Continuity and fission in the Anglo-Saxon landscape: the origins of the Rodings (Essex)

ABSTRACT

The eight ecclesiastical parishes in west Essex known as the Rodings contained sixteen separate manors and other, minor holdings in 1086. They had been formed by the piecemeal fission of a single land-unit, arguably one which was the settlement area of an early Anglo-Saxon community whose name they all perpetuated—*HroÐingas, ‘people of *HroÐa’. Very few other similarly early territories can be reliably identified, either (as in this case) from the survival of a name in—ingas which still refers to the entire area for which it was coined or through the use of other evidence. Therefore, it is important to discover, as far as we can, the socio-economic processes responsible for the fission of this early territory and its eventual replacement by the fragmented manorial landscape recorded in Domesday Book, and also to trace the parallel evolution of both its ecclesiastical and its administrative geography up to and, where necessary, after 1086.

The paper accordingly follows three main lines of enquiry about the Rodings area, investigating how its late eleventh-century landscape of manors, parishes and hundreds had come into being. This includes, among other things, a study of the origins of the substantial land-holdings there of the reformed minster churches at Barking and Ely. The information gained from these enquiries is placed in its broader historical context, and comparison is made with similar developments in other parts of England. Finally, the paper assesses the extent of the study's contribution to the current debate about the validity of the ‘minster hypothesis’ as an explanation of the measures which the Anglo-Saxon church took in the seventh and early eighth centuries in order to encourage the systematic provision of pastoral care.

KEYWORDS:

• Anglo-Saxon
• folk territory parish
• west Essex