A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



an unsafe method to determine the conquering tribe by the character of 

 relics found in the graves. 



To apply this method to a particular case, reasons will presently 

 be given for supposing that West-Saxon influence ceased for some time 

 to be felt in the south-west of the county after the middle of the seventh 

 century ; and the interval of seventy or eighty years does not perhaps 

 allow sufficient time for the recognition of Grimsbury as a frontier town, 

 as well as the subsequent invasion and settlement of a large tract of British 

 territory. On the other hand if, as is likely, the Saxons advanced up the 

 Thames and struck off along the tributary streams, the occupation of the 

 site of Banbury would no doubt have occurred some years before the battle 

 of Bedford ; and Grimsbury may on this supposition have ceased to mark 

 the frontier at that very date. This alternative seems on the whole more 

 probable than that the stronghold separated the Saxon from the Anglian, 

 or the Dane from either, for in both of these cases the dividing line was 

 further to the east. 



From such a centre as Bicester progress along the Roman road 

 running north-east would have been an easy matter, as that station stood 

 on the northern edge of the Oxford clay. Beyond this however the 

 poverty of a soil on which to this day large tracts of woodland have been 

 allowed to remain may well account for the rarity of Saxon remains 

 in the county between Towcester, Brackley, Buckingham and Stony 

 Stratford. Access to more productive localities was however afforded 

 by the Tove valley and two ancient British trackways, Banbury Lane 

 leading to Hunsbury camp, and the Portway, that ran from Kirtlington 

 along the line of Abes Ditch and due north by Rainsborough camp 

 and Chipping Warden to the neighbourhood of Daventry. And it is 

 no doubt in connection with these tracks that the settlements originated 

 of which the remains can now be traced in the Anglo-Saxon ceme- 

 teries of Marston St. Lawrence, Badby, Newnham and Norton. 



A comparison of the archsological and geological maps of the 

 county throws a good deal of light on the colonising methods of our 

 Teutonic ancestors, at least in Northamptonshire. 



Among the numerous sites in the county where settlements existed 

 in Anglo-Saxon times, there is a remarkable uniformity as regards 

 physical conditions. About two-thirds of the total number of such sites 

 are at the junction of the Northampton sand with the upper lias clay 

 which is exposed by the action of running water in the valleys south 

 of the ' Nene fault.' As pointed out in the chapter on the geology 

 of the county, the desirability of a dry site for a dwelling led to the 

 selection of spots on porous soil in the neighbourhood of springs ; 

 and where water could be got by means of shallow wells, groups 

 of dwellings would spring up to develop later into villages and towns. 

 Successive ridges of Northampton sand, from which an abundance of 

 good water is procurable, were thus early occupied along the Nene and 

 Ise, and in many cases the Anglo-Saxon sites adjoin the headwaters 

 of the tributary streams. Such for instance are Brixworth and Pitsford, 



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