I c;6 OLD ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE. 



What remained of Romano-British civilisation was swept 

 aside or sternly repressed. Anglo-Saxon laws, customs, 

 methods, habits of life everywhere prevailed. The new 

 settlements were stamping upon the country side strong 

 traces of their power and influence. In fact, the manorial 

 system had sprung into existence as a working reality. 

 There was the Manor-house, the residence of the leader 

 of the community, with his few dependents, and around 

 it the demesne land, reserved for himself as his own special 

 estate, and there was the village street, not much different 

 from what it is now, if we replace wooden structures by those 

 improvements in building which have come naturally with the 

 march of the centuries, and not far away the land in villeinage, 

 held in various degrees of dependence under the lord. 

 There were some with small holdings, having their strips of 

 ploughland and meadow, and the right of common pasturage, 

 and there were others who corresponded more closely to the 

 ordinary labourer at the present time. At Barrow and Twyford, 

 including Stenson, the system was in working order, in all proba- 

 bility, at an early date. At Arleston and Sinfin the sorry 

 condition of the land may have been, if not an insuperable 

 obstacle, at any rate a serious check upon the progress of the 

 communities which had settled there. They may well have been 

 smaller and of less influence. 



Strong marks of Anglo-Saxon dominion were left upon 

 the soil, and during the same period of settlement 

 religion took root, under the fostering care, we may well 

 believe, of S. Wilfrid, who is the patron saint of Barrow. 

 He was twice in Mercia ; once, when banished from his northern 

 diocese he sought in vain the shelter of the Mercian king; and 

 again during the ten years in which he was Bishop of Lichfield. 

 At West Hallam, at Egginton and at Barrow there are churches 

 dedicated to this saint, and it is not improbable that these 

 were then mission stations or praying crosses, where the folk of 

 these and the adjoining villages gathered round him and heard 

 his stirring message. The neighbouring chapelry of Twyford, 



