Very definite evidence of the places chosen by the Angles for settlement can be found on the map of the East Riding. Where the head of the household decided to ‘pitch his tent’ a piece of land was enclosed with a tūn,[[8]] or hedge, and the dwelling erected within it became his new hām,[[8]] or home. Such was the origin of our numerous towns and villages whose names now end in the syllables ton and ham. In many cases the name of the family is enshrined in the name of the settlement. Thus the Locings—the sons of Loc—the Essings, the Brantings, the Eoferings, and the Hemings gave their names respectively to Lockington, Easington, Brantingham, Everingham, and Hemingbrough.
Besides the endings ton and ham, others which tell of Anglian settlements are worth and bald (a dwelling), cote or coate (a mud cottage), stead (a place), brough or borough (a fortified place), wick (a village), wold (woodland), field (a place where trees have been felled), ley (an open place in a wood), mere (a lake), fleet (the mouth of a river) and ford. Examples of all these can be found on a map of the East Riding.
In their burial customs the Angles were little different from the peoples whom they dispossessed. Like them they often cremated the bodies of their dead, afterwards collecting the charred bones and burying them in earthen vessels, accompanied with the weapons or personal treasures which were to be used again in the life to come. A man was buried with his spear and shield, or with the long one-edged knife whose name—seax—gave rise to the tribal name of the Saxons; a woman with her knife, shears, bronze box containing thread and needles, and beads of glass and amber; a child with his toys, such as the tiny tweezers, knife and shears found with a child’s bones in a burial vase at Sancton.
Iron Knife and Bronze Spoon from an Anglian Cemetery
near Garton Gate House (1/2).
Not always, however, did the Angles cremate the bodies of their dead. More often they buried them near the surface of a British burial mound. From one of the mounds at Driffield, known as ‘Cheesecake Hill,’ was taken a necklace consisting of 219 beads, of which 141 were of amber, two of glass, three of carefully cut crystal, and five of cowrie shells.
Child’s Toys found in a Burial Vase at Sancton.