Fig. 3.
In the following chapter we shall deal in detail with such archæological remains as still exist of the boroughs of Edward and Ethelfleda, but here we will briefly summarise by anticipation the results to which that chapter will lead. We see that sites defensible by nature were often seized upon for fortification, as at Bamborough, Bridgenorth, and Eddisbury; but that this was by no means always the case, as a weak site, such as Witham, for example, was sometimes rendered defensible by works which appear to have fulfilled their purpose. In only one case (Witham) do we find an inner enclosure; and as it is of large size (9½ acres) it is more probable that the outer enclosure was for cattle, than that the inner one was designed solely for the protection of the king and his court. We are not told of stone walls more than once (at Towcester); but the use of the word timbrian, which does not exclusively mean to build in wood,[67] does not preclude walls of stone in important places. In the square or oblong form, with rounded corners, we see the influence which Roman models exercised on eyes which still beheld them existing.
We see that the main idea of the borough was the same as that of the prehistoric or British “camp of refuge,” in that it was intended for the defence of society and not of the individual. It was intended to be a place of refuge for the whole countryside. But it was also something much more than this, something which belongs to a much more advanced state of society than the hill-fort.[68] It was a town, a place where people were expected to live permanently and do their daily work. It provided a fostering seat for trade and manufactures, two of the chief factors in the history of civilisation. The men who kept watch and ward on the ramparts, or who sallied forth in their bands to fight the Danes, were the men who were slowly building up the prosperity of the stricken land of England. By studding the great highways of England with fortified towns, Alfred and his children were not only saving the kernel of the British Empire, they were laying the sure foundations of its future progress in the arts and habits of civilised life.
[CHAPTER III]
ANGLO-SAXON FORTIFICATIONS—continued
The bare list which we have given of the boroughs of Edward and Ethelfleda calls for some explanatory remarks. Let us take first the boroughs of Ethelfleda.
Worcester.—We have already noticed the charter of Ethelred and Ethelfleda which tells of the building of the burh at Worcester.[69] There appears to have been a small Roman settlement at Worcester, but there is no evidence that it was a fortified place.[70] This case lends some support to the conjecture of Dr Christison, that the Saxons gave the name of chester to towns which they had themselves fortified.[71] The mediæval walls of Worcester were probably more extensive than Ethelfleda’s borough, of which no trace remains.
Chester is spoken of by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 894 as “a waste chester in Wirral.” It had undoubtedly been a Roman city, and therefore the work of Ethelred and Ethelfleda here was solely one of restoration. Brompton, who wrote at the close of the 13th century “a poor compilation of little authority,”[72] was the first writer to state that the walls of Chester were enlarged by Ethelfleda so as to take in the castle, which he fancied to be Roman;[73] and this statement, being repeated by Leland, has acquired considerable vogue. It is very unlikely that any extension of the walls was made by the Mercian pair, seeing that the city was deserted at the time when it was occupied by the Danes, only fourteen years before. But it is quite certain that the Norman castle of Chester lay outside the city walls, as the manor of Gloverstone, which was not within the jurisdiction of the city, lay between the city and the castle.[74] A charter of Henry VII. shows that the civic boundary did not extend to the present south wall in his reign. Ethelfleda’s borough probably followed the lines of the old Roman castrum.
Bremesbyrig.—This place has not yet been identified. Bromborough on the Mersey has been suggested, and is not impossible, for the loss of the s sometimes occurs in place-names; thus Melbury, in Wilts, was Melsburie in Domesday. Bremesbyrig was the first place restored after Chester, and as the estuary of the Dee had been secured by the repair of Chester, so an advance on Bromborough would have for its aim to secure the estuary of the Mersey. It was outside the Danish frontier of Watling Street, and could thus be fortified without breach of the peace in 911. There is a large moated work at Bromborough, enclosing an area of 10 acres, in the midst of which stands the courthouse of the manor of Bromborough. But this manor was given by the Earl of Chester to the monks of St Werburgh about 1152, and it is possible that the monks fortified it, as they did their manor of Irby in Wirral, against the incursions of the Welsh. One of the conditions of the Earl’s grant was that the manor is to be maintained in a state of security and convenience for the holding of the courts appertaining to Chester Abbey.[75] Thus the fortification appears to be of manorial use, though this does not preclude the possibility of an earlier origin. On the other hand, if Bromborough is the same as Brunanburh, where Athelstan’s great battle was fought (and there is much in favour of this), it cannot possibly have been Bremesbyrig in the days of Edward. Another site has been suggested by the Rev. C. S. Taylor, in a paper on The Danes in Gloucestershire, Bromsberrow in S. Gloucestershire, one of the last spurs of the Malvern Hills. Here the top of a small hill has been encircled with a ditch; but the ditch is so narrow that it does not suggest a defensive work, and it is remote from any Roman road or navigable river.