accommodation, jurassic, coast, dorset, world heritage, coastline, holiday, self catering, cottage, break, luxury, lyme regis, somerset, weymouth, southwest, england, walking, holiday accommodation sleeping 12 somerset

Saxon Times

Initially, the new Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain appear to have taken little notice of the Romano-British Celts in the South-West. The nearest Saxons, in the Kingdom of Wessex, centred on Wiltshire and Hampshire, made an early incursion into the area in AD 577, defeating the armies of three local kings at the Battle of Dyrham. The ruler of Caer-Bathan (Bath) was apparently killed, but the city remained outside the bounds of Saxon settlement, as internal English quarrels led Wessex to look to defences on its Mercian border. The boundary with Dumnonia (and therefore Somerset) seems to have been set, perhaps agreed, as the Forest of Penselwood; and thus it remained until the Wessex kings began to interfere in western affairs in the early 7th century. A raiding party, reaching as far as Bindon (Dorset) in AD 614, appears to have been repelled, but the watershed for Saxon encroachment appears in The Anglo Saxon Chronicle under the year AD 658. It reads: "Cenwalh [King of Wessex] fought at Peonnum [Penselwood] with the Welsh [ie. the Celtic people of the South-West], and put them to flight to the Parret". The Parrett is a river in the east of Somerset, and King Cenwalh followed up his invasion three years later with a push further into what is now Devon.

Wessex had pushed back Dumnonian control but was not able to fully establish its government over the 'Summer lands' of its Western settlers. Dumnonian influence remained strong in the region for almost a century and the two enemies found the Church to be a powerful weapon in the fight for full control of their border regions. King Ine of Wessex refounded the Abbey at Glastonbury in AD 681 and this was joined by Muchelney in 693 and the minster at Wells in 705. Whilst Gerren of Dumnonia was making grants to monasteries as far away as Sherborne in Dorset (AD 705) in order to acquire support for his cause. In the north of the county, the Mercian sub-kings of the Hwicce held sway over Bath, where King Osric founded a nunnery, amongst the old Roman springs, in AD 676. This was refounded by King Offa in the AD 750s when the city also became a convenient western centre for this itinerant monarch.

The Wessex kings also took to granting many estates in Somerset to warriors in their army, since warfare became virtually perennial in the area. Many of the local roads had military purposes: they were called "herepaths" - "here" meaning "troop," "army" or the more sinister "predatory band".

Wars and civil wars may account for the lack of archaeological finds in Saxon Somerset, though enough has been uncovered to build a picture of families living in single farmsteads and small hamlets, surrounded by a network of roads of Roman origin which sometimes delineated the boundaries between estates. By AD 710, the Dumnonian armies were crushed for the last time in Somerset. They withdrew even further west and King Ine established a fortress at Taunton. As the Saxons of Wessex became established in Somerset, settlements such as this began to appear with familiar Saxon names, ending in "-tun" (manor or mansion) or including "cyng" (king) or "burgh" (a strong place or fort): Somerton, Bruton, Petherton or Kingsbury. Some of these may have been Celtic villages, partly renamed or translated, others were new to the landscape.