ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



Cransley and Finedon, Twywell and Cranford ; but these are only- 

 special cases of what seems to have been the common practice in North- 

 amptonshire, for the vast majority of early Anglo-Saxon settlements were 

 made on the sand in the immediate vicinity of a clay formation, which 

 would provide timber for fuel and forest-pasture for the herds of swine. 



A smaller but equally instructive group occurs in the north-west 

 corner of the county, where the favourite situation for settlements 

 appears to have been on the narrow water-bearing outcrop of marlstone, 

 with plenty of marshy woodland on the adjoining lower lias. The 

 claims of agriculture were also considered in the choice of a home ; and 

 the Northampton sand, though inferior to the marlstone in point of 

 fertility, is a good arable soil, while the neighbouring limestone tracts are 

 comparatively barren, and the Oxford clay to the south very difficult of 

 cultivation. 



Perhaps half a dozen sites remain that are not included in the 

 two groups already noticed ; and of these six, two apparently were 

 occupied in consequence of their proximity to the Nene, which was 

 at that period the principal route to the interior of the county, from the 

 direction of the Ermine Street and the Fens. 



There are no records to help in fixing the period during which 

 these sites were occupied by Teutonic colonists to the exclusion of 

 the Romanized Britons, who, though more thickly settled in the lower 

 Nene valley, have yet left numerous traces in the neighbourhood of the 

 Watling Street. It is generally allowed by historians that in the more 

 secluded parts of the country the political fusion of Briton and Teuton 

 was a tedious process ; and besides incidental remarks in the ancient 

 records, ' the comparative scarcity of villages bearing the English clan 

 names throughout the basins of the Welland, the Nene and the Great 

 Ouse, suggests the probability that Mercia, middle England and the Fen 

 country were not by any means so densely colonized as the coast districts.'* 

 For instance, the territory of the North and South Gyrwa must have been 

 very thinly populated, for it is estimated in the Numcrus Hydarum^ to con- 

 tain only 1,200 hides ; and the legend of St. Guthlac, who was startled by 

 strange noises in his cell near Croyland about the year 700, suggests that 

 ' Welshmen ' were not uncommon in his neighbourhood.^ The results 

 of anthropological research are here in accord with tradition. It is reason- 

 able to suppose, says Dr. Beddoe, that the British or pre-Saxon element 

 would remain between Banbury and Peterborough and between the Lea 

 and the Warwickshire Avon in larger proportion than in most parts 

 of England. He has personally noticed a high index of nigrescence 

 at several points in that area, including a group of villages between 

 Weedon and Northampton ; while a tendency to light hair and eyes is 

 generally very noticeable in districts that are known to have come under 

 Anglian or Saxon control during the pagan period. 



* Grant Allen, Jnglo-Saxon Britiiln, p. 49. 



* Birch, Cartulaiium Saxonicum, vol. i. p. 414 ; M.iitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 506-9. 



* Beddoe, Races of Britain, pp. 53, 54, 254. 



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