History of Warwickshire - Anglo-Saxon Period

Anglo-Saxon Period

Covering the period from the fall of the Roman empire to the Norman invasion of 1066.

After the Romans left Britain in the 5th century, the Warwickshire area was settled by Anglo Saxon tribes becaming a part of the kingdom of Mercia. While its earliest boundaries will never be known, there is general agreement that the territory that was called "the first of the Mercians" in the Tribal Hidage covered much of south Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Northern Warwickshire.

Following the decline of the Mercian kingdom during the early 9th century, large parts of Mercia to the east of Warwickshire were ceded in 878 to Danish (Viking) invaders by King Alfred's Treaty of Wedmore with the Danish leader Guthrum. Watling Street, on the north-eastern edge of Warwickshire, became the boundary between the Danelaw (the kingdom of the Danes) to the east and the much reduced Mercia to the west. There was also a boundary with the kingdom of Wessex to the south.

Owing to its location at the frontier between two kingdoms, what is now Warwickshire needed to establish defences against the threat of Danish invasion. Between, 911 and 918 this task was undertaken by the "Lady of the Mercians"Ethelfleda, daughter of King Alfred, who was responsible for defences against the Danes at Tamworth (see Tamworth Castle) in 914 and the building of the first parts of Warwick Castle in 916. Periodic fighting between Danes and Saxons occurred until the 11th century. The establishment of the burh by Ethelfleda in 914 and Warwick's subsequent status as a shire town must have given some impetus to economic development. The town was, at any rate, sufficiently important to have had one of the two royal mints set up in Warwickshire (the other was at Tamworth). Coins are first known to have been issued in the reign of Athelstan (925-39). In the early 11th century, new internal boundaries within the Mercian kingdom were drawn and Warwickshire came into being as the lands administered from Warwick. The county was initially divided into ten hundreds, their names as given in the Domesday Book, were 'Berricestone', 'Bomelau', 'Coleshelle', 'Fernecumbe', 'Fexhole', 'Honesberie', 'Meretone', 'Patelau', 'Stanlei', and 'Tremelau', they were reduced to four in the 12th century and were named Barlichway, Hemlingford, Kineton or Kington, and Knightlow. The first recorded use of the name Warwickshire being in the year 1001, named after Warwick (meaning "dwellings by the weir"). Warwickshire was invaded in 1016 during the Christmas period by Cnut as part of his ultimately successful invasion against Æthelred the Unready and his son Edmund Ironside, destroying Coventry and massacring the local saint, Osberg, virgin and martyr.