The Battle-site of 'Heavenfield'

Someone asked my - adult - daughter once if I travelled to many locations in the course of my research. Her answer was: 'She stands around in fields a lot and gets emotional, does that count?'

Well, it's largely true. There are a few buildings that can be dated to the Anglo-Saxon period (see my post here about Escomb Church) but when it comes to battle fields, many are still missing, presumed lost. 

While historians continue to argue about the exact location of Brunanburh, there are some sites which are less disputed, one of which is the place where, before the battle at Heavenfield, Oswald ordered a wooden cross to be erected, and it could be the site of the ensuing battle, too. It's where St Oswald's Church now stands, close to Hadrian's Wall. So close, in fact, that there are bits missing from the wall at this point, and it's thought that stones from it were used to build the church.

What we know of the battle is this:~

Edwin, king of Northumbria, had been killed in battle in 633 by the combined forces of Penda of Mercia and Cadwallon of Gwynedd. According to Bede, (HE ii 20) Cadwallon was in rebellion against Edwin, suggesting some sort of overlordship, evidently resented, and after the battle the land of the Northumbrians was ravaged and Edwin's wife and surviving children fled to Kent.

Edwin had been expanding his kingdom at the expense of the British kingdoms, and while there are some traditions which suggest that initially Penda of Mercia and Cadwallon had been enemies, they were at this point in alliance, although there is some debate over whether it was an enterprise of equals, or whether Cadwallon was the leader. 

Edwin had been in exile for many years before he became king, and one of his first acts upon gaining the throne had been to attack the British kingdom of Elmet (centred around modern-day Leeds) and in so doing, he removed a 'buffer' between his own lands and those of the Welsh.

After Edwin's death, the kingdom of Northumbria briefly split back into its two separate kingdoms, and Edwin's cousin came forward to claim Deira in the south, while an exiled member of the old ruling dynasty claimed Bernicia in the north.

Cadwallon, who clearly had a hefty axe to grind, killed the former, who had 'rashly' tried to besiege him, and a year later, also slew the latter, who had come to make peace with the Welsh king bringing 'only twelve chosen thegns' with him. Bede's verdict was that Cadwallon had executed a 'just vengeance on them, though with unrighteous violence'. They had, he said, reverted to the 'filth of their former idolatry'. (HE iii 1)

The latter's half-brother, Oswald, had also been in exile, and returned now to claim both the kingdoms of the north. Oswald was also the nephew of the previous king, Edwin, and having both Deiran and Bernician blood, was acceptable to both realms. There was just the small matter of the Welshman - a Christian whom Bede called 'a barbarian in heart and disposition' who spared neither women nor innocent children' - to deal with...

Oswald came, according to Bede, with an army, small in numbers but strengthened by faith, and I imagine that they might have followed the line of the wall as they travelled from what is now the west of Scotland. Before the battle, Oswald is said to have set up a holy cross, and it is on this site that the present church was built.

Excavation at this part of the wall has revealed fragments of human bone and weaponry, suggesting that this is indeed the site of a battle.

The church sits on top of the hill, and as I stood in the churchyard and looked down at the fields below, I couldn't help but picture the landscape as it might have looked then, with soldiers and equipment.

Cadwallon was slain. Possibly his forces were depleted, for it seems he had been campaigning in the north for a while. He is said to have been killed at a place called Deniseburn which has been identified with Rowley Burn*. If so, then he was chased for some miles before he was killed. I drove to Rowley Burn, and tried to envisage what it must have looked like in 634, when a mighty Welsh king drew his last breath, but the scene was a tranquil one.

Of the site of the church, Bede said that it was a place still 'held in great veneration' (HE iii 2) but no trace of the Anglo-Saxon church remains.  Inside the existing church, which dates from the nineteenth century, there is a Roman altar stone,

and the building is peaceful, simply presented, and so calm and quiet it's hard to imagine the clamour of battle which once rang out. 

Given the location and the archaeological evidence, I feel confident that I was in the right place. It's not often that I can stand somewhere and know that the people I write about once stood in the same spot. So yes, I do often stand in fields and get a bit emotional.

These characters all feature in my latest novel, Cometh the Hour

[all photographs by and copyright of the author]

* Peter Marren, Battle of the Dark Ages, pp74-75

Anglo-Saxon Childhood

It would be no surprise that childhood in centuries past was radically different from the experience of youngsters in the 20th and 21st centuries. But with so few written sources, can we glean anything at all about childhood in pre-Conquest England?

The laws of King Æthelberht of Kent give a few clues about the value of children in the seventh century. In them, we learn that if a man takes a widow who does not belong to him, there are various penalties, and 

If she bears a living child, she is to have half the goods, if the husband dies first.

If she wishes to go away with the children, she is to have half the goods .*

It may not be much, and certainly not anything like our modern notion of 'child benefit' money, but at least there was a basic provision there.

The laws of King Ine, later on in the seventh century, at first seem to suggest that childhood was short:

A ten-year-old boy can be considered privy to a theft.

Except that even in 2018, the age of criminal responsibility in the UK is still ten, albeit that the procedure for dealing with juvenile crime differs from that for adults. Later laws, of Athelstan in the tenth and Cnut in the eleventh centuries, set the age at twelve.

Elsewhere in Ine's laws there is provision for a widow if

the husband dies, the mother is to have her child and rear it; she is to be given six shillings for its maintenance, a cow in summer, an ox in winter; the kinsmen are to take charge of the paternal home, until the child is grown up.

Alfred the Great's laws in the ninth century specified that if a girl who was not of age was the victim of rape, then the compensation would be the same as for an adult.

So we can see that there were certain rights enshrined in the laws, regarding provision for widows with children, and for crimes perpetrated by and against minors. But what of attitudes towards children?

Asser, writing the life of King Alfred, does not at any point mention the name of the king's wife. But he mentions the children:

namely  Æthelflæd the first-born, and after her Edward, then Æthelgifu followed by Ælfthryth, and finally Æthelweard, (leaving aside those who were carried off in infancy by an untimely death who numbered...)

How many? We don't know. As Simon Keynes points out in the notes to his translation, the numeral, if it was there, is unreadable. 

It has been suggested that child mortality was around thirty percent in Anglo-Saxon England (S Rubin, Medieval English Medicine.) 

Coupled with the information from Asser that Alfred had many more children than those who survived to adulthood, it seems to me that there is a very good reason why his eldest daughter had only one daughter, and it is not, as the chronicler William of Malmesbury suggested, that she 'chose' not to have any more and 

ever after refused the embraces of her husband.

I suspect that there were other pregnancies, maybe other births, and that her daughter Ælfwynn was the only one to survive, but that this was not seen as uncommon, and thus was hardly remarked upon. When writing Æthelflæd's story in my first novel To Be A Queen I decided to present this scenario. 

Though rare, Asser's is not the only remark on this subject, and it seems to me that even if still-births or infant deaths were common, there is no reason to think that they weren't distressing.

There is one mention in Bede, of seventh-century King Edwin of Northumbria's children by his second wife Æthelburh of Kent, two of whom

were snatched from this life while they were still wearing [their baptism gown] and are buried in the church at York. (HE ii 14)

but by and large these occurrences are left unrecorded.

It has been suggested that because of the number of adult skeletons found with evidence of cleft palate, that such people must have been exceptionally well cared for when they were children, for it would have been extremely difficult for them to feed (Victoria Thompson, Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England, citing Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England pp94-5)

A seventh-century grave in a cemetery at Barton-on-Humber, less than a metre in length, was found to contain a feeding bottle, hinting that either the baby had a cleft palate, or that the mother was unable to feed the child herself, or perhaps even that the mother had died in childbirth.

Baptism was obviously important in the Christian age, and when I was writing my second novel, Alvar the Kingmaker, I was keen to find out what happened to children who died before they could be baptised. Information was scant. Compensation was due if a child died without having been baptised, but what happened to the body? 

John Blair (The Church in Anglo-Saxon England) observed that later infant burials at Raunds in Northamptonshire encroached on the reserved strip of land closest to the walls of the church, and in his note 201 p 471 he wrote:

This looks like a case of the widespread practice of burying infants under the eavesdrip.

He then refers to Stephen Wilson (in The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe) 

for the idea that water running off the church roof conveyed some kind of posthumous baptism **

There is one reference to a royal baptism, and a particular incident, which will not surprise any parent, but which was considered an evil omen. Æthelred II (the Unready), according to the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, 'made water in the font' during his immersion, causing Archbishop Dunstan to predict the slaughter of the English people that would take place during his reign. 

Of course, Henry was writing in the twelfth century with the benefit of hindsight. It cannot have been unusual for infants to urinate in the font and indeed priests were advised that they only need change the water if the child had defecated. (Hugh Cunningham, The Invention of Childhood, citing Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children)

What of the children who did survive those first few months and years? Asser tells us that Alfred's youngest surviving child was 

given over to training in reading and writing under the attentive care of teachers, in company with all the nobly born children of virtually the entire area, and a good many of lesser birth as well.

Asser's  job was to portray his patron's credentials as the promoter of learning and culture, but it is interesting to note that he saw fit to add that children of less noble birth were also given access to the rudiments of education. 

Children are rarely mentioned in the chronicles, laws, and charters of the period. Those of low rank probably worked alongside their parents from a young age, but we can see from these few examples that they were valued, cared for, and that those who survived were protected by law, and that those who did not were mourned, and that their journey into the after-world was considered to be of the utmost importance.



* All law codes quoted from EHD (English Historical Documents) Vol I Ed. Whitelock
**I am indebted to Ann Williams for locating this information for me

Repton - Royal Mausoleum and Viking Stronghold

Repton: the name has always been familiar to me. The first pages of To Be A Queen describe how the royal Mercian family is forced to flee because the Vikings have occupied Repton. The rival king, Ceolwulf II, has their support, and King Burgred and his wife must go overseas.
But Repton had been an important place long before the invasions of the ninth century.

And here I was, at last, standing outside the Church of St Wystan, about to see for myself the Anglo-Saxon crypt, and much more besides. Local historians, Andy and Margaret Austen, were my guides.

If you know me at all, through my novels or my blog posts, you'll know how exciting and emotional it all was. It's not often that one can stand in a place and know for certain that the Anglo-Saxons once stood in the same spot, even on the same stone floor.

Mercia – an ancient kingdom indeed. By the eighth century the Mercian kings were known as the Iclingas, and their dynastic centres lay at Lichfield, Breedon-on-the-Hill, Tamworth, and Repton.

The most famous early association with Repton is that of Saint Guthlac who was a warrior of noble, perhaps royal, Mercian stock, but who, according to his biographer, the monk Felix, entered the monastery at Repton when he was twenty-four years old. In around the year 669 he began a solitary life at Crowland Abbey, in the Fenlands of Cambridgeshire.

Guthlac had a frequent visitor there, who at the time was in exile: subsequently one of the longest reigning kings of Mercia, Æthelbald, who was killed in 757 at Seckington (North Warwickshire) and buried at Repton. 

The ‘Repton Stone’, which is now housed in nearby Derby Museum, is thought to have been part of a great cross raised – possibly by King Offa – in memory of Æthelbald.

A later story about the Mercian kings is given to us by Roger of Wendover, writing in the thirteenth century. He tells us that at Pentecost, ‘Bertferth, son of Berthwulf, wickedly slew his kinsman St Wulstan [Wigstan], who was the grandson of two kings of the Mercians. The body of the deceased was carried to the monastery of Rependun [Repton], and is said to have been buried in the tomb of his grandsire Wilaf [Wiglaf].’ Roger then describes heavenly miracles, but gives no reason for the murder.

According to the earliest version of his Passio, Wigstan was indeed the grandson of two kings, his father Wigmund being the son of King Wiglaf, and his mother, Ælfflæd being the daughter of King Ceolwulf I. 

The story goes that upon the death of his father, Wigstan was offered the crown but wouldn’t take it, being then a young boy and with intentions to lead a religious life. His killer, Bertferth [Beorhtfrith] asked to marry Wigstan’s widowed mother (presumably with the intention of ruling as king) and Wigstan refused because of the kinship and the fact that Bertferth was his godfather. Thwarted, Bertferth slew Wigstan, whose body was taken to Repton, and buried in the tomb of his grandfather. 

So it seems conclusive that Æthelbald, Wiglaf and Wigstan were all buried at Repton, but these are not the only significant burials there.

As I said, the first few pages of To Be A Queen are concerned with the Viking occupation of Repton. They were working in alliance with a king from a rival family to that of the ousted Burgred, and who may have been related to Wigstan. 

Having arrived in 873 and overwintered at Repton, the Vikings left in 874/5. 

The site was excavated between 1974 and 1993, and archaeologists Martin Biddle and Berthe Kjølbye-Biddle discovered the grave of a Viking warrior on the site. He had died a brutal death, and a copy of his battered skull, complete with the most piercing blue eyes, is on display in Derby Museum, along with his sword. 

The Dig Site

The Biddles then uncovered the remains of at least 249 other people. Work on the site, which is now part of the rectory garden, is ongoing and Cat Jarman and Mark Horton have been digging recently, and I’m told they will return in 2018.

So, what of the building itself? The crypt was built in the first half of the eighth century, during the reign of Æthelbald. It’s thought that it might originally have been a baptistry, and that it was partially underground, built over a spring which was drained by a deep stone-built channel. Andy explained that when Martin Biddle was on site, he thought he might have found evidence of the channel, but as neither myself nor Andy are archaeologists, we found it difficult to see what Mr Biddle had seen!

Later, the crypt was converted into a mausoleum, possibly for Æthelbald and certainly for King Wiglaf, and for Wiglaf’s grandson, Wigstan/Wystan.

It’s thought that rather than the bodies, it was the bones which were housed here, as the recesses are quite small. Wiglaf is believed to have made changes to the crypt, adding the four central columns which support the ceiling. Intriguingly, there are traces of what look like paint on these pillars.

Having recently visited St Mary’s at Houghton on the Hill,  I couldn’t help wondering if, once upon a time, this church was similarly decorated.

Decorated plaster at Houghton on the Hill

Only the westernmost recess is in its original ninth-century condition, and, in later centuries, the crypt was hidden from view with the stairs being covered over and the windows blocked with outbuildings. Ironically, it is this very concealment which helped to preserve it. Exposure to the elements has meant that it has begun to suffer water and frost damage.

Writing as much as I do about the Mercian kings, I was naturally a little emotional to be standing on this spot, but Andy had something else to show me and I followed him and Margaret back up the stairs and into the church. High up in the wall there is an Anglo-Saxon doorway which gives a clue to the nature of the original Anglo-Saxon church building.

Whilst we have historical evidence for a monastery before 700, and that tantalising doorway, there is no other surviving Anglo-Saxon building apart from the crypt. (For more reading on the fabric of the church, see Dr HM Taylors booklet St Wystan’s Church, Repton.)

Standing in the churchyard that quiet autumn afternoon, staring into the vicarage garden, it was eerie to imagine the place as once having been a Danish encampment.

The Vikings did some damage to the church, destroying a stone cross and using its fragments to cover the graves of their warriors, and damaging the upper walls of the building.

Frequently during my research for my forthcoming book I’ve had cause to wonder how much more Mercian historical evidence would be available to us had it not been for the Vikings. But I’ll be following developments with interest as the digs continue, and evidence comes to light about what those Vikings did while they were at Repton, how they lived, and how they died. 

[all photographs by and copyright of the author]

My new book Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, is available for pre-order on 
Amazon and from the publishers, Amberley Books