or 'black' ancestry, up to a possible maximum of 51% of the population in the higher-status 'The Railway' cemetery. Similarly, there is documentary and archaeological evidence for contacts between the Byzantine Empire, North Africa and post-Roman western Britain and England in the early medieval period which may well offer a potential explanation for some of the results retrieved—significant quantities of fifth- to sixth-century Byzantine imported pottery have, for example, been found along the west coast of Britain, including some produced in the Carthage region, and Middle Saxon England included churchmen such as Hadrian, the later seventh and early eighth-century Abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury, who was 'a man of African race' (Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV.1) and is thought to have grown up in Libya Cyrenaica before moving to Italy following the mid-seventh-century Arab conquest of North Africa. For the Medieval period, the Crusades and the evidence for trade and contacts between England and the Mediterranean/Spain have been suggested as obvious potential reasons for the presence of people from Africa here then, whilst the Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age evidence from Thanet can perhaps be seen in the context of both the well-evidenced Bronze Age trading along the Atlantic coast between the Mediterranean, Iberia, Britain and Scandinavia, and the increasing body of linguistic, numismatic and archaeological evidence for Mediterranean/Punic contacts with Britain during the Iron Age.

Of course, whilst the above isotopic evidence is certainly intriguing, there are undoubtedly pitfalls to be aware of. On the one hand, we need to be wary of overestimating the proportion of any North African migrants in pre-modern Britain using isotopic evidence. For example, sites are sometimes chosen for isotopic analysis because they look potentially 'interesting', as was arguably the case with the cemeteries at York, Winchester and Thanet, and such a situation might well lead to a greater proportion of positive 'hits' in any corpus aiming to look for potential evidence of long-distance migration. Similarly, it is not totally impossible that a few of the people with the more marginal results discussed here could just have had their origins in a small area of southernmost Iberia rather than North Africa, although the bar for inclusion in the present corpus was set at such a level as to hopefully significantly reduce the possibility of this, and a substantial proportion of the results included here are, moreover, well above any plausible southern Iberian range.(3) On the other hand, the corpus could well underestimate both the number of individuals who may have had their origins in North Africa and their chronological spread. So, for example, whilst over 900 results were surveyed here, we still end up with a situation whereby none of the individuals with elevated values date from the Late Saxon/Anglo-Scandinavian period (later ninth to eleventh centuries). Taking this as a reflection of a lack of people from Africa in Britain at that time would, however, be a mistake: not only do we have good textual evidence for the presence of such people in the British Isles, but there are three burials of people of African descent known from tenth- and eleventh-century Gloucestershire and East Anglia—the problem is simply that none of them have been subjected to isotopic analysis and so they haven't been included here. Likewise, there are at least four burials of people who appear to be of African descent in the medieval cemetery at Ipswich, but only one has been isotopically tested (interestingly, five of the post-medieval/sixteenth-century burials there also appear to be those of people of African descent). Finally, by adopting a fairly high bar to inclusion in the corpus so as to avoid—as much as possible—the risk of 'false positives', we actually end up excluding a significant number of individuals who are generally accepted as being of African origin. So, only three members of a group of thirteen burials from Lankhills (Winchester) have results high enough to be included in the current corpus, despite the fact that all thirteen are considered to form a sub-group that is probably of African origin within the cemetery. All told, therefore, it might well be wondered whether the above tendencies to both overestimate and underestimate don't, in fact, cancel each other out.

North African unguentaria found in a grave from the Late Roman cemetery at Lankhills, Winchester, that is part of the sub-group with elevated oxygen isotope results mentioned above, but which has values just a little below the cut-off for inclusion in the corpus used in this post (image: Oxford Archaeology, reused under their CC BY-SA 3.0 license).

Notes

1     This corpus is based primarily upon J. A. Evans, C. A. Chenery & J. Montgomery, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 27 (2012), 754–64 and 'Supplementary Material I' (14 pp.), to which have been added studies published after that paper or missing from it, using a Google Scholar search to catch any publications that weren't already known. Note, the periods assigned to the results taken from Evans et al, 'Supplementary Material I', have been checked and revised by me for this corpus, as they were occasionally idiosyncratic: 'Roman' is here used as a catch-all term for results from the first to early fifth centuries AD, 'Early Medieval' for those results from the period between the early fifth and late eleventh centuries AD, and 'Medieval' for those from the twelfth through to the fifteenth centuries. The additional studies used in creating this corpus are as follows, arranged by date of publication: S. Lucy et al, 'The burial of a princess? The later seventh-­century cemetery at Westfield Farm, Ely', Antiquity, 89 (2009), 81–141; J. Montgomery, 'Isotope analysis of bone collagen and tooth enamel', in C. Lowe (ed.), The P.R. Ritchie Excavations at Whithorn Priory, 1957–67: Medieval Bishops' Graves and Other Discoveries (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 65–82; A. M. Pollard et al, '"Sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat": The St Brice's Day Massacre and the isotopic analysis of human bones from St John's College, Oxford', Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 31 (2012), 83–102; S. E. Groves et al, 'Mobility histories of 7th–9th century AD people buried at early medieval Bamburgh, Northumberland, England', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 151 (2013), 462–76; K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region', Journal of Archaeological Science, 40 (2013), 2352–59; M. Jay et al, 'British Iron Age burials of the Arras culture: a multi-isotope approach to investigating mobility levels and subsistence practices', World Archaeology, 45 (2013), 473–91; E. Kendall et al, 'Mobility, mortality, and the middle ages: identification of migrant individuals in a 14th century black death cemetery population', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 150 (2013), 210–22; C. A. Roberts et al, 'Isotopic tracing of the impact of mobility on infectious disease: the origin of people with treponematosis buried in Hull, England, in the Late Medieval period', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 150 (2013), 273–85; K. A. Hemer et al, 'No Man is an island: evidence of pre-Viking Age migration to the Isle of Man'. Journal of Archaeological Science, 52 (2014), 242–9; J. I. McKinley et al, Cliffs End Farm, Isle of Thanet, Kent. A Mortuary and Ritual Site of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon Period with Evidence for Long-Distance Maritime Mobility (Salisbury, 2014); J. Montgomery et al, 'Finding Vikings with isotope analysis: the view from wet and windy islands', Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 7 (2014), 54–70; H. Eckardt et al, 'The Late Roman field army in northern Britain? Mobility, material culture and multi-isotope analysis at Scorton (N. Yorks)', Britannia, 46 (2015), 191–223; S. A. Inskip et al, 'Osteological, biomolecular and geochemical examination of an early Anglo-Saxon case of lepromatous leprosy', PLoS ONE, 10.5 (2015), pp. 1–22, online at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124282; R. Martiniano et al, 'Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons', Nature Communications, 7 (2016), article 10326, 8 pp., online at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160119/ncomms10326/full/ncomms10326.html, and Supplementary Materials, 54 pp. (Table 3 and discussion in Supplementary Note 2). I also include 'Ipswich Man' in the corpus, a man of African descent who was buried in the thirteenth century in Ipswich, as he was isotopically investigated and consequently determined to probably have his origins in North Africa, although the results are still as yet unpublished: BBC, History Cold Case: Series 1, Episode 1—Ipswich Man (broadcast 27 July 2010); 'Medieval African found buried in England', Discovery News, 11 February 2013, online at http://news.discovery.com/history/medieval-african-england.htm; K. Wade, Ipswich Archive Summaries: Franciscan Way, IAS 5003 (2014), online at http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/ipswich_5003_2015/downloads.cfm; and Xanthé Mallett, pers. comm..
2     The following footnote outlines the methodology adopted here. The conventional upper cut-off for phosphate oxygen isotope values for people who grew up in the British Isles is 18.6‰ δ¹⁸O_p, although it has been suggested that people brought up on the far western margins of Britain and Ireland—where drinking-water oxygen isotope values are at their highest, between -5.0‰ and -4.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw (see map)—could theoretically have values up to 19.2‰ δ¹⁸O_p (see K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region', Journal of Archaeological Science, 40 (2013), 2352–59; C. Chenery et al, 'Strontium and stable isotope evidence for diet and mobility in Roman Gloucester, UK', Journal of Archaeological Science, 37 (2010), 150–63; and especially J. A. Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 27 (2012), 754–64). As such, and in order to avoid as much doubt as possible, I decided only to look at people with tooth enamel phosphate oxygen isotope results of 19.2‰+ for this post. This reflects, across the entire resulting corpus, the childhood consumption of drinking-water with values from -3.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw up to +2.0‰ δ¹⁸O_dw on the 2010 revised Levinson equation or -4.0‰ δ¹⁸O_dw to +0.3‰ δ¹⁸O_dw on the 2008 Daux et al equation—needless to say, whichever equation is used, these values are notably higher than the maximum British drinking-water value of c. -4.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw (found only in a few spots in the far west of the Outer Hebrides and Cornwall), but in line with results from North Africa, whilst the highest of the recorded results in the corpus can only be matched in the Nile Valley, as was discussed in a previous post. Indeed, over 50% of the individuals studied in this post have results of at least 19.5‰ δ¹⁸O_p, equivalent to a drinking-water value of -2.8‰ δ¹⁸O_dw (-3.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw) or more, significantly above any credible British range and only really paralleled in some areas of North Africa. Moreover, it is worth noting from the map attached to this post that none of the individuals who are included in the study corpus were actually found in the areas with the highest drinking-water values in Britain, removing any lingering potential doubt as to their non-local origin. In fact, only a single individual of the 34 discussed here was found in an area with a local drinking-water value above -6.0‰ δ¹⁸O_dw, whilst the vast majority (79%) come from areas where drinking water values are between -7.0‰ and -8.5‰. As such, not only do they largely come from areas where the theoretical maximum for tooth enamel phosphate oxygen isotope values is closer to c. 18.5‰, according to Evans et al (2012, p. 759), not 19.2‰, but their results actually reflect the childhood consumption of water with values at least 3.0‰ higher than the local level right up to potentially as much as 10.2‰ higher (at the Driffield Terrace, York, site)—in all cases, this is significantly above any plausible variations around the local range and is massively so in the case of many results. Finally, it is worth noting that the adoption of this relatively conservative approach may mean that the number of individuals of in Britain who grew up in North Africa is underestimated, rather than overestimated. For example, even a small drop of the bar to include all those with results of 19.0‰ δ¹⁸O_p or above more more than doubles the number to be taken into the current corpus from our main source (the 2012 Evans et al corpus), and it is worth noting that many of the people with results at this level are indeed usually accepted as being probable migrants from North Africa, as are a significant number of people with slightly lower results too (see, for example, Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation', pp. 760–2; K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region'; and the discussion in a previous post, 'Some oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance migration to Britain from North Africa & southern Iberia, c.1100 BC–AD 800', 24 October 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/10/oxygen-isotope-evidence.html). Nonetheless, it was felt worthwhile to set the bar higher in the present study in order to minimize as fully as possible the risk of false positives, and also to avoid as much as possible increasing the chance of some of the people studied here could have their origins in the one other area of Europe with very high drinking-water oxygen isotope values, southernmost Iberia, see note 3.
3     The map included in Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation', p. 761, indicates that the only part of Europe other than Britain with water oxygen isotope values above -5.0‰ is a small area of the south-eastern Iberian peninsula. L. J. Araguas-Araguas & M. F. Diaz Teijeiro, 'Isotope composition of precipitation and water vapour in the Iberian Peninsula', in IAEA, Isotopic composition of precipitation in the Mediterranean Basin in relation to air circulation patterns and climate (Vienna, 2005), pp. 173–90 at p. 178, state that values in this area range down to -4.3‰ δ¹⁸O, which is slightly enriched over the upper end of the British range (c. -4.5‰ δ¹⁸O); they also indicate that similar values above -5.0‰ δ¹⁸O are found in limited areas of the south-western coast of Iberia too, contrary to Evans et al, with groundwater results of c. 4.0‰ or even slightly higher reported from a very small zone around Cádiz (Araguas-Araguas & Diaz Teijeiro, fig. 3 at p. 180). In consequence, the bar for consideration in the present post was set relatively high to reduce the chance of including people from southernmost Iberia in the corpus—as was mentioned in note 2, above, only people with tooth enamel phosphate oxygen isotope results of 19.2‰+ were considered here, which on the 2010 revised Levinson equation (as used in K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region', Journal of Archaeological Science, 40 (2013), 2352–59, and other recent studies) equates to the consumption of drinking-water with values of -3.5‰ δ¹⁸O or above, with the majority of the results included here moreover reflecting the consumption of drinking-water with even higher values than this, ranging from -2.8‰ δ¹⁸O right up to +2.0‰ δ¹⁸O, well above the southern Iberian range.

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