ANGLO-SAXON VILLAGE COMMUNITY 3 



to the more mountainous parts in the North and West of 

 Britain. These newcomers were tough fighting farmers, 

 pagan worshippers of Woden and Thor with none of the 

 civilization of the Celts. They hung together in their 

 families and tribes, fighting and ordering their lives in 

 accordance with the ancient customs of their race. 



It will be a help, in endeavouring to realize what 



actually occurred, to picture as definitely as we dare, 



the incidents in the advance of a party 



The creating o f these tribesmen. Let us take for illus- 



of a viUage _ 



community, tration that section of the Jutes who, 



landing in the south of Hampshire, pushed 

 their way up the Meon valley, driving before them the 

 Celts who must have withdrawn to the hills above 

 Petersfield, where to this day are found the scattered 

 hamlets characteristic of Celtic rural life. An advance 

 group of these immigrants, young men with their wives 

 perhaps, might have found themselves in the district 

 which afterwards became the Xllth century manor 

 pictured in the frontispiece. Arriving in this valley, 

 and crossing the stream at the point where the mill 

 stood later, they would see immediately before them 

 the remnants of a village which the Celts had deserted. 

 On the left bordering the river, would be the fertile 

 fields where later the meadows were plotted out, and 

 in front the stretch of country, partly cleared, which 

 in due time became the great arable fields. Here was 

 a place suited for a settlement. Some rough huts 

 would be quickly run up on the old Celtic site, near 

 enough to the river to make it easy to fetch water, 

 but yet far enough away to be above the mists and 

 possible floods ; and then a barricade of wood or wattle, 

 or perhaps a mud and flint wall, would be built round 



