8. The Anglo Saxons
The Anglo Saxons first arrived in Kent in 449AD when a fleet led by Hengest and Horsa, landed at Ebsfleet by invitation of the British king Vortigern.
These were Germanic speaking peoples; Angles from Angles, Jutes from Jutland and Saxons from lower Saxony. The Anglo Saxons migrated from northern Europe, to the southern half of England. Later they established seven kingdoms. The largest, Mercia had its capital in Tamworth.
They found a country falling into ruin, at war with itself, and under attack from the Picts in the north and the Celts from the west. Wroxeter would have been in a parlous state, as were the other towns and cities, along with the more isolated villas such as Yarchester.
As far as village life was concerned it was as if the Romans had never been here.
Saxon England was very early Medieval; The Dark Ages, Trevor Rowley remarks that nowhere was the Dark Ages darker than in Shropshire. A Saxon poet, wandering in the ruins of the city of Bath, wrote that he thought it was the work of giants, not of men. A dark curtain falls over Harley, and nothing is known about the village for the next thousand years. It is necessary to remember that the preceding Iron Age was a time of great activity when settlements expanded, and there is no reason to believe that the Shropshire area was in any way different. However nothing is known about Harley in this period.
In the words of Eric Gill – The Anglo Saxon Old English world was a handmade world, a slow world, a world without power, a world in which all things were made one by one, a world dependent upon human muscular power and the power of draught animals. Unless we keep this in mind, we shall never understand the unmeasurably slow process by which the English landscape and society down to the 19th Century came into being, and much of the beauty and fascination of its detail will forever escape us..
However it is not quite true to say that it was a world without power. The water mill had appeared by the 8th Century and they spread all over eastern England and the Midlands over the next 300 years. The Harley Mill was probably built in this period. Such water mills were very small, generally having the power equivalent to that of a small car. Nearly all rivers though were wider and therefore more powerful than today. Water mills, used to grind grain into flour continued in use until local corn milling ended. The Harley mill was in use until 1905.
Water Mills were, as a matter of necessity, probably built early in the period of Saxon occupation but there is no known date for the building of the Harley Mill.
Generally, there is a scarcity of Anglo Saxon written records and the archeological record is fragmentary. Much of the Anglo Saxon world was wiped out by the Normans.
In Anglo Saxon times the landscape was dense and continuous woodland. The Anglo Saxon Charters prove the existence of innumerable villages each with a permanent name and a defined boundary.
Nearly every village in England existed by the 11th C as described in the Domesday Book. Some go back to the 5th or 6th C with clues from their place names as recorded in the Anglo Saxon Charters of the 7th -10th C.
The Anglo Saxons in Harley
Although it is impossible to say when the Anglo Saxons arrived in Harley, Harley was, an Anglo Saxon village. The Saxons built a mill in Harley which was recorded in Domesday. Domesday was a record of the late Anglo Saxon settlement (or earlier)
According to Margaret Gelling – The Place Names of Shropshire, the name Harley is Anglo Saxon. Ley (leah Old English) means woodland clearing. Har obviously means Hare. She says the name Harley dates from the mid Anglo Saxon period which is the late 8th early 9th Century (750 to 850 AD) Most of the villages in England have Anglo Saxon names. This does not mean that they are not older.
In Shropshire there are ten place names which contain ‘leah’ or ley, meaning woodland clearing.
The village therefore, was named Harley, by the Saxons. This graphically describes that on arrival, they saw a woodland clearing populated by Hares.
Today this means very little but to the Saxons this was of great significance. It is said they were Christian on arrival, so woodland clearings would not have been regarded as ‘sacred groves’ and places of worship as did their pre Christian ancestors. Even so, their persistent folk memories would still have made woodland clearings very special.
On arrival in England, and for several centuries whilst the Christian religion was taking hold, the non-Christian Saxons worshipped many gods and goddesses, the chief god being Odin or Woden (Wednesday). However the Christian religion was gathering strength and St Augustine had taken responsibility for the Christianization of England.
St Augustine was a Catholic Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 597. He is the founder of the Catholic Church in England. In 595 he was chosen by Pope Gregory to lead a mission to England, and within a year of his arrival in Kent, he claimed a large number of converts which rose to around 10,000 by 598. He, incidentally established the first school in England, King’s College School in Canterbury. St Augustine died on 26 May 604 AD. He led the second wave of evangelism, as the Romans were the first to bring Christianity to England.
