My local history

Following on from yesterday and the location where I live.

I come from an area once populated by the Celts, and then controlled by the Romans, with the Celts used as serfs or bonded workers, between 60AD and around 410AD.

The Celtic tribe most likely to have lived here were the Carieltauvi who were a farming community that had little central government and was ruled by up to 3 rulers at any one time.

When the Romans left in 410AD they not only took the soldiers with them, but also, it was written, ‘the youth of Britain’, which left the Island of Britain open for attack.

The attack came from the Scoti of Ireland and the Saxons of Northern Europe.

I would fight this lot on my own :)

These raids by the Saxons - in our case - just about ended Celtic Britain and started the country of England.

Locally in the county of Nottinghamshire, no village names survived from Celtic or Roman times, which shows that after 410AD, very little was left that was not fully controlled by the Saxon invaders.

The only remaining Celtic names belong to rivers like the Trent and Idle (spelt Idel at that time).

Britons that survived became slaves and worked the land. This can be seen in very few place names, Walesby being one - meaning 'dwelling place of Briton (Welsh) serfs'. By this time, only a few places remained still populated by Britons, and Wales was one of them.

The Saxon invaders became Anglo-Saxon and their language took over from the Celtic language. Place names from this period show their seats of power and the type of dwelling they lived in. Most place names start with the name of the owner of the land and end in the type of home (tun [ton] looks like town but really means home surrounded by a fence).

In 868 the Vikings arrived at Nottingham led by the famous sons of Ragnor, Ivor the Boneless and Halfdan Ragnarsson.

They stayed a short time, and under Saxon threat, left.

In 874 they returned with the Great Heathen Army to conquer the whole of the East Midlands and form the 5 Boroughs of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Lincoln and Stamford.

They stayed and farmed until in 920, under Aethelflaed (Queen of Mercia), they were forced out.

The change in place names show that their occupation was not one of violent conquest, but integration, and they took to farming the areas not farmed by the Saxons.

In my case, I live in what would have been Sherwood Forest and the name Sherwood which sounds like Shirewood actually means 'border' and would at that time been the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and very sparsely populated.

The Danish returned in 1016 and this time conquered the lot, placing Canute on the throne.

Very little changed in the area until the Norman conquest in 1066 when our rulers were replaced by Norman rulers.

Place names didn’t change, but the French spelled them wrong when writing official documents like the Domesday Book and over time, names have evolved.

The names of most of the local towns and villages have Viking/Danish names and although the people that formed these villages are not recorded, their names live on in our town names.

Maybe the Normans having Viking ancestry didn't want to change things, who knows?

All images free to use from google images