Anglo Saxon England – The Revival
This series is a revival in 2023 of a new limited series about the Anglo Saxons. It is based on a series I did for Members back in 2017; and in 2023 I have tweaked and updated it (maybe 20% of it). I loved doing the series so much that I wanted to make it available to everyone, I do hope Members will not mind, since they have essentially funded it (thank you!). If things happen, I may then publish occasionally into it, as the mood takes me.
The series is called Society and Countryside, and it’s about how life and society worked – what did it mean to be Anglo Saxon? For resources please go to the first episode. Or download the ‘all important PDF file’ here.
So much changes over the period; from the early settler society of the 6th century, the economy begins to change and become more sophsticated and that brings change. I love the way landscape still bears the marks of English from their earliest days; landscapes shaped society, but the Anglo Saxons change the landscape too. And you can see their mark still. Society was unique and worked very differently to today, and I try to explan a bit of that; and then how lordship changes, and society with it.
I also got into local history a lot while writing this; I currently live in South Oxfordshire, which is interesting because is straddles two types of lowland landscapes – Planned and Ancient. So I use the ancient scir of the Benson hundreds to illustrate some features of the landscape. I hope you will recognise similar features in other areas of England too.
And then I talk about the old question – did the Norman colonisation simply accelerate changes already present? Or did it fundamentally change the way society worked?
All this takes 9 episodes, including the introduction, and will take us from the 5th to 11th centurues. For the politcal history of Anglo Saxon England which I wrote orginally in 2011 and rewrote in 2017, please go across to History of England, Series 1, which includes 22 episodes.
2.7 Rise of the Thegn
The Viking wars helped create a centralised state and changed the English landscape
2.6 Life in the Warland
Warland was held by free families, amd its resources to be used in defence of the well being of the state and community
2.5 Life on the Inland
The Church brings resident institutions, and to support them the land and people must work harder
2.4 Extensive Lordship and the Scir
A sense of lordship based on mutual obligations of free peoples
2.3 The Early Settlers
Early Germanic settlers establish themselves in the Romano British countryside
2.2 The Old and the New
The decline f Roman o Britain, and theories of the Germanic migrations
2.1 The Anglo Saxons: Land, Lordship and People
The Whys and Wherefores of this new series