The Anglo-Saxons

410 AD - 1066

START: In 410 AD the Roman army left Britain and Anglo-Saxon raiders began their attacks.

END: In 1066 Duke William of Normandy invaded and conquered Anglo-Saxon England.

Go back to The Dark Ages. See also Anglo-Saxon Langar and Anglo-Saxon placenames.

INVASION!

The Roman army left Britain in AD 410, leaving the Ancient Britons to fend for themselves as invaders sailed across the North Sea from the Netherlands, northern Germany and Denmark. They were people who wanted to make Britain their home.

Little is known about much of this period, because there are no written records and little archaeological evidence.

To find out what we know about

Anglo-Saxon Langar, click here.

INVADERS!

The Jutes settled in Kent.
Saxons settled across the south of England.
The Angles settled across north east England and the Midlands.

Together they are called the Anglo-Saxons.

But there are mysteries -

Nobody knows how many Anglo-Saxons crossed the North Sea to settle in Britain.
Were there hundreds of them or thousands?
Nobody knows how the Anglo-Saxon settlers found land to farm. Did they steal land from the Ancient Britons, did they buy land or did they find poor land that was not being farmed by the Ancient Britons?

Nobody knows how the Anglo-Saxons gradually took over the whole of England.
Nobody knows how the Ancient British language disappeared completely in England. Every farm and village in England was given an Anglo-Saxon name. And now, one thousand years later, we all speak a modern version of the language of the Anglo-Saxons - English. They even changed the name of the country from Britannia to Angle land - England.

What is certain is that the Ancient British people did not disappear.

The Ancient Britons started to speak the Anglo-Saxon language (Old English).

They adopted Anglo-Saxon ways of life.

Anglo-Saxons and Ancient Britons married and brought up their children speaking the language of the Anglo-Saxon settlers.

This was not Ancient Britain any longer - it was England.

The Anglo-Saxon period lasted from the end of the Roman Britain

in 410 AD until the Norman Conquest in 1066, a time span of

more than 650 years.

Anglo-Saxons in the Vale of Belvoir

When the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the Vale of Belvoir, they found the area busy with agriculture: small farms surrounded by fields growing crops and grazing animals. This is good farming country. Farming families were self-sufficient: they built their own homes, grew their own food and made their own clothes and tools.

Small villages

During the Anglo-Saxon period people began to live together in small villages of perhaps ten to twelve houses. Some people in the village were craftsmen: blacksmiths, carpenters and potters. But most people worked on farms.

Farming

A medieval picture of ploughing using oxen

The farming families of the village shared a plough and shared the oxen to pull it. They grew cereal crops of wheat, barley and rye, as well as peas, cabbages, parsnips, carrots and celery. They also picked wild fruit such as apples, pears and plums, blackberries and raspberries.

The farms in this area grew mainly crops, although goats and sheep, cattle and pigs were also kept. However, farmers could not grow enough food in the summer to feed all their animals through the winter. So, when winter came, most animals were killed and the meat was salted or smoked to preserve it. Everyone kept hens or ducks or geese. The Anglo-Saxons hunted wild animals if they could - deer, wild pigs, hares and birds - though this is not easy! And fish caught in streams and ponds were an important part of their diet.

Anglo-Saxon houses

Anglo Saxon people lived in small rectangular wooden huts with thatched roofs. The whole family shared one single room - including the animals in the winter. The warmth of the animals’ bodies helped to keep the hut warm.

When the houses were abandoned, the wood and straw rotted away and left very little for modern archaeologists to discover.

The Seven Kingdoms

The many different tribes of Anglo-Saxons developed into seven kingdoms:

East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex (the most powerful)

and Essex, Kent and Sussex.

What is now Nottinghamshire was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia which covered the West and East Midlands. Langar was in Mercia.