The Annals of Willenhall

by Frederick William Hackwood

Here at Hantun he kept his state—such as the luxury of the age permitted to him. Seated in his great oaken hall, with its heavy roof timbers, at the close of each day he drank deep draughts with his guests and his numerous servants, in the flaring light of odorous resin torches stuck in iron staples along the walls. The smoke from his fire of logs escaped as lazily as it might through an aperture in the roof. The earthen floor was strewn with rushes, more or less clean as it was littered by the refuse of few or more feasts. The only furniture consisted of a long trestle

table, with rude benches of oak on each side; the whole effort at ornamentation being limited to trophies of war and the chase hanging upon the walls. Such, in brief, was the home life of a great thane.

It will be observed that Wednesfield and Wednesbury at least were founded by the Saxons in their pagan days; that is before their acceptance of the White Christ, which was towards the close of the seventh century. Tradition hath it that at the Anglian advent into this district, the worship of Woden was first set up in a grove at Wednesfield. Here was first fixed the Woden Stone, the sacred altar on which human sacrifices were offered of that dread Teutonic deity, Woden.

It was carved with Runic figures—for was not Woden the inventor of the Runic characters? In sacrificing, the priest, at the slaying of the victim, took care to consecrate the offering by pronouncing always the solemn formula, “I devote thee to Woden!”

Part of the blood was then sprinkled on the worshippers, part on the sacred grove; the bodies were then either burnt on the altar or suspended on trees within this mystic grove. Later, when some advance had been made by the hierarchy, the Woden Stone was removed from the Wednesfield grove to be erected within the temple of Woden at Wednesbury.

There are other evidences of pagan practices to be discovered in Staffordshire place-names. Tutbury is said to derive its name from Tuisto, the Saxon god who gave the name to Tuesday, as Woden lent his to Wednesday; and Thursfield from Thor, the deity worshipped on Thursday. There is also Thor’s cave, still so-called, in the north of this county (see “Staffordshire Curiosities,” p. 159), and other similar reminders of Anglo-Saxon paganism.

It is not outside the bounds of possibility that a third local place-name is traceable to the personality of Woden. Sedgley may be derived from Sigge’s Lea, and Sigge was the real name of the Teutonic conqueror who, in overrunning north-west Europe, assumed the name of Woden for the sake of prestige—he was the

founder of Sigtuna, otherwise Sigge’s town, in Sweden. In the science of English place-names it is well-known that while hills and streams and other natural phenomena were allowed to retain their old British names (as Barr, “a summit,” and Tame, “a flood water”), towns, villages, and other political divisions were very generally renamed by the Saxon conquerors, the places in many instances being called after the personal names of their owners.

Here are some local illustrations of place-names conferred by the Anglian invaders when they had conquered and appropriated the territory.

Arley, otherwise Earnlege, was “the Eagle’s ley.”