Burghal Hidage
Encyclopedia
The Burghal Hidage is an Anglo-Saxon
document providing a list of the fortified burhs
in Wessex
and elsewhere in southern England. It offers an unusually detailed picture of the network of burhs that Alfred the Great
designed to defend his kingdom from the predations of Viking
invaders.
s were fortified towns or forts in Anglo-Saxon England, built as a defence against the Vikings, as well as being strategically offensive against positions held by the Vikings. The burhs of Wessex, listed in the Burghal Hidage, formed part of a system built by King Alfred, arguably in the years 878-9. Other burhs were built by Alfred's son Edward the Elder
in his campaigns against the Vikings who were in control of much of Mercia
as well as East Anglia. Alfred's daughter Æthelflæd, and her husband Æthelred, also built burhs in western Mercia. These became administrative centres which were related to the shiring of Mercia in the early 10th century.
Burhs had official status recognised by grants such as the right to mint coinage. In Wessex, these fortified communities were geographically distributed so that, in the period when the Burghal Hidage was compiled, everyone in Wessex lived within a day's march of a place of refuge.
Burhs were supported by the labour of the inhabitants of the burghal district, which was assessed by hides
. In regions of medieval England outside the Danelaw
, the hide was a unit of land defined according to its agricultural yield and taxable potential rather than its area. The areas of hides ranged from 15 to 30 modern acres
(6 to 12 hectares
). One hide was assumed to support one household. In wartime, five hides were expected to provide one fully armed soldier, and one man from every hide was to provide garrison duty for the burhs and to help in their initial construction and upkeep. The continued maintenance of the burhs, as well as ongoing garrison duty, was also probably supplied by those inhabitants of the new burhs which were planned by the king as new towns. In this way the economic and military functions of the larger burhs were closely interlinked.
, which is sited not in Wessex but in eastern Mercia, and is first mentioned as being created as a burh by Edward the Elder in 914 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
). Furthermore, Oxford
, also in the document, is similarly in Mercia, and is not mentioned until 910 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). One explanation offered for its function is that it was created as a blue-print for the way that burhs were connected with hidation, originally worked out in Wessex, and applied to the situation in Mercia at that time. This received view has now been challenged from two directions – from the perspectives of the strategies involved , and a new interpretation of the coinage of King Alfred .
The order of citation of the individual burhs in the document, in a clockwise circuit around Wessex rather than on a shire by shire basis, indicates that at the time of the original composition of the document all the burhs were seen as being part of a single system. The defining characteristic of this system is that these fortified sites would have all been built at one occasion to serve a single strategic end, in that the functions of all the individual components of the system complemented the functions of each of the others. It follows that it cannot have originated, for instance, as a core number to which others were added at a later date. By the early 10th century this system was already long out of date and overtaken by events. It is not likely therefore to have survived as a viable and effective system to be recorded as such in the Burghal Hidage after 914. There would, furthermore, have been no reason to add Buckingham to a system which by 914 was already redundant in the rapidly evolving political situation of the times. There are therefore good grounds for suggesting that the system (and therefore the document which describes it) is considerably earlier in date.
installed Ceolwulf (II)
as king of Mercia to replace Burgred
. The most probable context on strategic grounds is in the short period between 877 and 879, when Mercia was partitioned between Ceolwulf and Guthrum
. The creation of this system by King Alfred can therefore best be seen as both an in-depth defence of Wessex against possible invasion of Viking forces (such as indeed happened in the period 875-early 878), and as a strategic offensive against the Vikings who controlled Mercia and London at that time.
Work on the minting patterns of the coinage of the period has shown that King Alfred was in control of London and the surrounding area until about 877, exactly the time when the Vikings are recorded as partitioning Mercia and taking control of its eastern extent. Thereafter the coins minted in London are only in the name of the Mercian king Ceolwulf. After his decisive defeat of the Vikings at the Battle of Ethandun in early 878, Alfred was once again able to take the offensive. His victory must have earned him wide acclaim. It is this juncture which seems the most appropriate time for the start of the planning and construction of the system of burhs recorded in the Burghal Hidage. Throughout 878 Guthrum’s Vikings were in control of Mercia and, arguably, London, with his base in Cirencester
. The creation of burhs at Oxford and Buckingham at this time fits in with the likelihood that Alfred was able to regain control of this area which he had exercised before being deprived of it as a result of the Viking partition of 877, and their siting demonstrates that he was able to initiate a strategic offensive against the Vikings in Eastern Mercia and London. Alfred’s standing enabled him to impose a level of conscription on the population of his kingdom to construct the burhs, to act as garrisons behind their defences, and to serve in his new army, at a level which was probably not attained again until the Second World War.
The retreat of Guthrum and his band to East Anglia in late 879 and the similar retreat of the Viking army stationed at Fulham
, west of London, back to the Continent at the same time (both events recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), can be seen as a tactical response to the effectiveness of the strategic offensive posed by the construction of the Burghal system. The ratification of a mutually agreed boundary to the east of London, in Alfred and Guthrum’s Treaty, between Guthrum’s new Viking kingdom of East Anglia and Alfred’s newly won territory, can best be ascribed to this time. These developments gave Alfred control of London and its surrounding territory, which included a good length of the strategically important Watling Street
as it approached London. This interpretation is supported by the issue at this time of the special celebratory London Monogram coinage from the London mint, now under the control of Alfred, and by the issue at the same time of coins from Oxford and Gloucester
in southern Mercia.
The fact that the Burghal Hidage does not include London, only taken in late 879; that many of the burhs recorded in the document were of a temporary nature and were only replaced by more permanent fortified sites later on; and that its organisation reflects a strategic offensive against the Viking presence in Mercia and London, are factors which argue strongly that the Burghal Hidage is a prescriptive list describing a system which was in process of being planned and implemented before late 879. It is therefore likely to have originated in a context in which the logistics of the system and the means for its implementation and support were being worked out in practice on the ground. The fact that the construction of a burh at Buckingham by Alfred can be logically placed within this strategic scheme at this period (878-9), removes the necessity of having to place the creation of the original version of the Burghal Hidage after the first documentary mention of Buckingham in 914. Its composition can therefore be most appropriately placed in a West Saxon context, rather than one which relates to the formation of burhs and shires in Mercia in the early 10th century – to which situation it has no relevance.
In Wessex a number of the burhs which were part of the system recorded in the Burghal Hidage, and which were merely fortresses rather than fortified towns, were in many cases replaced at a later date by larger fortresses which were fortified towns. The received view of the date of this process is that this took place in the 920s or 930s during the reign of King Athelstan
. More recently, arguments have been given which places these changes in the reign of Alfred, possibly in the 890s in response to the new Viking invasions. Examples of this process can be seen in the replacement of Pilton
by Barnstaple
, and Halwell by Totnes
and Kingsbridge
in Devon.
The forensic and palaeographic analysis by Hill (The Burghal Hidage, the establishment of a text in Medieval archaeology vol XIII 1969) of the seven variant manuscripts demonstrates that there were probably two slightly differing originals from which they ultimately derive; ‘A’ a transcript by the Tudor antiquarian Nowell, in 1562 (copied from an original, ‘Cotton Otto’ of ca1025, lost 150 years later); and ‘B’ the older original manuscripts (‘Hill B2 - B7’ copied between ca1210 and ca1330) which can be paired into three groups sharing similarities, there are several discrepancies between them all. (there is another antiquarian copy, Gale’s of 1691, which seems to mix, match and mistranscribe elements of Hill ‘B3’ and ‘A’.) Most notably, despite the variants of ‘missing’ burh all of the lists keep to the same order in reciting the burh. To summarise his argument:
All of the ‘B’ lists miss Burpham, Wareham and Bridport; one pair of the ‘B’ lists also miss Hastings and Lewes; another pair of the ‘B’ lists miss Chichester and Portchester;
Whereas ‘A’ misses Barnstaple and Shaftesbury; however, the reference to Barnstaple in the ‘B’ lists is actually a gloss “Barnstaple that is Pilton”, i.e. they are same place, so the copyist of the ‘A/Otto’ list simply dropped the gloss.
I suggest that the archetype of ‘B’ group predates the ‘A’ group archetype because of this and would also propose that the same ‘A’ copyist misunderstood the original list’s reference to Shaftesbury, in the document he copied (this gives its hidage assessment as following that of Chisbury as “Chisbury is 700; and Shaftesbury likewise.” as in the ‘B’ archetype, i.e. the original meant the latter burh had 700 hides assigned, but the copyist of ‘A’ thought it meant that Chisbury was doing duty for Shaftesbury so dropped it, there is no reason for the scribe to have known where either town was) this has an implication for Hill’s discussion of the total hidage figure referred to in the ‘B’ lists.
Although, therefore, none of the texts are original to the creation of the defensive system described they are sufficiently similar to show that ultimately they do derive from one source. Hill shows how all of the recensions can be used to correct each other or at least help us understand how errors, especially in the hidage numbers, were mistranscribed in the copying process. Hill argues that these errors are not conflicts of facts or derive from differing lists, but simply errors in copying from a common source; it is possible to see that this was because lines of the text were being missed. However, I would add that, as noted above, as the ‘B’ recensions do not list Burpham, Wareham and Bridport, it is likely that their common archetype must have missed them also. Yet it too must have contained the ‘grand total’ sentence at the end which is flatly contradicted by the hidages enumerated.
Taking these ‘copying’ errors into account there is one main textual difference between the ‘A’ and ‘B’ variants, the final statements at the close of the lists:-
The Burghal HidageThe earliest manuscript of the BH. The entry for ‘Southwark - 1800 Hides’ is highlighted at fourth row from the bottom. ‘A’ ends with a formulaic method of how by knowing the length of walls one can calculate how many hides are required to be assigned to a burh:-“For the maintenance and defence of an acre’s breadth of wall sixteen hides are required. If every hide is represented by one man, then every pole of wall can be manned by four men. Then for the maintenance of twenty poles of wall eighty hides are required ...[there follows a series of like calculations and multiples and ends with ...] If the circuit is greater, the additional amount can easily be deduced from this account, for 160 men are always required for 1 furlong, then every pole of wall is manned by 4 men”.Now Hill argues that this is back to front, the hidage assessment for a burh should provide a wall-length. He advances his argument to propose that the intention of the BH document is to provide a method of doing so not for Wessex but for the newly created burh in the reconquered ‘shires’ of Mercia. Perhaps this is what that formula means attached to ‘A’.Yet if we regard the archetype of ‘B’ as earlier then the end text of this says as follows:-“That is all 27 and 70 which belong to it; and 30 to the West Saxons.And to Worcester 1200 hides. To Warwick four and 2400 hides”
One of the ‘B’ variants (Hill ‘6’) has a copyist’s gloss which proposes a meaning of ‘27,000 and 70 hides’ to make sense of the “27 and 70” reference: the “belong to it” refers to the entire list enumerated, a grand total. However, none of the ‘B’ lists can give us that total as they miss out between three and five burh. Therefore the archetype of ‘B’ must have included these, as did that of ‘A’. However, if we, as Hill, do some recalculating of the mistranscriptions and supply the missing burh figures from ‘A’ then the ‘restored’ total would be 28,671. Hill then turns to the second part of the final sentence “and 30 to the West Saxons”, this too is glossed as ‘30,000’ by the copyist ‘6’ so that it seems to refer to hides; but Hill proposes that it refers to the 30 burh; there are in fact 31 of these in the combined lists, but he then proposes that Buckingham (at 1600 hides) is in fact Mercian, i.e. not of “the West Saxons”, so is not included in the grand total (adjusted total 27,071) seemingly spot on for the final ‘B’ sentence/statement.
[Note: the sentence “And to Worcester 1200 hides. To Warwick four and 2400 hides” is not part of the foregoing lists and is not included in the ‘grand total’, however it does show that the copyist was changing the numbers from spelled to numerals and then confused himself, i.e. the archetype probably read “To Warwick four hundred and twenty hundred hides”.]
Therefore ‘A’ and ‘B’ were copied from the same archetype/s as they agree on the grand total (less 1600 for Buckingham), yet differ only in their final sentence/statements as to what the figures demonstrate, a formula for manpower or a total of hidage. This is important because it evidentially contradicts any proposal that the recensions had burh added or subtracted to reflect ‘new’ or ‘abandoned’ burh.
.
The ‘B’ archetype is more likely to be closer to the ultimate source which would be an ‘exchequer/ treasury’ document. ‘A’/ Cotton-Otto would have been prepared from it to perform the function Hill proposes, the burh/ shiring of the reconquered areas. But, surely the final sentence/statement of ‘B’ “And to Worcester 1200 hides. To Warwick four and 2400 hides” which Hill proposes as being about the proposed organisation of the new Mercian ‘shires’ should actually, if it meant such, would actually be more congruent if appended to the formulae following ‘A’
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
document providing a list of the fortified burhs
Burh
A Burh is an Old English name for a fortified town or other defended site, sometimes centred upon a hill fort though always intended as a place of permanent settlement, its origin was in military defence; "it represented only a stage, though a vitally important one, in the evolution of the...
in Wessex
Wessex
The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...
and elsewhere in southern England. It offers an unusually detailed picture of the network of burhs that Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...
designed to defend his kingdom from the predations of Viking
Viking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
invaders.
Burhs and hides
BurhBurh
A Burh is an Old English name for a fortified town or other defended site, sometimes centred upon a hill fort though always intended as a place of permanent settlement, its origin was in military defence; "it represented only a stage, though a vitally important one, in the evolution of the...
s were fortified towns or forts in Anglo-Saxon England, built as a defence against the Vikings, as well as being strategically offensive against positions held by the Vikings. The burhs of Wessex, listed in the Burghal Hidage, formed part of a system built by King Alfred, arguably in the years 878-9. Other burhs were built by Alfred's son Edward the Elder
Edward the Elder
Edward the Elder was an English king. He became king in 899 upon the death of his father, Alfred the Great. His court was at Winchester, previously the capital of Wessex...
in his campaigns against the Vikings who were in control of much of Mercia
Mercia
Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...
as well as East Anglia. Alfred's daughter Æthelflæd, and her husband Æthelred, also built burhs in western Mercia. These became administrative centres which were related to the shiring of Mercia in the early 10th century.
Burhs had official status recognised by grants such as the right to mint coinage. In Wessex, these fortified communities were geographically distributed so that, in the period when the Burghal Hidage was compiled, everyone in Wessex lived within a day's march of a place of refuge.
Burhs were supported by the labour of the inhabitants of the burghal district, which was assessed by hides
Hide (unit)
The hide was originally an amount of land sufficient to support a household, but later in Anglo-Saxon England became a unit used in assessing land for liability to "geld", or land tax. The geld would be collected at a stated rate per hide...
. In regions of medieval England outside the Danelaw
Danelaw
The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the "Danes" held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. It is contrasted with "West Saxon law" and "Mercian law". The term has been extended by modern historians to...
, the hide was a unit of land defined according to its agricultural yield and taxable potential rather than its area. The areas of hides ranged from 15 to 30 modern acres
Acre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
(6 to 12 hectares
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
). One hide was assumed to support one household. In wartime, five hides were expected to provide one fully armed soldier, and one man from every hide was to provide garrison duty for the burhs and to help in their initial construction and upkeep. The continued maintenance of the burhs, as well as ongoing garrison duty, was also probably supplied by those inhabitants of the new burhs which were planned by the king as new towns. In this way the economic and military functions of the larger burhs were closely interlinked.
Origins of the document
The current received view is that the existing document is dated to the reign of Alfred's son, Edward the Elder. The list identifies 33 burhs, most founded during Alfred's reign. The view that the Burghal Hidage is of early 10th century date is based on the inclusion of BuckinghamBuckingham
Buckingham is a town situated in north Buckinghamshire, England, close to the borders of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. The town has a population of 11,572 ,...
, which is sited not in Wessex but in eastern Mercia, and is first mentioned as being created as a burh by Edward the Elder in 914 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...
). Furthermore, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, also in the document, is similarly in Mercia, and is not mentioned until 910 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). One explanation offered for its function is that it was created as a blue-print for the way that burhs were connected with hidation, originally worked out in Wessex, and applied to the situation in Mercia at that time. This received view has now been challenged from two directions – from the perspectives of the strategies involved , and a new interpretation of the coinage of King Alfred .
The order of citation of the individual burhs in the document, in a clockwise circuit around Wessex rather than on a shire by shire basis, indicates that at the time of the original composition of the document all the burhs were seen as being part of a single system. The defining characteristic of this system is that these fortified sites would have all been built at one occasion to serve a single strategic end, in that the functions of all the individual components of the system complemented the functions of each of the others. It follows that it cannot have originated, for instance, as a core number to which others were added at a later date. By the early 10th century this system was already long out of date and overtaken by events. It is not likely therefore to have survived as a viable and effective system to be recorded as such in the Burghal Hidage after 914. There would, furthermore, have been no reason to add Buckingham to a system which by 914 was already redundant in the rapidly evolving political situation of the times. There are therefore good grounds for suggesting that the system (and therefore the document which describes it) is considerably earlier in date.
Political and military context
It has long been recognised that the system of burhs recorded in the Burghal Hidage was the creation of King Alfred, the received view being that they were in place by the time of the second Viking invasions in the 890s (based on the evidence in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of the existence of garrisons in many of them by this time), and that most of them were constructed in the 880s. However, the fact that nearly half the number of hides in the system were allocated to burhs on the northern border of Wessex with Mercia suggests a context for the creation of this system in the period when Mercia was occupied and controlled by the Vikings. This was the situation in the period from 874, when the Vikings at ReptonRepton
Repton is a village and civil parish on the edge of the River Trent floodplain in South Derbyshire, about north of Swadlincote. Repton is close to the county boundary with neighbouring Staffordshire and about northeast of Burton upon Trent.-History:...
installed Ceolwulf (II)
Ceolwulf II of Mercia
Ceolwulf II was the last king of the Mercians. He succeeded Burgred of Mercia who was deposed in 874.-Dynastic background:...
as king of Mercia to replace Burgred
Burgred of Mercia
Burgred or Burhred or Burghred was the king of Mercia .-Rule:Burgred succeeded to the throne in 852, and in 852 or 853 called upon Ethelwulf of Wessex to aid him in subduing northern Wales. The request was granted and the campaign proved successful, the alliance being sealed by the marriage of...
. The most probable context on strategic grounds is in the short period between 877 and 879, when Mercia was partitioned between Ceolwulf and Guthrum
Guthrum
The name Guthrum corresponds to Norwegian Guttom and to Danish Gorm.The name Guthrum may refer to these kings:* Guthrum, who fought against Alfred the Great* Gorm the Old of Denmark and Norway* Guthrum II, a king of doubtful historicity...
. The creation of this system by King Alfred can therefore best be seen as both an in-depth defence of Wessex against possible invasion of Viking forces (such as indeed happened in the period 875-early 878), and as a strategic offensive against the Vikings who controlled Mercia and London at that time.
Work on the minting patterns of the coinage of the period has shown that King Alfred was in control of London and the surrounding area until about 877, exactly the time when the Vikings are recorded as partitioning Mercia and taking control of its eastern extent. Thereafter the coins minted in London are only in the name of the Mercian king Ceolwulf. After his decisive defeat of the Vikings at the Battle of Ethandun in early 878, Alfred was once again able to take the offensive. His victory must have earned him wide acclaim. It is this juncture which seems the most appropriate time for the start of the planning and construction of the system of burhs recorded in the Burghal Hidage. Throughout 878 Guthrum’s Vikings were in control of Mercia and, arguably, London, with his base in Cirencester
Cirencester
Cirencester is a market town in east Gloucestershire, England, 93 miles west northwest of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswold District. It is the home of the Royal Agricultural College, the oldest agricultural...
. The creation of burhs at Oxford and Buckingham at this time fits in with the likelihood that Alfred was able to regain control of this area which he had exercised before being deprived of it as a result of the Viking partition of 877, and their siting demonstrates that he was able to initiate a strategic offensive against the Vikings in Eastern Mercia and London. Alfred’s standing enabled him to impose a level of conscription on the population of his kingdom to construct the burhs, to act as garrisons behind their defences, and to serve in his new army, at a level which was probably not attained again until the Second World War.
The retreat of Guthrum and his band to East Anglia in late 879 and the similar retreat of the Viking army stationed at Fulham
Fulham
Fulham is an area of southwest London in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, SW6 located south west of Charing Cross. It lies on the left bank of the Thames, between Putney and Chelsea. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...
, west of London, back to the Continent at the same time (both events recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), can be seen as a tactical response to the effectiveness of the strategic offensive posed by the construction of the Burghal system. The ratification of a mutually agreed boundary to the east of London, in Alfred and Guthrum’s Treaty, between Guthrum’s new Viking kingdom of East Anglia and Alfred’s newly won territory, can best be ascribed to this time. These developments gave Alfred control of London and its surrounding territory, which included a good length of the strategically important Watling Street
Watling Street
Watling Street is the name given to an ancient trackway in England and Wales that was first used by the Britons mainly between the modern cities of Canterbury and St Albans. The Romans later paved the route, part of which is identified on the Antonine Itinerary as Iter III: "Item a Londinio ad...
as it approached London. This interpretation is supported by the issue at this time of the special celebratory London Monogram coinage from the London mint, now under the control of Alfred, and by the issue at the same time of coins from Oxford and Gloucester
Gloucester
Gloucester is a city, district and county town of Gloucestershire in the South West region of England. Gloucester lies close to the Welsh border, and on the River Severn, approximately north-east of Bristol, and south-southwest of Birmingham....
in southern Mercia.
The fact that the Burghal Hidage does not include London, only taken in late 879; that many of the burhs recorded in the document were of a temporary nature and were only replaced by more permanent fortified sites later on; and that its organisation reflects a strategic offensive against the Viking presence in Mercia and London, are factors which argue strongly that the Burghal Hidage is a prescriptive list describing a system which was in process of being planned and implemented before late 879. It is therefore likely to have originated in a context in which the logistics of the system and the means for its implementation and support were being worked out in practice on the ground. The fact that the construction of a burh at Buckingham by Alfred can be logically placed within this strategic scheme at this period (878-9), removes the necessity of having to place the creation of the original version of the Burghal Hidage after the first documentary mention of Buckingham in 914. Its composition can therefore be most appropriately placed in a West Saxon context, rather than one which relates to the formation of burhs and shires in Mercia in the early 10th century – to which situation it has no relevance.
In Wessex a number of the burhs which were part of the system recorded in the Burghal Hidage, and which were merely fortresses rather than fortified towns, were in many cases replaced at a later date by larger fortresses which were fortified towns. The received view of the date of this process is that this took place in the 920s or 930s during the reign of King Athelstan
Athelstan of England
Athelstan , called the Glorious, was the King of England from 924 or 925 to 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder, grandson of Alfred the Great and nephew of Æthelflæd of Mercia...
. More recently, arguments have been given which places these changes in the reign of Alfred, possibly in the 890s in response to the new Viking invasions. Examples of this process can be seen in the replacement of Pilton
Pilton, Devon
Pilton is a suburb of Barnstaple. It is located about half a mile north on the outskirts of Barnstaple in Devon, England. It is home to about 2000 residents, and has its own primary and secondary school...
by Barnstaple
Barnstaple
Barnstaple is a town and civil parish in the local government district of North Devon in the county of Devon, England, UK. It lies west southwest of Bristol, north of Plymouth and northwest of the county town of Exeter. The old spelling Barnstable is now obsolete.It is the main town of the...
, and Halwell by Totnes
Totnes
Totnes is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
and Kingsbridge
Kingsbridge
Kingsbridge is a market town and popular tourist hub in the South Hams district of Devon, England, with a population of about 5,800. It is situated at the northern end of the Kingsbridge Estuary, which is a textbook example of a ria and extends to the sea six miles south of the town.-History:The...
in Devon.
List of burhs
This list shows the 33 burhs (with hidages) included in either or both of the 'A' and the 'B' groups of manuscripts as discussed by David Hill, in the order that they appear in all of the documents. Burhs that were probably added to the document group 'B' after Alfred's time are shown in bold.| Eorpeburnan | 324 |
| Hastings Hastings Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900.... | 500 |
| Lewes Lewes Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town... | 1300 |
| Burpham Burpham Burpham is a village and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. The village is on an arm of the River Arun slightly less than northeast of Arundel.The civil parish has an area of... | 720 |
| Chichester Chichester Chichester is a cathedral city in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, South-East England. It has a long history as a settlement; its Roman past and its subsequent importance in Anglo-Saxon times are only its beginnings... | 1500 |
| Portchester Portchester Portchester is a locality and suburb 10km northwest of Portsmouth, England. It is part of the borough of Fareham in Hampshire. Once a small village, Portchester is now a busy part of the expanding conurbation between Portsmouth and Southampton, on the A27 main thoroughfare... | 500 |
| Southampton Southampton Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest... | 150 |
| Winchester Winchester Winchester is a historic cathedral city and former capital city of England. It is the county town of Hampshire, in South East England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs, along the course of... | 2400 |
| Wilton Wilton - England :*Wilton, Cumbria, a place in the county of Cumbria*Wilton, Herefordshire, a village in south Herefordshire*Wilton, North Yorkshire, a place in the county of North Yorkshire*Wilton, Redcar and Cleveland, a place in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland... | 1400 |
| Chisbury Chisbury Chisbury is a hamlet and prehistoric hill fort in the civil parish of Little Bedwyn in Wiltshire, England. Chisbury is about west of Hungerford and about south-east of Marlborough.-History:... | 700 |
| Shaftesbury Shaftesbury Shaftesbury is a town in Dorset, England, situated on the A30 road near the Wiltshire border 20 miles west of Salisbury. The town is built 718 feet above sea level on the side of a chalk and greensand hill, which is part of Cranborne Chase, the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset... | 700 |
| Twynam (now called Christchurch Christchurch Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of... , Dorset) | 470 |
| Wareham Wareham, Dorset Wareham is an historic market town and, under the name Wareham Town, a civil parish, in the English county of Dorset. The town is situated on the River Frome eight miles southwest of Poole.-Situation and geography:... | 1600 |
| Bridport Bridport Bridport is a market town in Dorset, England. Located near the coast at the western end of Chesil Beach at the confluence of the River Brit and its Asker and Simene tributaries, it originally thrived as a fishing port and rope-making centre... | 760 |
| Exeter Exeter Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the... | 734 |
| Halwell | 300 |
| Lydford Lydford Lydford, sometimes spelled Lidford, is a village, once an important town, in Devon situated north of Tavistock on the western fringe of Dartmoor in the West Devon district.-Description:The village has a population of 458.... | 140 |
| Pilton Pilton, Devon Pilton is a suburb of Barnstaple. It is located about half a mile north on the outskirts of Barnstaple in Devon, England. It is home to about 2000 residents, and has its own primary and secondary school... | 360 |
| Watchet Watchet Watchet is a harbour town and civil parish in the English county of Somerset, with an approximate population of 4,400. It is situated west of Bridgwater, north-west of Taunton, and east of Minehead. The parish includes the hamlet of Beggearn Huish... | 513 |
| Axbridge Axbridge Axbridge is a town in Somerset, England, situated in the Sedgemoor district on the River Axe, near the southern edge of the Mendip Hills. The town population according to the 2001 census was 2,024.-History:... | 400 |
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| Langport Langport Langport is a small town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated west of Somerton in the South Somerset district. The town has a population of 1,067. The parish includes the hamlets of Bowdens and Combe... | 600 |
| Bath | 1000 |
| Malmesbury | 1200 |
| Cricklade Cricklade Cricklade is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in north Wiltshire in England, midway between Swindon and Cirencester.On 25 September 2011 Cricklade was awarded The Royal Horticultural Society's 'Champion of Champions' award in the Britain in Bloom competition.Cricklade is twinned with... | 1500 |
| Oxford Oxford The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through... | 1400 |
| Wallingford | 2400 |
| Buckingham Buckingham Buckingham is a town situated in north Buckinghamshire, England, close to the borders of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. The town has a population of 11,572 ,... | 1600 |
| Sashes Sashes Island Sashes Island is an island in the River Thames in England at Cookham Lock near Cookham, Berkshire. It is now open farmland, but has Roman and Anglo-Saxon connections.... | 1000 |
| Eashing Eashing Eashing is a small village in Surrey a couple of miles outside Godalming and was once part of the Godalming but is now administered by Guildford Borough Council. The village is divided into Upper and Lower Eashing. During the reign of King Alfred the Great a burgh was constructed at Upper Eashing... | 600 |
| Southwark Southwark Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north... | 1800 |
| Worcester Worcester The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the... | 1200 |
| Warwick Warwick Warwick is the county town of Warwickshire, England. The town lies upon the River Avon, south of Coventry and just west of Leamington Spa and Whitnash with which it is conjoined. As of the 2001 United Kingdom census, it had a population of 23,350... | 2400 |
The forensic and palaeographic analysis by Hill (The Burghal Hidage, the establishment of a text in Medieval archaeology vol XIII 1969) of the seven variant manuscripts demonstrates that there were probably two slightly differing originals from which they ultimately derive; ‘A’ a transcript by the Tudor antiquarian Nowell, in 1562 (copied from an original, ‘Cotton Otto’ of ca1025, lost 150 years later); and ‘B’ the older original manuscripts (‘Hill B2 - B7’ copied between ca1210 and ca1330) which can be paired into three groups sharing similarities, there are several discrepancies between them all. (there is another antiquarian copy, Gale’s of 1691, which seems to mix, match and mistranscribe elements of Hill ‘B3’ and ‘A’.) Most notably, despite the variants of ‘missing’ burh all of the lists keep to the same order in reciting the burh. To summarise his argument:
All of the ‘B’ lists miss Burpham, Wareham and Bridport; one pair of the ‘B’ lists also miss Hastings and Lewes; another pair of the ‘B’ lists miss Chichester and Portchester;
Whereas ‘A’ misses Barnstaple and Shaftesbury; however, the reference to Barnstaple in the ‘B’ lists is actually a gloss “Barnstaple that is Pilton”, i.e. they are same place, so the copyist of the ‘A/Otto’ list simply dropped the gloss.
I suggest that the archetype of ‘B’ group predates the ‘A’ group archetype because of this and would also propose that the same ‘A’ copyist misunderstood the original list’s reference to Shaftesbury, in the document he copied (this gives its hidage assessment as following that of Chisbury as “Chisbury is 700; and Shaftesbury likewise.” as in the ‘B’ archetype, i.e. the original meant the latter burh had 700 hides assigned, but the copyist of ‘A’ thought it meant that Chisbury was doing duty for Shaftesbury so dropped it, there is no reason for the scribe to have known where either town was) this has an implication for Hill’s discussion of the total hidage figure referred to in the ‘B’ lists.
Although, therefore, none of the texts are original to the creation of the defensive system described they are sufficiently similar to show that ultimately they do derive from one source. Hill shows how all of the recensions can be used to correct each other or at least help us understand how errors, especially in the hidage numbers, were mistranscribed in the copying process. Hill argues that these errors are not conflicts of facts or derive from differing lists, but simply errors in copying from a common source; it is possible to see that this was because lines of the text were being missed. However, I would add that, as noted above, as the ‘B’ recensions do not list Burpham, Wareham and Bridport, it is likely that their common archetype must have missed them also. Yet it too must have contained the ‘grand total’ sentence at the end which is flatly contradicted by the hidages enumerated.
Taking these ‘copying’ errors into account there is one main textual difference between the ‘A’ and ‘B’ variants, the final statements at the close of the lists:-
The Burghal HidageThe earliest manuscript of the BH. The entry for ‘Southwark - 1800 Hides’ is highlighted at fourth row from the bottom. ‘A’ ends with a formulaic method of how by knowing the length of walls one can calculate how many hides are required to be assigned to a burh:-“For the maintenance and defence of an acre’s breadth of wall sixteen hides are required. If every hide is represented by one man, then every pole of wall can be manned by four men. Then for the maintenance of twenty poles of wall eighty hides are required ...[there follows a series of like calculations and multiples and ends with ...] If the circuit is greater, the additional amount can easily be deduced from this account, for 160 men are always required for 1 furlong, then every pole of wall is manned by 4 men”.Now Hill argues that this is back to front, the hidage assessment for a burh should provide a wall-length. He advances his argument to propose that the intention of the BH document is to provide a method of doing so not for Wessex but for the newly created burh in the reconquered ‘shires’ of Mercia. Perhaps this is what that formula means attached to ‘A’.Yet if we regard the archetype of ‘B’ as earlier then the end text of this says as follows:-“That is all 27 and 70 which belong to it; and 30 to the West Saxons.And to Worcester 1200 hides. To Warwick four and 2400 hides”
One of the ‘B’ variants (Hill ‘6’) has a copyist’s gloss which proposes a meaning of ‘27,000 and 70 hides’ to make sense of the “27 and 70” reference: the “belong to it” refers to the entire list enumerated, a grand total. However, none of the ‘B’ lists can give us that total as they miss out between three and five burh. Therefore the archetype of ‘B’ must have included these, as did that of ‘A’. However, if we, as Hill, do some recalculating of the mistranscriptions and supply the missing burh figures from ‘A’ then the ‘restored’ total would be 28,671. Hill then turns to the second part of the final sentence “and 30 to the West Saxons”, this too is glossed as ‘30,000’ by the copyist ‘6’ so that it seems to refer to hides; but Hill proposes that it refers to the 30 burh; there are in fact 31 of these in the combined lists, but he then proposes that Buckingham (at 1600 hides) is in fact Mercian, i.e. not of “the West Saxons”, so is not included in the grand total (adjusted total 27,071) seemingly spot on for the final ‘B’ sentence/statement.
[Note: the sentence “And to Worcester 1200 hides. To Warwick four and 2400 hides” is not part of the foregoing lists and is not included in the ‘grand total’, however it does show that the copyist was changing the numbers from spelled to numerals and then confused himself, i.e. the archetype probably read “To Warwick four hundred and twenty hundred hides”.]
Therefore ‘A’ and ‘B’ were copied from the same archetype/s as they agree on the grand total (less 1600 for Buckingham), yet differ only in their final sentence/statements as to what the figures demonstrate, a formula for manpower or a total of hidage. This is important because it evidentially contradicts any proposal that the recensions had burh added or subtracted to reflect ‘new’ or ‘abandoned’ burh.
.
The ‘B’ archetype is more likely to be closer to the ultimate source which would be an ‘exchequer/ treasury’ document. ‘A’/ Cotton-Otto would have been prepared from it to perform the function Hill proposes, the burh/ shiring of the reconquered areas. But, surely the final sentence/statement of ‘B’ “And to Worcester 1200 hides. To Warwick four and 2400 hides” which Hill proposes as being about the proposed organisation of the new Mercian ‘shires’ should actually, if it meant such, would actually be more congruent if appended to the formulae following ‘A’
Sources
- The Burghal Hidage, ed. and tr. A.J. Robertson (1956), Anglo-Saxon Charters. 2nd ed. Cambridge. 246-9.
- Blackburn, Mark (1998). "The London Mint in the Reign of Alfred." In Kings, Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage in Southern England in the Ninth Century, edited by M.A.S. Blackburn and D.N. Dumville. Studies in Anglo-Saxon History no. 9. Woodbridge. pp. 105–23.
- Haslam, J. (2005). "King Alfred and the Vikings: strategies and tactics, 876-886AD." Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 13. pp. 121–153.
- Haslam, J. "The towns of Devon." In Anglo-Saxon Towns in Southern England, ed. by J.Haslam. Phillimore. pp. 249–283.
- Hill, David and A.R. Rumble (eds.) (1996). The Defence of Wessex. The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Hill, David. "Athelstan's urban reforms." Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 11, 173-185.
- Stenton, Frank. (1971). Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Further reading
- Radford, C.A. Ralegh. "The Later Pre-Conquest Boroughs and their Defences." Medieval archaeologyMedieval archaeologyMedieval archaeology is the study of humankind through its material culture, specialising in the period of the European Middle Ages. At its broadest, the period stretches from the 5th to the 16th century and refers to post-Roman but pre modern remains. The period covers the upheaval caused by the...
14 (1970): 83-103.