212 The Breckland 



ridge, offered easy intercourse with the rich cultural province of Wessex. 

 It was probably during the Bronze Age that Breckland became one of the 

 chief centres of population in Eastern England, but as Iron Age man 

 acquired the power to subdue and exploit the more stiff but richer soils 

 of adjacent regions, the cultural focus of "East AngUa" moved south-west 

 leaving Breckland as a backwater for a thousand years. Not until the late- 

 Saxon period did Breckland acquire a new strategic status, when the 

 deforestation of the claylands of Norfolk and Suffolk again swimg the 

 economic pendulum north-eastward. Though still a poverty-stricken 

 steppe, as the Domesday Book attests,^ it was now the gatehouse of a 

 wealthy East Angha commanding the Icknield Way, stiU the main hne of 

 approach from the civilised south. Although a waste-land it was a frontier 

 zone through which communication was essential. The rise of Thetford* 

 to the zenith of its importance as the eleventh-century capital of East 

 AngUa, with its cathedral and its mint, was due to its location on this 

 highway, at the confluence of the Rivers Litde Ouse and Thet. 



Place-names indicate that most of the present primary settlements of 

 Breckland are of Anghan origiii; there are 8 -ings and -itighams, 20 -hams, 

 13 -tons, and 8 -fords. The importance of the rivers for water supply is 

 demonstrated by the concentration of these nucleated villages in the 

 valleys. Two villages are associated with the Nar, 28 with the Wissey, 16 

 with the Little Ouse, 10 with the Thet, and 9 with the Lark, each including 

 its tributaries. Secondary settlements consisting of heathland farms, with 

 their satellite cottages, and isolated houses for warreners and gamekeepers, 

 only came into existence, in most cases, with the growth of enclosures and 

 tree-planting during the nineteenth century. 



What were the main features of the economy of Breckland prior to the 

 modern enclosures? Recent investigation has shown that in West 

 Wretham,^ and also several other parishes in the heart of the region, 

 something akin to the Scottish infield-outfield system was common, 

 though the border parishes are likely to have conformed to the custom of 

 the normal Norfolk and Suffolk village-community. The essence of the 

 system was a division of the arable land of a village into two unequal parts: 

 a small infield probably cropped continuously, near the village; and a 

 larger outfield comprising five to ten temporary enclosures from the waste 



' See H. C. Darby, "The Domesday Geography of Norfolk and Suffolk", Geog. 

 Jour. Ixxxv, 432 (1935)- 



' It is interesting to note that the Domesday Book numbers the burgesses of 

 Thetford as 720, compared with 665 at Norwich and 70 at Yarmouth. 



3 J. Saltmarsh and H. C. Darby, "The Infield-Outfield System on a Norfolk 

 Manor", Economic History, ui, 30 (1935). 



