Origins of The Document
The document probably dates from after 914 during the reign of Alfred's son, Edward the Elder, this assumes that it was compiled as part of the preparations for Edward the Elders campaign against the Danes in 917. The list identifies 30 burhs in Wessex, 2 in Mercia and one in Hwicce. The view that the Burghal Hidage is of early 10th century date is based on the inclusion of Buckingham and Oxford, two settlements that were sited in Mercia not Wessex, and according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Buckingham was created as a burh by Edward the Elder in 918. The chronicle also reports that Edward the Elder took possession of London and Oxford in 910; Buckingham being situated between the two would have also been included. It is possible that the Burghal Hideage was created as a blue-print for the way that burhs were connected with hidation, originally worked out in Wessex, and applied to the situation in Mercia at that time. This received view has now been challenged from two directions – from the perspectives of the strategies involved, and a new interpretation of the coinage of King Alfred.
The order of citation of the individual burhs in the document, in a clockwise circuit around Wessex rather than on a shire by shire basis, indicates that at the time of the original composition of the document all the burhs were seen as being part of a single system. The defining characteristic of this system is that these fortified sites would have all been built at one occasion to serve a single strategic end, in that the functions of all the individual components of the system complemented the functions of each of the others. It follows that it cannot have originated, for instance, as a core number to which others were added at a later date. By the early 10th century this system was already long out of date and overtaken by events. It is not likely therefore to have survived as a viable and effective system to be recorded as such in the Burghal Hidage after 914. There would, furthermore, have been no reason to add Buckingham to a system which by 914 was already redundant in the rapidly evolving political situation of the times. There are therefore good grounds for suggesting that the system (and therefore the document which describes it) is considerably earlier in date.
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