In 443 king Wyrtgeorne (Vortigern) of the Britons applied to Rome for assistance against the Pictish tribes threatening his northern borders. The Roman emperor was then at war with Atilla of the Huns, and could not offer any aid, so, driven to desperate measures, the ageing British monarch petitioned his war-like neighbours the Angles, then living in the low-lands immediately across the Channel. The first band of Angles to take up Vortigern's invitation arrived in Britain in the year 449, under the command of two warrior brothers, Hengest and Horsa, sons of Wihtgils, son of Witta, son of Wecta, son of Woden.
"A.D. 455. This year Hengest and Horsa fought with Wyrtgeorne the king on the spot that is called Ægelesford (Aylesford). His brother Horsa there being slain, Hengest afterwards took to the kingdom with his son Esc." |
It is uncertain from the above text whether Hengist and Horsa were fighting against king Vortigern or allied with him against the Picts. We are unable, therefore, to conclude if the British king gave to the Angles the wetlands north and east of the Thames which had been retaken from the northern barbarians in gratitude for the defeat of the Pictish army, or if they were wrested from him after the battle described above. Either way, this does not seem to have long satisfied the Anglic king, however, because in 457 Hengest and his son Esc, fought a battle against the Bryttas (i.e. the Britons themselves) at Crayford, just north of the Thames, reputedly slaying four-thousand of them. Hengest then encouraged his Anglic brethren to settle in Britain, and before long their original homelands across the Channel was emptied, the whole of the lowlands between the Jutes to the north (in Jutland) and the Saxons to the south (in Saxony) becoming a wasteland. In Britain the Angles made their homes north of the Thames, creating many clearings throughout the forest which covered most of the mainland. The areas they settled would later become known by names familiar today; East Anglia, which incorporated the kingdom of the Middle Angles, also the kingdoms of Northumbria and lastly, Mercia.
Mercia was the last Anglo-Saxon kingdom to be created, and was thus bordered on most sides by other such realms; to the north lay the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, separated by the River Humber and the Derbyshire uplands; to the east in Norfolk and the Fens was the kingdom of East Anglia; while to the south lay the Saxon kingdoms of Essex in the south-east, Sussex in the south, and Wessex in the south-west. The founder of the kingdom was the warlord Cryda (Cridda), the mightiest of several Anglic noblemen, who first moved into the Midland area sometime during the year A.D.586. Cridda called his newly-formed kingdom Mercia, which is a Saxon compound name from the words Merc 'a mark or boundary line', and -ric 'a rule or kingdom'; Mercria then, was 'The Kingdom at the Borders'. The name very likely refers to the fact that the kingdom's western borders abutted against the Welsh foothills, the last bastion of the ancient Britons, into which the remnants of the Romano-British peoples had been beaten by the Anglo-Saxon war-bands of Cridda and his like.
The modern name of Wales is derived from this period in history, from the Anglo-Saxon word wealas 'strangers', which would seem to reveal the fate of the Celtic-speaking race who once peopled the entire British province; they appeared to have become "strangers in their own land". After being robbed of the fertile lowlands in the south-east by the superior technology of the Anglo-Saxon invaders - Cridda included - the wealas or the 'Welsh', were driven into the highlands of the west. After a relatively short space of time this beautiful, though unproductive territory came to be named Wealkynne 'the Land of the Strangers', after the displaced peoples who were forced to live there; from this is derived the modern name, Wales.
Modern genetic ethnotyping techniques, coupled with a nationwide voluntary DNA database, has established that the majority of the ancestral Romano-British did not, in fact, flee into the hills of Wales leaving behind an empty land to be populated by the golden-haired Saxon invaders, but instead stayed mainly where they had lived for generations, with the Saxons and their families living amongst them. These native people, who still represented over 80% of the population, almost immediately adopted the superior agricultural techniques of the newcomers. This gave the impression that the Saxons had driven the Britons completely off the map to the west, especially from the evidence of place-names, where almost no places in Britain have a Roman ancestry the vast majority having names deriving from the Anglo-Saxon language.
The Angles were the first people to extensively populate the Cannock Chase area. The uplands were not settled however, as they were unsuitable even for subsistence farming due to the poor quality of the land. Underneath a thin layer of acidic soil was a gravelly sub-soil which caused the rapid draining away of surface water. Absorbed through the gravel beds beneath the Chase, this water re-emerges around the borders of the upland area in the form of copious springs, clean and very potable after being filtered through many hundred feet of permeable triassic pebble-beds. These springs, and the streams they propagated, proved ideal water sources for the farmsteads of the first Anglic settlers.
During much of the Anglo-Saxon period, the area of Cannock Chase was incorporated within the great Forest of Arden, which stretched from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire to Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, and included much of the intervening counties of Warwickshire and Staffordshire within its boundaries. Before the Angles arrived, the largest clearing in the area was situated around the town of Walsall, which had however, become wasted before the Normans invaded and Domesday was compiled (so don't bother looking).
The Anglo-Saxons felled many clearings in the Forest of Arden to make way for their homesteads, and many Midland towns and villages have names which are derived from their original Anglo-Saxon owners. The following list is only a quick example, there are many others:
| Eccleshall - Æcla's Halh - 'the Hillside of Aecla' |
| Essington - Esne Ingas Tun - 'The Farmstead of Esne's People' |
| Handsacre - Handa's Acre - 'the Farm of Handa' |
| Hednesford - Heoden's Ford - 'the Ford of Heoden' |
| Teddesley - Tyddi's Leah - 'the Woodland Clearing of Tyddi' |
| Tutbury - Tutta's Byrig - 'the Fortification of Tutta' |
| Wednesbury - Weoden's Byrig - 'The Fortification of Weoden' |
| Wednesfield - Weoden's Feld - 'the Field of Weoden' |
| Wolseley - Wulfgar's Leah - 'the Woodland Clearing of Wulfgar' |
| Wolverhampton - Wulfruna's Hame Tun - 'the Home Steading of Wulfruna' |
Many other places have names which have been derived from Anglo-Saxon words describing their original local situation. These names are important as they give an idea of what the land actually looked like almost one and a half thousand years ago. The following list contains a few examples of this type of place-name which occur around the Cannock Chase area:
| Aldridge - Alr Wic - 'the Village of the Alder trees' |
| Alrewas - Alr Woesc - 'the Alder Swamp' |
| Brereton - Brere Don - 'the Hill of Briar bushes' |
| Bromley - Brom Leah - 'the Woodland Clearing covered with Broom bushes' |
| Brewood - Bre Wudu - 'the Wooded Hill' |
| Burton - Burh Tun - 'the Farmstead at the Fortifications' |
| Fazeley - Fearr Leah - 'the Woodland Glade where Bulls are raised' |
| Hagley - Hacga Leah - 'the Woodland Clearing where Hawthorn grows' |
| Rugeley - Hrycg Leah - 'The Clearing on the Ridge' |
| Stafford - Staeth Forda - 'the Ford at the Wharf' |
| Stoke - Stoc - 'the Holy Place' |
| Stretton - Straet Tun - 'the Farmstead on the Roman Road' |
| Tamworth - Tame Weorth - 'the Enclosure on the River Tame' |
The Mercians were often engaged in repulsing the Welsh, who came screaming out of the foothills of the Berwyns in the west to run riot through the Mercian fields and farms in Herefordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire, burning the standing crops, pillaging the homesteads, also raping and killing the inhabitants. Shrewsbury possesses a name which betrays the town's Mercian origins, composed from the Saxon word byrig 'fortification' prefixed by an obviously Anglo-Saxon personal name, the whole translated as 'Scnobber's Fort'. Little is known of this Mercian nobleman beyond his name, though it may be surmised that his following contained warriors enough for him to adequately defend his lands from Welsh encroachments.
"Near Lichfield, at Swinfen, is all that remains of great Offa's burial mound. An arable field there is called Offlow (Offa's Low) and gives its name to an extensive Hundred of South Staffordshire. Repeated ploughings have all but defaced the mound; but little doubt is entertained as to the identity of the place with the tumulus of the greatest of all the Mercian Kings, who died in the year 796. An earthwork sepulchre was a most fitting resting-place for one whose name will always remain identified with such an entrenchment of national importance as that which he erected to become a defence against the wild Welsh - that artificial boundary-line stretching from the Wye to the Dee, that notable earthen rampart between Bristol and Flint, so well known by the name of Offa's dyke (A.D. 774)."
Offa's Dyke was a frontier earthwork raised during the reign of king Offa of the Mercians (d.796) to separate the barbarians of Wales from the heartlands of Mercia. It consisted of an earth-cut ditch together with a twenty-five foot high turf embankment probably topped by a wooden palisade and walkway, with no intervening berm, the whole earthwork measured some sixty feet in width. The Dyke stretches in excess of one-hundred and fifty miles through the valleys and hills of the Welsh Marches, from Chepstow on the Severn Estuary, along the east side the Wye Valley through Ross-on-Wye and Hereford, shadowing the Wye for a few miles westward then proceeding north through the foothills of the Cambrian Mountains, past Presteign, Knighton and Bishop's Castle to the Severn east of Welshpool, from there continuing north past Oswestry and Wrexham to the River Dee near Chester. Offa's Dyke is over twice as long as the comparable barrier built by the Roman emperor Hadrian to separate the province of Britannia from the barbarians in Scotland, and shows what a remarkable man this Mercian king must have been. He not only had the power of vision to contemplate and design such a barrier, but he also possessed the organisational and administrative skills necessary to bring this massive project to fruition and eventual completion.
Offchurch (SP3565) near Royal Leamington Spa on the Fosse Way. 'Church of a man called Offa.' Offenham (SP0546) in Hereford & Worcester north-east of Evesham on the River Avon near Ryknild Street. 'Homestead of a man called Offa.' Offham () in Kent. 'Homestead of a man called Offa.' Bishop's Offley and High Offley (SJ7729/7826) near Eccleshall. 'Woodland clearing of a man called Offa.' Both are listed in Domesday within Pirehill Hundred, the first being the property of the Bishop of Chester, the second held by Robert of Stafford. Offton (TM0649) near Ipswich in Suffolk. 'Farmstead of a man called Offa.' Offwell () Devon. Spring or stream of a man called Offa.'
Throughout England from the Iron-Age through to Anglo-Saxon times, many burial mounds or tumuli were erected over the corporeal remains of pagan kings and consorts. There are very few examples in the Midland region, however, the only ones of any note being King's Low and Queen's Low west of Tixall, which probably date to the Anglo-Saxon period. All pagan burial mounds in the vicinity of Cannock Chase are dealt with on the CCNet page on The Tumuli Burials.
"A.D. 679 This year Elwin was slain, by the River Trent, on the spot where Everth and Ethelred fought. ..." |
It is possible that Elwin was buried in the Saxons Lowe marked on OS maps near the Iron-Age hillfort at Bury Bank north-west of Stone, although this tumulus has also been associated with king Wulfhere of the Mercians, the elder brother of the Ethelred mentioned in the above passage. Elwin was evidently numbered among the Mercian nobles in the king's retinue.