Anglo-Saxon Romsey
The Evidence in the Landscape
Introduction
The small market town of Romsey in Hampshire is less well known than its neighbours. It lies in the Test Valley north of Southampton, with Salisbury to the northwest and Winchester to the northeast. The town is a lovely place to live in. I moved here in 2014 and within days had become a member of the Romsey Local History Society. My arrival was well timed as the society was about to start a study of Anglo-Saxon Romsey and the Lower Test Valley. It was an opportunity to make use of my experience as a field archaeologist, see the Digging page, and my degree in Early Medieval Archaeology (UCL, 1977). A substantial bequest funded a collaboration with the University of Winchester. Several project participants were trained in the use of QGIS. Having an MSc in Computer Science (Swansea University, 1990) and years of experience as a database programmer, I was soon hooked on digital mapping and landscape analysis. Examining early OS, tithe and estate maps in combination with the geology and LiDAR revealed aspects of the landscape that weren’t readily apparent on a paper map. I have used this insight into the landscape in combination with the finds and drawings from excavations and the boundary descriptions in Saxon charters to reassess Anglo-Saxon Romsey. This website presents the results of my research. - Karen Anderson
Read about the Romsey Local History Society Anglo-Saxon Project.
Alex Langlands leads a walk to examine a Saxon charter boundary.
View examples of QGIS maps.
Looking at the Landscape(s) - Physical, Digital and Charter
Romsey Abbey, looking west from the Market Place.
Walking around the town, Romsey residents and visitors are well aware that the town has a long history. The Norman abbey, built in the 1100s, is a very visible presence. It stands on the site of the Saxon abbey, traditionally founded by King Alfred’s son Edward the Elder in 907. The foundations of an earlier stone church are partially exposed beneath the abbey floor. In its day this smaller church would have been the most prominent structure in the landscape, overlooking a settlement of timber buildings.
King Alfred's great grandson King Edgar buried his young son Edmund in Romsey in 971. A charter from King Edgar granting certain privileges to the nuns records that 'Edmund lies in the minster'.
There is more to see of Saxon Romsey than the church foundations. Lying underneath the Norman building, its pre-Conquest date is evident. Most features in the physical landscape are less easy to date. Banks, for example, are very common and noticeable in the countryside - they help to create the chequerboard landscape of farmers’ fields. Many have existed for centuries or even millennia, but dating any individual bank is difficult. In the digital landscape it is possible to view the development of an area over time by comparing maps of different dates. Maps drawn on differing scales and orientations - north isn’t necessarily at the top - can be superimposed. By time travelling through a virtual stack of maps, the more recent features can be dated. Older elements are at least as old as the earliest map.
Using maps for landscape analysis is limited. There are no pre-Conquest maps. Rather than drawing maps, the Anglo-Saxons relied on a verbal description of notable landmarks that served to define the boundary of a property that was the subject of a land grant. A charter’s boundary clause, usually written in Old English, proceeded clockwise from a selected starting point, along the boundary and back to the start. ‘Solving’ a charter boundary involves locating the landmarks on a modern map. In the Romsey charter of c.972 a feature described as the Bishop’s boundary defined part of the eastern boundary of the estate. Sections of the Bishop’s Bank still survive along the parish boundary.
The Bishop’s Bank alongside the Straight Mile and in Hillier Gardens, where an information board explains its history.
Locating the features in the charter landscape can be difficult. The Romsey charter boundary clause begins by heading ‘Up along the street’. Fields named Street Meadow on the 19th century Romsey tithe map help to identify Greatbridge Causeway as the Saxon Street. Unusually, the Street doesn’t form part of the boundary - it helps to define the location of the start, and end, point for the circuit of the boundary. That difficult-to-describe location is where water was diverted from the Test into an artificial waterway - the Fishlake. Both the causeway and the Fishlake were probably constructed in the 960s by King Edgar and Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester.
Greatbridge Causeway carries the road over the floodplain to the Test.
May’s Island lies near the start of the Fishlake. It was named after a family of Romsey millers.
The Fishlake flows from the floodplain of the Test onto a river terrace and is, therefore, unquestionably artificial. The Fishlake is contained within banks made from clay and chalk as it crosses the floodplain. It continues towards Romsey in a cutting through the terrace gravels, dividing into an east and west branch as it approaches the town centre. This Anglo-Saxon addition to the landscape has provided a valuable resource for the town, running water. Each branch of the Fishlake powered a mill into the 20th century, the successors of the Domesday mills. The water flushed waste from the town - the outflow of the west branch was called the Shitlake. The Fishlake channels in the town ran dry when a section of the retaining bank near the Test was damaged in 1874. Fortunately, the Fishlake wasn't the source of the town's drinking water which was drawn from wells.
Abbey Water on the west branch of the Fishlake served as the mill pond for Abbey Mill, shown on the 1867 OS town map.
The east branch of the Fishlake runs past the bus station towards the former location of the Town Mill. The 1867 OS map shows the channel dividing as it enters the mill to power a pair of water wheels. The Municipal Boundary, the boundary between the parishes of Romsey Infra and Romsey Extra, follows the course of the channel. The abbess had special judicial privileges over Romsey infra pontem to the west of the Fishlake, an arrangement dating back to the time of William the Conqueror. Documentary evidence of the boundary proves that the Fishlake was constructed before the Conquest.
Romsey required an artificial water supply because it is located on a dry river terrace, the lowest and most recent of the series of step-like terraces flanking the Test valley. The town was not built on an island as its place-name suggests, -ey from Old English eg meaning ‘island’. Place-names developed from the descriptions people used to describe locations in the landscape, often involving salient features that distinguished a particular place. Romsey seems to have been marked out by its iron smelting industry. Deep deposits of slag, ash and charcoal south of the Market Place have recently been radiocarbon dated to the 7th and 8th centuries. These deposits were cut by a channel on the original course of the west branch of the Fishlake. Lenses of dumped smelting residue within the channel show that the industry continued into the 10th or 11th century. Excavations have encountered evidence of iron smelting over the corner of the terrace sloping south towards the valley of the Tadburn. This industrial landscape might have given the town its name. Hrum is Old English for ‘soot’ and rumig and romig mean ‘sooty’ or ‘blackened’. An area of the terrace would have stood out as a virtual, blackened island.
Blocks of Saxon iron smelting slag have been found in many excavations in Romsey. A charcoal sample from this piece of slag was radiocarbon dated to the 7th/8th century. The iron smelting was probably controlled by a religious community that settled in Romsey in the 7th century, following the conversion of the area to Christianity.
The Saxon iron smelting technology produced large masses of slag that collected in a pit beneath the furnace. This example is from Narrow Lane.
Iron produced in Romsey would have supplied the smiths working in the emporium of Hamwic, mid-Saxon Southampton. Cattle might also have been delivered as meat-on-the-hoof, their bones transformed by the Hamwic craftsmen into combs and other objects. A stock enclosure at Ashfield south of Romsey could be an early feature. From the 9th century the kings of Wessex developed the landscape as a defence against Viking attacks. Romsey lay within the territory of the fortified burh of Winchester, a place of refuge in the event of a Viking threat. Toothill, southeast of Romsey, was the probable location of a beacon, one link in a signalling network. Its access road was referred to in the Nursling charter of 877 as Stemn’s Path, a name connected with military service. A year after the charter was written King Alfred defeated the Vikings at Edington.
Tableau of the 878 Battle of Edington performed as part of the King Alfred Millenary in Winchester. King Alfred won a decisive victory over the Danes in the battle. The nuns of Romsey Abbey were granted land in Edington by King Edgar in 968.
King Alfred's statue in Winchester.
In 1901 Winchester celebrated the 1000th anniversary of King Alfred's death, later determined to have been in 899. Several days of celebration preceded the unveiling of the statue which had been commissioned as a permanent memorial. There are more photos on the King Alfred Millenary page.
King Alfred's descendants were involved in the development of Romsey. According to local tradition, his son Edward the Elder founded a nunnery in Romsey in 907. This connection might account for the decision of Edward's grandson King Edgar and his wife Ælfthryth to bury their firstborn son, Edmund, in Romsey Abbey. The boy, who was only four or five years old when he died in 971, had been Edgar’s intended successor. The Fishlake had probably been constructed by King Edgar and Bishop Æthelwold in the 960s. Perhaps a new church had also been built, suitable for this royal burial. When Edgar died in 975 his eldest son by his first wife became king. The teenage king Edward the Martyr was murdered three years later at Corfe. His stepmother Queen Ælfthryth was suspected by some to have been involved in the crime. Her son then became the king, Ethelred the Unready.
Early 20th century crested china souvenir puzzle jug commemorating the founding of Romsey Abbey by Edward the Elder.
King Edgar in the illuminated charter for Bishop Æthelwold’s reformed New Minster in Winchester.