Roman Pottery Found at Great Wymondley, Herts. March 1882.

See [Larger].
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Strong evidence of continuity in this district.

So far the local evidence supports the view that the West Saxons, who probably conquered it about A.D. 570, succeeded to a long-settled agriculture; and further it seems likely that, assuming the lordship vacated by the owners of the villas, and adopting the village sites, they continued the cultivation of the open fields around them by means of the old rural population on that same three-field system, which had probably been matured and improved during Roman rule, and by which the population of the district had been supported during the three generations between the departure of the Roman governors and the West Saxon conquest.

But it may perhaps be urged that these districts, conquered so late as A.D. 570, may have been exceptionally treated. If this were so, it must be borne in mind that the whole of central England—i.e. the counties described in the second volume of the Hundred Rolls as to which the evidence for the existence of the open-field system was so strong—was included in the exception. Indeed, if the line of the Icknild way be extended along Akeman Street to Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester, the line of the Saxon conquests which were later than A.D. 560 would be pretty clearly marked. The laws of Ine, pointing backwards as they do from their actual date, reach back within two or three generations of the date of the Saxon conquest of this part of Old Wessex.

The Hitchin district hardly exceptional.

It would be impossible here to pursue the question in detail in other parts of England. Perhaps it will be sufficient to call attention to the many cases [p436] mentioned in Mr. C. Roach Smith's valuable 'Collectanea,' [650] in which Roman remains have been found in close proximity to the churches of modern villages, and to his remark that a long list of such instances might easily be made.[651]

The number of such cases which occur in Kent is very remarkable, and Kent was certainly not a late conquest.

I will only add a passing allusion to the remarkable case at Woodchester, in Gloucestershire, where the church, present mansion, and Roman villa are close together,[652] and mention that in two of the hamlets on the manor of Tidenham—Stroat and Sedbury (or Cingestun)—Roman remains bear testimony to a Roman occupation before the West Saxon conquest.[653]

The fact seems to be that the archæological evidence, gradually accumulating as time goes on, points more and more clearly to the fact that our modern villages are very often on their old Roman and sometimes probably pre-Roman sites—that however much the English invaders avoided the walled towns of Roman Britain, they certainly had no such antipathy to the occupation of its villas and rural villages. [p437]