Statue of Alfred the Great in Wantage Market Square by Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg dates from the 1880s (courtesy Steve Daniels / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Early Medieval Box

Many people like to think of themselves as English with a common ancestry dating back to the Anglo-Saxons – hence the popularity of Game of Thrones. But what do the words Anglo-Saxon mean? It seemed straightforward when learned at school but more recently all basic assumptions have been challenged.
 
Much of the Victorians’ understanding of our history was derived from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (written perhaps about 880AD, several centuries after the events it purports to describe) and the writings of near-contemporary monks, such as the British writer Gildas. However, this evidence conflicts sharply with new archaeological and genetic findings. In an attempt to reconcile the discrepancy, a reconsideration of the documentary sources has indicated that the earliest accounts need to be treated with great caution, perhaps owing as much to origin myths as reality, and with events suspiciously connected to conspicuous antiquities such as the hillforts of Old Sarum and Barbury. The reliability of the early periods in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has been questioned as fabricated and the writings of Gildas interpreted as sermonising. This has shaped a completely different story not just of the Saxon period but the whole 650 years of our Early Medieval history. As one recent historian said: The apparent clarity, cohesiveness and implied cultural identity of the phrase “Anglo-Saxon” is a chimera that shimmers into invisibility as one approaches it.[1]

There is neither documentary nor artefact evidence of Saxon occupation of our area, apart from a single, entirely inconsequential, sherd of late Saxon pottery from the villa site. To discover more about Early Medieval Box, we need to use available evidence from surrounding areas, the organisation of our landscape, and local place-names with Anglo-Saxon origins, including Hazelbury, Ashley, Henley and Ditteridge.

Article, Author and Issue

​Late Antiquity, 350-600
1.What happened after 350AD?
2.Box After 350AD
3.Why do we Speak English?
4.Anglo-Saxon Art, Craft and Literature
 
Anglo-Saxon, 600-800
5.Why is Box in Wiltshire?
6.Saxon Evidence in Early Medieval Box
7.When did Box become Christian?
8.Life in Saxon Box

​Reference
[1] Susan Oosterhuizen, The emergence of the English, 2019, Leeds: Arc Humanities Press