ANGLO-SAXON

The period in this investigation (AD 410 – AD 1066) spans some 600 years - from the fall of Rome to the Norman invasion - and is recognised as one of most formative periods in English history.

Two claims are made for the history of Wantage during this period:

Bishop Asser recorded that King Alfred was born in a royal residence at Wantage in AD 849. Although the validity of this reference has recently been doubted by Alfred Smyth who argues that Alfred’s biography is a later forgery, the Domesday Survey tells us that on the eve of the Norman Conquest in 1066 Wantage lay in royal hands.
A mother church, known as a minster, existed here by the tenth century. The will of a rich lady named Wynflaed, made in about AD 950, contains small bequests to the minsters of Wantage, Shrivenham, Childrey and Coleshill.

We set out to discover:

How are these claims supported by evidence from archaeology and other sources?
What impact did royal and minster status at Wantage have on the surrounding landscape?

More detailed questions can be framed:

If a royal vill was established at Wantage, did it form the centre of a much larger agricultural estate with outlying specialist farms and small farming settlements?

In the later Anglo-Saxon period, grants of land or rights (the written records are known as charters) show how over time large estates became fragmented through sub-division. Gradually churches were established on the new smaller estates. How did these twin developments influence the formation of later parishes?

To find our answers we will look at the results of recent archaeological investigation; air photographs; place-name evidence; parish topography; and late Anglo-Saxon land grants, particularly the boundary surveys of neighbouring parishes where they have survived.