Anglo-Saxon Somerset - Michael Costen

The county of Somerset cannot lay claim to have been an
Anglo-Saxon kingdom like Kent or Sussex, but nevertheless it has
a history as a distinct region which can be traced to the seventh
century and there are hints of an earlier entity in the
post-Roman period. Although the detail of this society is
difficult to recover, there is no doubt that it was successful in
maintaining its independence for over two centuries before it was
over-run by the Anglo-Saxons from the east. On the edge of the
highland zone, with its diverse topography, newly conquered
Somerset provided the early Anglo-Saxon kings and aristocracy
with a rich prize, which they were quick to exploit.This book traces the way in which the king and his warrior
followers shaped the countryside to meet the particular needs of
a society which was still in the process of formation when it
created Somerset. The westward expansion of the Anglo-Saxons of
Hampshire and Wiltshire was a step in the formation of Wessex,
both as a kingdom and as a self-conscious society.
The landscape
still bears witness to the changes that took place in a highly
ordered and stratified polity over the course of the eighth and
ninth centuries.The book also examines the response to the challenge presented by
the attacks of the Vikings and traces the impact of the new
technologies introduced into agriculture which underpinned a
profound change in the structure of society at all levels and
provided the economic impetus for a growth in population and the
final shaping of the landscape we see today.
Although profoundly
rural and agricultural even Somerset felt the impact of trade
with the outside world, though a connection with distant parts of
the Mediterranean did not last long.
Instead the shire came to
feel the influence of Gaul and Ireland through its ecclesiastical
links and also through the Vikings, who had a commercial side to
their contacts with western Britain. The influence of the Church on this society was profound,
successfully replacing the gods of the Romano-British world with
the faith which now dominated the Eastern Empire and the
barbarian successor states of the western Empire. Evidence of
Christianity in post-Roman Somerset is strong.
The enthusiastic
acceptance of Christianity by the Anglo-Saxons was closely bound
up with the emergence of their petty kingdoms and the ideological
support offered by the Church underpinned much of the new
structures of their society.
In return the Church prospered as a
major economic and cultural force in the landscape. Somerset
provides good evidence of
long-term monastic survival from the
late post-Roman world through to the great rebirth of the tenth
century.
It is at some of its church sites that we should look
for the continuity between the post-Roman and the Anglo-Saxon
worlds.