The origins of Leicestershire: churches, territories, and landscape

Graham Jones

Introduction Neat parcelling-out of the landscape need In the decades since our introduction to not be Danish. Like the open fields, it may be Glanville Jones’s ‘multiple estate’ (Jones 1961) older.4 and John Blair’s minster parish (Blair 1988),1 Rather than ‘Where are the minsters?’ attempts to identify Leicestershire’s earliest better to ask ‘What territories were served by churches and pre-hundredal structures have minsters?’ Can they be identified and their mainly concentrated on area studies.2 Blair extents estimated?5 Can they be categorised? himself notes how some ‘relatively settled’ Sub-kingdoms, provinces, folk territories, and areas such as Leicestershire ‘still seem very regiones (Bassett 1993; Hooke 1998) are thin’ in their number of minsters, asking ‘whether not easily distinguished from each other and the contrast is simply in the surviving sources’ from hundreds and wapentakes. Moreover, (Blair 2005, 152, 315-6). While the national a network of minsters, monastic or secular, and regional pictures remain incomplete,3 with neatly dovetailing parochiæ, will not alone uncertainty clings to the shape of religious reveal the ancient devotional landscape. provision before and after the Augustinian Places of religious or ritual resort came in many mission, the process of Christianisation, the guises. What became Leicestershire had a extent of Danish colonisation, the impact of richly varied religious geography as this study reforms, and the emergence of the parochial shows, but we should expect it from continental network. This ramifies back and forth with evidence. In southern Germany, for example, secular matters: cultural identity, nucleation, churches were first built at fords or crossroads, manorialisation, and here the existence of hilltops, burial barrows, or springs for baptism, Leicestershire itself. ‘perhaps the pre-Christian centres of gaue or hundreds’ (Wood 2005, 79-80). Locating pre-Conquest churches is not the issue. By the eleventh century few places were Furthermore, the idea that lords’ churches, eigenkirchen, emerged in England only in the more than a reasonable if lengthy walk from a century or so before the Norman Conquest church (Parsons 1996, 11-35). The number looks increasingly vunerable. Numerous looks similar to that of ‘small hundreds’ and places in Leicestershire appear likely to have villae integrae (taxation units) two centuries been furnished much earlier with churches, later. One persistent explanation for the deeper oratories or chapels supplementary to problem is that Danish incomers so disrupted episcopal and ‘proto-parochial’, minster and reorganised the territorial landscape provision. Again, continental evidence that earlier arrangements are impossible to supports this. Wilfrid, bishop in Leicester circa recover. Archaeology is now challenging this. 692-706, spent time in Francia like many other 1 Jones 1961, ‘Settlement Patterns in Anglo- English clerics, exposed to a pattern of church Saxon England’, was reassessed by Barnwell and provision already two centuries in the making. Roberts 2011, alongside some of his seminal texts. See also Barrow’s ‘small shires’ (Barrow 1973). 4 See for example Oosthuizen 2006 and 2013, Blair 1988 (ed), Minsters and Parish Churches: and her contribution and others’ in Higham and The Local Church in Transition, 950-1200, was Ryan 2010. reviewed by Cambridge and Rollason 1995, 87– 5 Bassett who discusses this issue (2007a, 115- 104. For additional reading see Blair 2005. 42) has reconstructed early Midland parochiæ 2 Roffe 1996, 107-20; Foss 1996, 83-105; elsewhere, arguing for Romano-British diocesan Phythian-Adams 1978 [on Claybrooke and origins in some cases. See also Bassett 1989, 225- district]; Bowman 2004, 105-36 [on south-east 56; 1991, 1-23; 1992a, 14-15; 1992b,13-40; 2000, Leicestershire]. 1-27. My matching conclusion about Worcester is 3 Comparative studies include Foard 1985, 185- in Jones 1996. Bassett’s westernmost parochiæ 222; Everitt 1986; Croom 1988; Hase 1988; can be fitted into a series of large early units along, Blair 1991; Pitt 1999; Hall 2000; Hadley 2000; and mostly spanning the Severn from Bristol to Winchester 2008, 14-21. north-east Wales. 1 Figure 1: Hypothetical districts (broken black lines) mapped against principal and secondary watersheds south of the Trent (dark tint) and Leicestershire’s county boundary (lighter, broken tint). As Susan Wood describes, in Frankish cities The word parochia still meant primarily the (generally places with a Roman past, like bishop’s territory, or a large, loosely defined Leicester) baptisms took place in the cathedral region within it served by what was almost a or an attendant baptistery; further basilicas, subsidiary cathedral. However the Council of closely tied to the cathedral, housed honoured Orleans in 541 spoke of ‘parishes constituted relics; others marked burial places – often of in the houses of powerful men’ and of ‘anyone a revered bishop – outside the walls (Wood, having or asking to have a parish (diocesim) in op. cit.). In the country, the parish church his land’. Similarly, when Wilfrid visited Rome, serving a large area was normally in a vicus, he would have passed through a countryside a substantial rural settlement, often a pre- where the beginnings of a ‘growing swarm of Christian cult centre; it had probably been built small private churches’ was adding to Italy’s by order of the bishop or count (the English network of important baptismal churches ealdorman’s counterpart), and was staffed (plebes, vernacular pievi) under episcopal and maintained by the bishop. An increasing control, with their own dependent oratories phenomenon was the private oratory, built by (Wood 2005, 66-67, 86). In Switzerland and a landlord on his villa, probably for his own and Bavaria, 100 churches have been discovered to his household’s convenience rather than for have origins circa 600-750. Local nobility were his tenants. The household had to attend the ‘busy studding the landscape with proprietary cathedral or parish church for the great feasts churches in which they could receive lavish and almost certainly for baptism. burial’ (Burnell and Jones 1999, 83-106 at 88). 2 Recovering Leicestershire’s pastoral 2011, 110-11, 127-32). Peripheries may be centres and related territories is hampered by indicated by names in -worth, ‘small, single a county boundary which everywhere looks homesteads, often in remote situations’ (Smith artificial, permeable, the result of arbitrary 1970, 274; Hooke 1996, 85-87), though expansions or contractions. Though the circumstance could promote their status, as at geography of the Midland shires is thought Market Bosworth and Tamworth. likely to perpetuate aspects of ‘military Fragmented mother parishes are evidenced territories which surrounded the fortified by former chapelries (Phillimore 1912; VCH settlements of the kingdom of Mercia’ (Bassett 1905-64; Nichols 1795-1811; Humphery-Smith 2007b, 53-85, fn 78), Leicestershire ‘probably 1984), payments in lieu of lost income, and evolved in the tenth century’, no earlier than two-and three-fold geographical separation8 Edward the Elder’s conquest of the Danelaw of central-place or proto-urban functions: circa 920, and with the use of Watling Street court, church, and market. The latter often to divide English from Danish Mercia dated evolved from king’s tūns, collection centres to 886-913 ‘in the course of unchronicled for food rents or renders, often the reeve’s vill struggles and negotiation’ (Stafford 1985, rather than the king’s (Sawyer 1983, 273-99). 137). Significantly, then, parish or township boundaries transgress both Watling Street Sunday markets, originally in the churchyard (itself diverting from a natural feature, the and archaic in the twelfth century, may be Severn-Trent watershed)6 and the Welland, diagnostic. Parishes spanning rivers where and the shire boundary along the Soar arguably this is not the norm may survive from trans- truncates a regio. The Eye Brook gives way riverine units. Boundaries can be eloquent to a ‘weak’ boundary across headwaters of (Winchester 2000; Richardson 1996): whether the Chater. Neither Sewstern Lane nor the weak and meandering, strongly fixed, e.g. watershed of the Witham is respected. The on watercourses and ridges, or suggestive boundary with Nottinghamshire intrudes into of partition – zig-zagging as through open- the Vale of Belvoir. Townships were shared field furlongs, coming close to the church, 9 with Derbyshire, and so on. panhandled, etc. In areas of gentle topography, curvilinear churchyards seem Paradoxically this strange boundary is a diagnostic of older managed landscapes help, because it frees the observer to allow for than the rectilinearly planned, nucleated earlier land-units – with central places served villages of Midland England. Hilltop, spring- by major churches – which ignore it. Clues head, riverside and isolated churches also to such units include clustered place-names speak differently to those slotted into planned suggesting function, specialism or location, like villages. Those with floors level with, or raised Charlton, Hardwick, Norton.7 Peter Sawyer above, their yards may have different origins argued that tūn names were intrinsically (on man-made mounds, for example?) from subsidiary by the mid-Anglo-Saxon period, those which are sunken. circa 650-85 (Sawyer 1979), the ‘long eighth century’ which Stephen Rippon associates Hundreds and wapentakes may preserve with large-scale investment in landscape ancient entities, but their quartering of management (Rippon 2010, 39-64). Place- Leicestershire looks like a consequence of names alluding to churches, e.g. Kirkby and shiring. Wariness is also needed when using Misterton, may occupy the same category, Domesday (Morris 1976-79). Cadastral though they may pinpoint provisioning rather architecture – the mathematical relationship than church locations. Paul Cullen, Richard 8 The late Mick Aston’s term was ‘dispersal’ (Aston Jones and David Parsons have recently 1985). concluded that bý names represent pastoral 9 For a map view of this see Roger Kain and colonisation and thorps arable (Cullen et al, Richard Oliver (2001), ‘Historic Parishes of England and Wales: an Electronic Map of 6 Examples of such boundary transgressions are Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and reviewed by Williamson 2012, 94-97. Metadata’, held online at the UK Data Archive 7 Place-name interpretations rely on Cox, 1998- http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/ - access at 2009, The Place-Names of Leicestershire, English subscribing institutions or registration required for Place-Names Survey 75, 78, 81, 84, and Cox use. Large-scale nineteenth-century Ordnance 2005, A Dictionary of Leicestershire and Rutland Survey mapping is on-line at the University of Place-Names; also on Ekwall 1960; Watts 2004. Edinburgh Edina archive and can be accessed at On relational names, Finberg 1964, 144-50. subscribing institutions via http://edina.ac.uk/. 3 = churches with =  = mother churches  = administrative centres = relationships a sub- = at = hall places    Figure 2: Early churches and hypothetical districts based on mother church parishes and other evidence: a framework for future investigation. Boundaries are provisional, problematic, intuitive, and in places misinterpretation. result of doubtless the No contemporaneity or permanence is implied. Districts are labelled by major river(s) and by folk or kin name. Church-site classifications are similarly provisional, some certain but others intuitive. This is not a definitive list. Squares Circles Bold crosses Arrows district level. Light crosses potentially significantorigins. non-parochial OUNDLE CHATER UPPER UPPER LOWER LEAKE South Central 1 UPPER AVON LEAM TRENT MEASE BLYTHE TAME

4                 Inner Leicestershire/ Legora South 1 Croft 2 Barwell 3 Earl Shilton 4 Kirkby Mallory 5 Leire 6 Foston Lower Sence/ ’Peotlingas’ 1 Knaptoft 2 Peatling Magna 3 Peatling Parva Central Sector 1 Great Glen 2 Wistow 3 Wigston Magna (All Saints) 4 Wigston Magna (St Wigstan) 5 Thurnby 6 Ratby 7 Groby Leicester (L) ‘St Nicholas’ St Mary in Castro St Margaret                    Northern Leicestershire (Eye)/ Upper Wreake Framland 1 Melton Mowbray 2 Waltham-on-the-Wolds 3 Scalford 4 Wymondham 5 Buckminster Devon 1 Bottesford 2 Orston Lower Soar and lower Wreake 1 Rothley 2 Barrow-upon-Soar 3 Loughborough 4 Shepshed 5 Queniborough 6 South Croxton 7 Keyham 8 Owston 9 Willoughby-on-the-Wolds (Vernemeton) 10 Ratcliffe-on-Soar Gotham 11 Trent 1 Flawforth                   Upper Avon/’Lillingas’ 1 Monks Kirby 2 Newnham 3 Lilbourne 4 Holywell (Caves Inn, Tripontium) 5 Lutterworth 6 Misterton Upper Welland 1 Market Harborough (St Mary in Arden) 2 Great Bowden 3 Gumley 4 Church Langton 5 Hallaton 6 Medbourne 7 Welham 8 Bringhurst 9 Holyoaks (Mirabel) 10 Tilton Desborough 11 12 Rothwell                        3 Lyddington 3 Lyddington 4 Oakham 5 Hambleton 6 Whitwell 7 Empingham 8 Stamford 9 Barrowden 10 North Luffenham Tixover 11 Witham 1 Grantham Outer Leicestershire Valley/’Hreope’ Trent 1 Breedon 2 Melbourne 3 Repton Trent 4 Burton on 5 Measham 6 Ashby-de-la-Zouch Not shown: Southwell Sence 1 Market Bosworth 2 Sibson 3 Mancetter Anker 1 Hinckley 2 Higham-on-the-Hill 3 Nuneaton   ’   ’    1 Daventry        External Ring of Primary Churches Tame/ Blythe/’Tomsaetan 1 Tamworth 2 Polesworth 3 Coleshill Not shown: Lichfield Coventry/’Sowe 1 Coventry 2 Exhall 3 Stoneleigh Leam 1 Offcurch Nene 1 Brixworth Not shown: Oundle/’Undalas’ 1 Kettering Not shown: Oundle Peterborough Not shown: Peterborough Chater/’Roteland’ 1 Ridlington 2 Uppingham

5 of fiscal obligations to tenurial and other land- cattle to high summer pastures, and followed units - is another useful technique (Hart 1992; Beltaine – May Day in Celtic-speaking lands, 1968, 55-66; 1970; 1974). It nevertheless when pre-Norman cattle renders, ‘Beltancu’ carries a caveat about mistaking eleventh- in Lancashire, treth calan mai in Wales, and century conditions for something older. Large elsewhere ‘cornage’ or ‘noutgeld’, were due to districts, multiple estates, and landed units the king’s reeves. approximating to minster parishes share Territorial boundaries often shadowed similarities which make them difficult to watersheds and Figure 1 shows hypothetical differentiate: heavily exploited cores and a districts mapped against principal and generally upland, pastoral periphery. Often secondary watersheds. Pre-industrial high-status functions survived around the communities were self-resourcing, accessing estate caput; and sometimes archaic tenures involving renders and obligations to kings or river-meadows and high pastures and earls (the latter succeeding sub-kings in the benefiting from secure, shared river routes west Midlands and wielding regal power in with optimally organised market hinterlands. palatine counties). Smaller sub-hundredal They are primary building blocks for the groupings of vills included land booked out cultural provinces or regional societies argued to ministers and clerics, while on smaller by Charles Phythian-Adams (1993, 2007). estates everywhere upland and lowland This survey is therefore organised around settlements were linked by common lordship. drainages. Figure 2 locates churches within In the background are Romano-British estates, these drainages and should be referred to for corresponding with the Merovingian ‘villa- locations in the survey that follows. region’ in which the mansus was the basic unit After detailing the ring of primary of settlement (Halsall 2007, 221). Conflating churches outside the county, the survey first evidence is a continual risk, but only by bringing examines ‘Outer Leicestershire’: the Trent data together can threads be disentangled. drainage (including Breedon and Ashby-de- Scientific study of church and other religious la-Zouch districts), the Market Bosworth and dedications shows that they carried specific Hinckley/Nuneaton districts in the Anker and associations (Jones 2007)10 and that superior Sence drainage, the Lutterworth district on centres generally adopted superior cults: Peter the upper Avon, and Market Harborough’s and Paul, representing Romanitas, civic (royal) on the upper Welland. It then addresses authority; Michael, captain of heavenly hosts those areas drained by the Soar and (hilltops), angel of death (cemeteries) and Wreake: ‘Northern Leicestershire’ on the baptism/healing (riversides, pools); Andrew, Wreake and lower Soar (plus Bottesford and mission and baptism (revered by Augustine’s other vills in the Vale of Belvoir), and finally master, Gregory the Great, and by Wilfrid); ‘Inner Leicestershire’ on the upper Soar and John the Baptist, baptism, wood-pasture; including Leicester itself. and Mary at the earliest periods, associated with arable and harvest (Assumption, August The external ring of ‘primary’ 15, and Nativity, September 9) as well as the churches motherhood of Christ. Especially significant Tame-Blythe/‘Tomsaetan’ are the apostle Bartholomew, legendary Beyond Leicestershire lay a ring of large pre- appropriator of temples for Christian worship, Conquest units served by major churches (for and Helen, mother of Constantine. She overview see Parsons 2001, 50ff). Lichfield, represents ideal monarchy (her portrait was where St Michael’s pre-dated Chad’s cathedral imitated on coins for Offa’s consort Cynethryth, of circa 670 (Mary, then Peter) (Bassett 1992b), unique in Anglo-Saxon England) and perhaps had Tamworth as its corresponding royal vill pastoral wealth. St Helen’s-Day-in-the-Spring, with a secondary minster, originally St Edith’s May 3, began annual Pennine migration with nunnery, at Polesworth. Facing across the Tame-Blythe confluence are Coleshill (Peter 10 For the dedications cited in this study see the on-line datasets of TASC, the project for a and Paul), centre of a royal estate and large Transnational Database and Atlas of Saints’ Cults, parish with a Sunday market, and Curdworth at Leicester University: http://www.le.ac.uk/users/ to the north (not shown on map), whose name grj1/tasc.html; and the UK Data Service, deposit echoes that of Penda’s grandfather Creoda. 4975. 6 Sowe Roteland/Chater Coventry’s minster was perhaps of eighth/ Rutland is divided by a major watershed. Its ninth-century date (op. cit.), though Exhall, northern streams feed the Wreake, so Alstoe on its parochia’s northern edge, ‘angle of hundred is considered with Leicestershire. In land pertaining to an ecclesia’, looks older. the south, Roteland, dowry of English queen- Stoneleigh, to the south of Coventry, is the consorts (Phythian-Adams, 1977, 63-84), matching royal estate. Lichfield and Coventry the Chater and tributaries converge with the were country places in landscapes with ritual Welland. Uppingham, ‘hām of the upland potential: ‘open field/veldt in a grey forest’ dwellers’ (Peter and Paul) with ‘Thor’s leāh’ to (Letocetum, modern Wall on Watling Street), the west, had pilgrimages to St Mary’s spring and Cofa’s tree, both on hills with adjacent and a church image of Michael. It formed a pools and Michael churches. church-manor pair with its chapelry, Queen Edith’s soke-centre of Ridlington (Andrew). Leam However, adjacent Preston’s name suggests Offa’s name marks Offchurch, overlooking an early church-place also, and immediately the Fosse west of Southam. St Gregory’s south of Uppingham is the Bishop of Lincoln’s was linked to the cult of Offa’s supposed son manor of Lyddington (Andrew) (see also Upper Fremund. Dunchurch (Peter) on Dunsmore, Welland). just south of Rugby, is the other place in the Leam valley defined by religious activity. Edith’s manors of Oakham and Hambleton look like poles of a Vale of Catmose estate Nene divided off from a larger territory dependent On the Nene side of its watershed with the Leam on the king’s manor of Empingham, pivotal is Daventry. Holy Cross stood in a strikingly to Roteland and where St Peter’s churchyard curvilinear yard off the main thoroughfare, lies on the south of a playing-card shaped west of a large Iron-Age enclosure overlooking settlement core, with ‘Old Prebendal House’ Romano-British Bannaventa on Watling Street. sandwiched between the church and a chapel However, Fawley was the hundredal mother of St Botolph. Oakham had fairs of John the church and Weedon, wēoh dūn (Peter and Baptist and the Invention of the Holy Cross Paul), the royal vill – given to Penda’s grand- (‘St Helen’s-in-the-Spring’. Helen was patron daughter St Wærburh, with her disciple Alnoth of a pilgrimage chapel at nearby Langham). enshrined at adjacent Stowe. Oakham and Hambleton’s churches were Chapelries, place-names, and boundary Domesday possessions of a King’s Clerk, patterns suggest Brixworth’s parochia marched Albert of Lorraine. This marks minster on the east with that of Kettering (Peter and status for one of them, probably Hambleton Paul). Northampton itself might once have (Andrew), mother church of the royal chapel of been served from Brixworth, with St Peter’s St Peter at Stamford and probably also once of as a royal chapel. Visible for miles, Brixworth Whitwell, named after the spring which flowed church sits on a ridge above a pool. Its patronal under its hilltop church of Michael. cult, All Saints, was promoted at Rome circa Parochial topography around Stamford 800. Had it once honoured Michael? clearly predates its attachment to Lincolnshire. The boundaries of St Michael’s, one of fourteen Oundle (‘Undalas’)/Peterborough medieval parishes, make sense in relation Oundle (Peter and Paul), with a Sunday to those of the Castertons (Peter and Paul market and eight hundreds, doubtless the at Great Casterton, a Romano-British walled provincia reported by Bede, was one of settlement) and Ryhall, with its local saint Wilfrid’s federated monasteries. Across the Tybba. St Michael’s also spans the Welland, Nene was a Romano-British settlement. extending into, and thus again predating the Peterborough minster (Peter and Paul, soke of Peterborough, as far as Wittering, probably Andrew earlier) was founded at named from the Witheringas, a people of the Medehamstede by king Peada in 655. Nearby Tribal Hidage. on the Welland is Flag Fen, a prehistoric ritual A further folk-name, the Hwicce, was complex. Peterborough, a soke centre, lay preserved in Witchley Hundred, chiefly along downstream from Romano-British Castor, the Welland between Stamford and the Eye Cyneburh’s monastery. Brook. Barrowden (‘tumuli dūn’) (Peter)

7 was the Domesday royal soke centre. North and became a royal mausoleum (Biddle Luffenham (John Baptist) belonged to the 1992) – Wigstan was enshrined there. Its Queen. Here the advowson went with assets included lead mines in the Peak, and Oakham Castle, while a churchyard-chapel its parochia appears to have included another of Mary had its own burial ground. Tixover’s minster at Burton-on-Trent (Tringham 2003, isolated church beside the Welland – a chapel 3-5, 48-53). Here too the Trent is spanned, of Ketton, first-named royal Domesday manor and Burton’s ancient parish, pushing into of Northamptonshire and Rutland – has an Needwood, comes tantalisingly close to that of extremely rare patron, St Faith. Hanbury. The latter, on a major Trent tributary, the Derwent, was Wærburh’s first burial-place. East and north of Rutland, extensive districts Together with nearby Tetbury it is best seen in were served by the churches of Bourne (Peter the context of a Mercian royal territory. and Paul), supposedly patrimony of Hereward the Wake, and Grantham, another possession Burton, like neighbouring Newton, Barton, of Queen Edith. Its enshrined patron Wulfram Walton, Stretton, and Stanton, has a name arrived in the tenth century: the church had indicating subsidiarity; a reeve’s tūn, perhaps? a rare chantry of Peter, and another of John Repton’s name hints at territorial identity: ‘hill of the Baptist (see Bottesford, below). A number the people called Hreope or Hrype’. How they of seventh-century parochiæ along the Trent related to the ‘dwellers on the Tame’ is difficult complete the circle, beginning with the minster to assess. Their name is Germanic, while parish of Southwell (Mary), supposedly ‘saetan’ peoples have been characterised founded by Paulinus, circa 627. The others as occupying land where British populations follow. remained an important part of the social mix. Breedon’s patrons are Mary and a prince 1. ‘Outer Leicestershire’ Hardwulf, one of four saints venerated there. Trent Valley/’Hreope’ The others were Fretheric (Frithuric), Cotta, Leicestershire’s best-known early church, and Benna. Beonna (another form of the Breedon’s hilltop minster founded in an shortened name), ruler of East Anglia circa Iron-Age fort by the princeps Frithuric circa 758, may be Beornred, briefly ruler of Mercia 700 (Stenton 1970, 158; Foot 2006, 275), in 757 after the murder at Seckington of king associates more easily with Derbyshire. A Æthelbald (Archibald, Fenwick and Cowell strong boundary divided its medieval parish 1996, 1-19). However, Breedon’s original from those of the lower Soar, and significantly patron was probably Andrew, as at Burton and coincides with the watershed which also also Peterborough, whose monks established encloses its western, Derbyshire neighbour the minster (one of Breedon’s townships was Melbourne (Michael). A royal demesne manor Andreskirk). A shared association with ‘Celtic’ in 1066, Melbourne had extensive berewicks saints is striking: David at Repton, Modwen on the opposite side of the Trent which at Burton, Brigid at Stanton on a principal interlocked with outlying portions of Derby’s approach to Breedon (whose name is a parishes of Michael and Peter (two of six British-Anglian hybrid). Margery Tranter has churches there in 1086). Derby’s earlier name, pointed out the place-names Walton, Bretby Northworthy, locates it more easily within the and Ingleby (Tranter 2003). An intriguing Melbourne estate than in relation to Tamworth, Welsh tradition described Guthlac, alumnus a presumption based on Breedon’s foundation of Repton and son of Penwalh (‘chief of the by a prince of the Tomsaetan, ‘dwellers on the British speakers’), sojourning at Llangollen in Tame’. Powys, perhaps in exile. Westward there is no clear demarcation Mease valley between Melbourne’s estate and the large Repton’s parochia included places in the area linked manorially and ecclesiastically to catchment of the Mease, which flows into Repton (Wi[g]stan), five miles away. (Was the Trent less than a mile downstream from Leicestershire’s boundary drawn to separate the confluence with the Tame. Here are the Breedon’s 20 hides, previously joined to Seals (Netherseal, Overseal), townships Repton’s 30?) Repton’s minster was operating complicatedly divided between Derbyshire by circa 600 (according to tradition), or circa and Leicestershire and interdigitating with the 700 from a further land-grant by Frithuric, large parish of Ashby de la Zouch (Helen). 8 Together they make a compact unit, a further the Tame is Tamworth, the Mercian royal vill such unit including Measham in Derbyshire, to which Bosworth/Mancetter may ultimately a royal Domesday manor, and bordering have looked. Edith, sainted princess-abbess Ashby’s southern neighbour Packington in of Polesworth upstream from Tamworth, is the Leicestershire (Helen also). The ‘ash-tree noteworthy patron of Orton-on-the-Hill, another place’ had a St Anne’s well and the local place- major early parish. Possibly Polesworth should name Prestop, (?)‘priest’s valley’. Were Ashby be considered part of the Bosworth/Mancetter and Measham a church-manor pair? entity. Anker-Sence drainage Anker Sence A second group of parishes occupies the The southernmost vills of the Mease group Anker’s headwater basin, flanked by the link more easily with a royal estate dominating parochiæ of Coventry, Monks Kirby, and the basin of the Sence, chief tributary of the Barwell. Like Sheepy, Hinckley parish Anker, itself a tributary of the Tame. (Appleby, (Mary) overlapped Watling Street. Hinckley’s problematically, divides between this group chapelries interlocked with those of Higham on and Measham’s.) The administrative centre, the Hill (Peter and Paul), making a religious/ Market Bosworth, ‘of the Queen’s Holding’ in lay pair. Higham’s boundaries in turn continue 1086, was surrounded by clustered chapelries those of Nuneaton (earlier Eaton, ‘river tūn’) in and relational and specialist vills. They include Warwickshire, which with Hinckley belonged in Congerstone (‘king’s tūn’), Carlton, Barton, 1066 to Harding, Butler to Queen Emma in 1062 Shenton, ‘tūn on the Sence’, and the ‘new hall’, and son of another royal minister, Eadnoth the Newbold Verdon. (Angus Winchester has Staller. Nuneaton’s dedication (Nicholas) looks linked boðl names to bode-service - watching late; its twelfth-century fair, on Holy Cross duty (Winchester 2008, 18-19). Newbold is on day, May 3, suggests Helen, but the nunnery a three-way watershed at the district’s edge.) commemorated Mary. Boundary evidence Bosworth church (Peter and Paul) had long- supports the further inclusion in this territory of surviving collegiality (a priest and deacon in Bulkington and Wolvey in Warwickshire, plus 1086), a curvilinear yard, and a nearby spring. in Leicestershire another church/manor pair, Sibson, ‘Sigeberht’s dūn’ (Botolph), on the Burbage (‘ridgetop burh’, a Domesday manor Sence looks a likely secular counterpart, with of Coventry Abbey, probably given by Earl adjacent Wellsborough, ‘the wheel hill’, as a Leofric or Godiva) and Aston Flamville. hypothetical place of assembly and ritual – Half-way between Mancetter and Venonae around a henge? Sibson’s parish reached (High Cross), Watling Street is crossed by Mancetter (Manduesseum) on Watling Street, the Harrow stream. The hærg or ‘shrine’, a where the walled settlement has produced tribal meeting place, probably lay near one of a mid-fifth century coin, while St Peter’s and the head-springs west of Hinckley, perhaps at the manor house stand within a related fort. Hollycroft or Wyken. The latter, like Higham, Sheepy parish, from which Sibson may have stands on the spur dividing the Bosworth and separated, spanned the road, the Anker, and Hinckley districts. Possibly these were two the shire boundary, pre-dating it therefore. parts of a single territory, served by churches Mancetter and its chapelries Atherstone of Peter and Paul, and Mary respectively. (Æthelred’s tūn) and Oldbury (named from Upper Avon/‘Lillingas’ a hillfort), all in Warwickshire, complete Misterton is on everyone’s list of minster a coherent territory and offer a plausible candidates. Testing its claims necessitates a narrative: a Romano-British Christian presence preliminary look at a minster in Warwickshire. relocated to Mancetter’s fort but eclipsed as They lay in adjoining compartments of the secular power moved to Atherstone and then complex topography of the upper Avon, Bosworth. If Æthelred is the Mercian ruler which was overridden by two large estates who agreed a boundary with the Danes and and their suspected parochiæ. These in turn married Alfred’s daughter Æthelflæd, both ignored and therefore probably predate the Atherstone’s preservation within English shire boundaries. On the Avon itself was Mercia and Bosworth’s membership of the Newnham, one of the ‘new-steads’ assigned Queen’s Holding make sense. Eight miles up to the villa-replacement phase of English Watling Street at the Anker’s confluence with settlement. Its religious pair was the minster

9 at Monks Kirby, earlier Kirkbury (Mary), a decayed minster? A round 30 carucates rebuilt in 1077 with two priests, and Giles is achieved by adding in the two-and-a-half added to its dedication. Chapelries known or carucates of king’s alms-land which Arnbern inferred included Smite, named after the Avon the Priest held at Swinford. The Misterton tributary which Kirkbury overlooked. Smite, lands were all held by a Godric, otherwise in turn, had its own chapelry – Brinklow, its unknown in Leicestershire. If he and Arnbern church on the hill whose summit, a suitable held former collegiate land, this might explain pre-Christian devotional focus, provided a the two medieval rectories at Misterton, a sight-line for the Fosse. The interlinked estate feature shared with Hallaton and Sheepy. and parish probably extended ten miles north to south, reaching to the Dunsmore ridge and Misterton lacks Lutterworth’s imposing the outskirts of Rugby. At the northern end site just across the valley, its church (Mary) the ancient parish took in some – probably opening onto a large yard. Maybe that was once all – of the vills around Claybrooke on the minster, provisioned by Misterton. The the Leicestershire side of the Avon/Soar jury is out, especially now Google Earth shows watershed, the hypothesised territorium of cropmarks on the hill between Misterton and Venonae where the Fosse crosses Watling Walcote. Also Lutterworth’s 13 carucates, with Street (Phythian-Adams 1978). Northernmost two each at Misterton and Catthorpe, were was Sharnford. Here royal lordship survived held by Earl Ralph, perhaps by gift of his uncle in 1086 as king’s alms-land enjoyed by Aelfric King Edward or by right of his wife Gytha. the Priest, with another manor in the hands of Another secular-ecclesiastical pairing seems the bishop. Newnham’s owners on the eve more plausible, serving a block of interlocked of the Conquest were likely relatives of Earl vills from Lutterworth to the Avon and from Leofric, their lands delimited in the east by an Watling Street to the Swift/Soar watershed. Avon tributary, the Swift. Lutterworth lies on Much commends a larger territory its upper reaches, but the Leofricings’ lands occupying the whole upper Avon drainage as ended at Watling Street. far as Crick, Naseby, and Husbands Bosworth, Misterton’s name, tūn with, or provisioning where a henge points to the antiquity of the a minster, is much discussed, but rarely in its watershed as a boundary. The rising lands local context. Lutterworth, facing Misterton south of the Avon could be characterised across the valley, looks like the central place as the pastoral counterpart of more arable of a district whose antiquity it evidenced by country around Lutterworth. Crossing points place-names like Walton and Walcote, tūn at Stanford and Swinford (the latter indicating and cot of British-speakers (the latter three- stock movements) strengthen the idea. Just quarters of a mile from Misterton), Wakeley, south of the Avon is Lilbourne, which together ‘watchers’ burial-mound’, and Misterton itself. with land on the west of Watling Street was Misterton church is small but its medieval held after 1066 by Earl Aubrey, perhaps the patron was Andrew. Some curvature in the vestige of a royal manor. Lilbourne had a churchyard perimeter could be residual in a castle and a Sunday market, and was one replanned landscape. Misterton Hall’s lake of the few places where foreign merchants draws attention to the volume of water entering could buy wool through the Leicester market. the Swift here; Andrew’s baptismal association The sheep probably grazed the slopes below could be relevant. A similar point may be made Crick, whose simplex name (Old Welsh creic) about John the Baptist’s patronage of the describes the hill crowned by its church (and riverside hospital below Lutterworth which had largely curvilinear yard) of Margaret, the springs within its curtilege – the spot where, shepherdess saint. Lilbourne looks plausible at the end of the Middle Ages, John Wyclif’s as such a territory’s administrative centre, bones were cast into the river. forming a lordship/church pair with Crick Six of the diocesan bishop’s 14 Domesday but with another devotional locus closer to lands in Leicestershire were in Misterton parish hand. This is Holywell within the defences of (at Poultney, Cotes de Val, and Misterton Romano-British Tripontium. Holywell chapel, itself) or adjoining it (Walcote, Kimcote, and fronting Watling Street, vanished before the Swinford), 27.25 carucates in all (half, 13.5 Reformation, the site occupied by Caves Inn, carucates, at Kimcote) – the endowment of now Coton Farm.

10 A possible pre-Conquest religious presence Godmund’s lēah (Helen) would fit a hunting at Tripontium, suggested to me by Peter lodge, with the royal residence within easy Liddle, prompts comparisons with Mancetter. reach – at Lubba’s hoh perhaps, or even what Like Mancetter and the Sence, Tripontium became Market Harborough. St Mary in (‘Three Bridges’) seems the natural fulcrum Arden, Harborough’s now redundant mother for an upper Avon entity which included the church, belonged circa 1200 to the rector of town’s territorium. Lilbourne’s name shares Great Bowden (Peter and Paul), within which its first element with ‘Lilling’, known from the Harborough lay. Though clerks were uncertain Claybrooke estate. Perhaps the ‘Lillingas’ – whether it was capella or ecclesia, it was ancestors of Leofric’s cousins at Newnham, actually the Pentecostal pilgrimage church for even – acquired a post-Roman lordship communities as far away as Kibworth in the spanning Watling Street as well as the Avon. thirteenth century (‘as is the custom of the country’) and as late as the fifteenth it was A further scenario sees the Kirkbury parochia regarded as Kibworth’s ‘mother church’.11 taking in the vills around Venonæ as a result Much points to a minster on a pre-Christian of the Leofric family’s ancestors pushing their sacred site. Its large, curvilinear yard overlooks power northwards at the expense of the lords the Welland which divided Great from Little of Croft (see under ‘Inner Leicestershire’). Bowden. Eighteenth-century excavation for a Leofric’s father was Earl of the Hwicce, the family grave within the outline of the vanished Severn/Avon people whose bishop-seat was medieval church nave unearthed quantities Worcester. Lichfield diocese’s medieval of cremation material, Romano-British or salient across north-eastern Warwickshire has prehistoric. A short distance north, many a strange shape, with the rest of the county Roman coins (but very little building material) in the Worcester diocese. Leofric is chiefly have been found in gardens along The associated with Coventry, but his home ground Ridgeway, leading to the hilltop overlooking may have lain more centrally within the Avon’s Harborough, an area dotted with springs. The catchment area. The northern boundary of the coins may mark a Romano-British religious Hwicce’s British predecessors, the Dobunni, site, possibly later occupied by a periodic rural may have lain further north than conventionally fair, given finds of Anglo-Saxon metalwork. understood, making them neighbours of the ‘Arden’ is from a British/Gaulish word meaning Corieltauvi. ‘high’ (cf. the Ardennes and Arden forest), suggesting Ardwinna as the deity venerated. Upper Welland Harborough’s medieval street fairs were Parishes and lordships spanning the Welland notable. Harborough’s patron, Denis, is a fair suggest a further territory predating the saint from his cult at Paris. However, Denis was shire (Roffe 1996, 107-20). Neighbouring martyred on Montmartre and it is conceivable Theddingworth and Lubenham, Leicestershire, that Harborough’s foundation brought a hilltop had daughter settlements in Northamptonshire fair down to the Welland crossing. (Hothorpe and Thorpe Lubenham). The extent of Bowden soke’s 300 hides, Lubenham’s looks like a detachment from East largely corresponding to Gartree Hundred, is Farndon. That in turn has wider implications closely matched south of the Welland by three for lordship since Lubenham’s boundary hundreds of Northamptonshire. One was with Great Bowden on the Leicestershire attached to Rothwell (Holy Trinity) – named bank carries across the Welland as Thorpe from a (?red) spring and like Harborough an Lubenham’s boundary with Little Bowden. important fair place. It was the soke centre Little Bowden’s scarp-slope chapelry of Little to Desborough’s royal hall. Rothwell hundred Oxendon (Helen) fits between Farndon and occupied much of the long, thin, east-west Great Oxendon, the latter’s eastern boundary upper drainage of the Ise, a tributary of the continuing that of Little Bowden. A relationship Nene which separates the Welland valley from between Lubenham and Bowden is significant the fan-shaped basin surrounding Brixworth. because Great Bowden (Peter and Paul) was Overlooking the Ise from the south are the a royal vill in 1086 and head of a soke, while intriguingly named Maidwell and Lamport Lubenham’s topographically linked northern (‘long market’). neighbours included Gumley, a Mercian 11 Michael Wood kindly alerted me to this from council meeting place in the reign of Offa. his research for his television series ‘Story of England’. 11 Several other churches in Gartree Hundred Alternatively, this unit should be associated had dependent chapels. Notwithstanding with Rutland. The queen’s hilltop manor Kibworth Harcourt’s relationship to Mary of Whatborough, just east of Tilton and at in Arden, its dedication (Wilfrid) hints at the source of the Chater, hints at this. One landholding by bishops of Leicester attending of the Eye Brook’s sources is a spring just the king at Gumley and Great Glen (see under south of St Peter’s, Tilton, where the Humber/ ‘Inner Leicestershire’). Conceivably Kibworth Wash watershed is crossed by a ridgeway. was exchanged for Knighton (see below). Hallaton looks like the mother church for the Church Langton (Peter), hilltop mother church district – except that in the south-east angle of the Langton settlements, is highly visible, is Bringhurst, whose hilltop church has a close to a prehistoric circle (if that explains curvilinear yard around which the village’s Whirlygig field) and a St Anne’s well, and a mile houses are grouped. Peter Liddle may be from the transitional villa/early-Anglian site right in suggesting it represents an early on the Langton Brook. Billesdon’s curvilinear monastic site. Its dedicatee by 1754, Nicholas, yard, its parish’s position abutting the ridgeway hardly supports that – unless he replaced a (marked by Coplow), and its midsummer more important patron. Bringhurst’s chapelry dedication (John the Baptist) hint likewise at of Easton Magna has Andrew, and that an older ritual locus. Billesdon’s name links aligns Bringhurst (and Welham) with the it to a lost Bilton in Hallaton (see below) and Andrew dedications in Rutland. They begin suits seasonal stock movement. immediately on the other side of the Eye Brook with the episcopal palace church of Towards the eastern end of Gartree hundred, Lyddington and its probable former chapelry Medbourne’s curvilinear yard stands at a Stoke Dry (east bank) and Stoke’s west bank convergence of routeways, including a side- hamlet Holyoaks. These are among a string road from Port Hill on the Gartree Road where of religiously significant places along the Eye an Anglian cemetery in ‘The Old Churchyard’ valley. Others are Prestley Hill, Prestgrave, followed a Romano-British settlement. Priest Hill, Thor’s leāh below Uppingham, Weston and Sutton, south of the Welland, may and Bradley Priory Holy Well. Two hoards of have names relating to Medbourne. The king Late Roman coins are recorded in Holyoaks kept Medbourne’s advowson, having granted Wood, adjoining Mirabel hermitage. Re-use of the manor away, but the church lacked the a shrine-site might be suspected. status of St Michael’s, Hallaton. The parishes intermixed in a probable lay-clerical pair. 2. Northern Leicestershire Hallaton had two rectories, high-status burials Upper Wreake (Eye)/Framland (a pre-Conquest grave slab is in the north aisle), Melton Mowbray (Mary) had several large and a local saint Morrell whose hilltop chapel chapelries and probably others which had and cemetery site overlooking his spring is gained parochial status by the thirteenth the starting point of the annual bottle-kicking century. The parish overlapped substantially and hare-pie scramble. It overlay a buried with a multiple estate acquired by Geoffrey rectilinear feature reminiscent of a small rural de la Guerche from his Leofricing father-in- Romano-British shrine. It is also close to an law (see Newnham, above). The ‘middle Iron Age temple site where ritual feasting and tūn’ indicates a central place, effectively the deposition of coins and fine metalwork was equivalent of a ‘king’s tūn’, an administrative practised (even then a long-standing custom, and market centre. Melton may have attracted judging by a broken Bronze Age rapier found a pre-Conquest mint. It had a Burton (Lazars) nearby). Hallaton’s likely minster status is and a church tūn, Kirby Bellars, whose name, location at a Romano-British settlement site, underlined by tenurial links to the north and and dedication, Peter and Paul, point to some the Bilton-Billesdon connection. Also within significant status within the estate. Hallaton’s putative orbit was Welham on the Welland (Andrew), together with its chapels. Another candidate religious centre to partner Its name may contain the term wēoh, or shrine, Melton’s secular caput interposes between and hām suggests this was the hall site for a Melton and its detached members Eastwell territorial unit bounded by the Welland and the and Goadby Marwood. This is Scalford, which Langton and Eye Brooks, administered from on one interpretation of a tenth-century list of Medbourne. pilgrimage places had its own saint, Egelwin. 12 A copious spring, a source of the Wreake, Buckminster as the one-time mother church of flowed from just below the churchyard (?at the an area split later between Leicestershire and ‘shallow ford’) – a potential focus of devotion Lincolnshire. and/or baptism. Martin was patron saint by 1754, and there was a Michaelmas fair, but Upper Devon and related drainages Northernmost Framland sits oddly on the there was also a medieval devotional image headwaters of the south-flowing Devon. of Peter and Paul. One of William I’s servants Bottesford (Mary), the ‘palace ford’, sits had a small manor here, a likely last vestige between two major Domesday manors: of royal lordship; most of the parish had been Orston, a royal soke centre a mile or so east Earl Waltheof’s. of Romano-British Margidunum near the Trent, A royal hall site offers itself at Waltham-on with a boundary linked to Bottesford’s, and the-Wolds. Barry Cox interpets ‘wald hām’ Grantham, centre of an estate of Queen Edith as a hunting lodge (Cox 2001), and between (see ‘External Ring’ above). Bottesford and its it and Scalford are Chadwell and Wycomb, dependencies form the northern end of a string Domesday members of the king’s Rothley of parishes carved from an existing arable manor. Wycomb is one of several places landscape, judging by their boundaries. On one named ‘wīc (?for vicus) hām’ associated side the scarp of the Wolds, ending at Belvoir, with Romano-British administrative units and cuts them off from the rest of Leicestershire; adjoins Goadby Marwood, a small Romano- on the other they face a similar block in British town. The vills of the Upper Wreak Nottinghamshire, grouped around Orston. divide neatly east and west, with Melton and Despite Orston’s two Domesday priests, the Waltham in the western half. Maybe Waltham more impressive church is Bottesford’s, in a was the summer hall and the permanent hall curvilinear yard half-enclosed by the Devon, should be sought elsewhere, say Wymondham, its west door beside the ‘palace ford’ and its which lies centrally in the eastern half. rectory in similarly large grounds on the other The drainage of the Wreake (known bank. as the Eye above Melton) extends east to The regularity of these parishes and Market Overton/Thistleton, thus including townships – possibly a result of Danish re- northernmost Rutland. Overton’s church lies planning, ends where Long Clawson meets within the Romano-British enceinte associated the upper Smite. From there the wedge with a temple of Veteris (?The Old One) at of townships northwards as far as the a source of the Witham, and its locational Cropwells, and west to the Fosse, has an name best relates to Wymondham. Both integrity. One of the Cropwell manors was a had Peter and Paul as patrons. (Elsewhere Domesday possession of the Archbishop of in Wymondham was Burrowchurch chapel, York (representing the canons of Southwell perhaps identical with St Peter’s chapel minster), with detached wold-land at Hickling. at ‘Burgh’.) Wymondham with Stapleford Old Dalby may not fit this block easily, but constituted a substantial, 48-carucate estate its church of John the Baptist attracts notice of Henry of Ferrers in 1086. Its major northern for its curvilinear yard, and as the nearest to neighbour is Buckminster (John Baptist), the summit where the wold scarp meets the probably its ecclesiastical pair, a Domesday watersheds of the Smite, Fairham and Leake. possession of the Bishop of Lincoln. Bucca’s The site of Vernemeton is close by (see below). church is built into a westward slope with Lower Wreake and lower Soar a modern east-end crypt extension which A striking feature of the medieval geography just might have developed an existing burial of the district along the lower Soar and lower place. Like the other east Framland parishes, Wreake, extending into High Leicestershire Buckminster’s boundary runs along the Witham as far as the Humber/Wash watershed, was side of the watershed, following Sewstern Lane. the complex interlinking of places subject The point where the watershed turns to divide manorially or ecclesiastically to Barrow, the Wreake from the Devon is linked to the Rothley, and Loughborough. Several lane at Wyville, ‘wēoh stream’, by King Lud’s were shared between Barrow and Rothley Entrenchments. The boundary line is then or between Barrow and Loughborough, followed eastward across the Witham valley sometimes with third-party tenants. A handful north of Skillington, so that it is tempting to see of Rothley chapelries beyond the watershed

13 may have resulted from land acquisitions, but faces a large marketplace. At nearby Hathern, in general it is hard to avoid the conclusion Harrow (hærg?) Lane leads off towards the that behind this network lies a single territorial ‘Sheep’s Head’. Christianisation of a sacred entity with the three neighbouring capite at its place makes better topographical sense of core. Shepshed than ‘sheep’s headland’. All enjoyed high-status in 1086: Rothley The sokes of Loughborough, Barrow, and was a royal manor, Barrow-on-Soar had Rothley, like that of Gartree, may have brought been assigned to Earl Hugh of Chester as together more than one earlier entity, but their successor to ‘Earl’ Harold, and the manor of components fit together too neatly to ignore Loughborough was also in Hugh’s possession, the existence of an underlying territory. For having previously been shared by ‘five example, the townships east of the Soar and thegns’ (conceivably servants of Edward the south of the Wreake fall into two blocks, divided Confessor). As well as their widespread sokes by Ridgemere Lane (mere = boundary) from and chapelries to the east, both Rothley and the Wreake to Billesdon Coplow on the Soar/ Barrow had home parishes which extended Welland watershed. At the Wreake end of the into Charnwood. Since Harold was in fact king northern block is Queniborough (Mary), ‘the (though never recognised as such by William) queen’s burh’, with its probable manor/church it is not unreasonable to see Barrow and partner, South Croxton, where the Bishop of Rothley as two components of a royal estate, Lincoln held one of the two manors. Croxton’s the first hived off to create a stopping place for hilltop church (John Baptist) contains a Hugh en route to and from his palatine shire possible fragment of Anglo-Saxon sculptured of Chester via his castle at Tutbury. Rothley stone. Other probable early churches are is reminiscent of Gumley, well-placed to have Gaddesby (Michael) and Owston (Andrew). been a royal hunting lodge on the edge of On the upland margin is Burrough hillfort, Charnwood. Barrow, ‘at the glade’, on its hill locale of the Whitsun festivities recorded by overlooking the Soar, is an intuitive focus for Leland circa 1540 and difficult to contextualise ritual, perhaps associated with a royal hall. Its without a religious element. Like Halstead titular cult, Holy Trinity, possibly represents a (‘holding place’), it was a natural corralling point development of, or parallel to Christ Church, for cattle driven from lowland vills to summer a frequent naming in the Conversion period. pastures. Immediately east of Burrough-on- However, by 1086 Rothley (Mary) appears the-Hill is Somerby. Harold Fox saw this as a the more important ecclesiastical centre, with natural transhumance landscape. its Anglian churchyard cross and a chapel of Tucked beside Queniborough but divided the murdered Mercian prince Wigstan (‘the from it by the Ridgemere is Syston (Peter and churchyard of St Wystane in the temple of Paul), which with its probable dependencies Rothley’, Lloyd 1973, 41). Loughborough, occupies the lower end of the southern block. ‘Luhheda’s burh’, destined to become the The upper-end is taken up by Keyham, High district’s market town, had the smallest soke Leicestershire’s only hām; Beeby (Guthlac), of the three, but like the others it spanned ‘bee-keepers’ bý’; Leofric’s manor of Scraptoft the Soar. Its burh (‘defended enclosure’) is and its ancient mother church Humberstone, perhaps to be associated with the church’s ‘Hunbeorht’s stone’ (Peter and Paul); and, large curvilinear yard, not impossibly surrounding Keyham on three sides, Hungarton enclosing an early monastery. The local name (Botolph) with its chapelries Ingarsby and Prestwold may point in the same direction. Quenby, ‘the queen’s or women’s bý’. Keyham, Nevertheless, with its patron saints Peter and sole member of Barrow and Rothley in the Paul, Loughborough looks equally suitable as southern block, shared parochial rights with the reeve’s vill and trading-place relative to a Hungarton in Baggrave – significant because king’s hall at Barrow and its attendant minster Baggrave is on the far side of Ridgemere, at Rothley. Boundaries support a further or apparently carved out of Croxton. alternative relationship with Shepshed, royally owned and still hidated in 1086, whose church In summary, this block looks like a bipartite (Botolph) occupies a spur site on the eastern estate of the Queen (reflecting that of the king parish margin approached by Butthole Lane. across the Soar), with halls at Queniborough Shepshed’s boundaries are continued by those and Keyham, a church centre at Croxton, and of Belton (John Baptist), whose rectilinear yard the reeve at Syston. Belgrave’s relationship 14 with the estate is discussed under Inner St Bartholomew’s, Quorndon, recalls a Leicestershire. characteristic of English dedications honouring the temple-appropriating apostle: their Lower Soar, Leake drainage statistically positive, geographical correlation It is probable that the hypothesised Lower with places whose names are indicative of non Soar territory spanned and therefore predated or pre-Christian ritual or worship. The b(e)aru the shire boundary along the river. Harold held of Barrow, Quorndon’s mother church, might manors on both banks. Approaching the Trent, have functioned as a sacred grove overlooking the Soar’s left bank is occupied by townships the Soar. Further off, in Wymeswold parish, and manors associated with Shepshed and Barry Cox has identified two ‘Harrow’, hærg Loughborough while on the right bank sit names, and two from alh, also meaning ‘shrine’ Kingston-on-Soar (Wilfrid), its mother church or ‘temple’ (Cox 2004). The Alhfleot, ‘temple Ratcliffe (Holy Trinity), and its ‘Sutton’. The stream’, must be the one which rises at Six Hills natural extent of the regio would take in the and forms Wymeswold’s eastern boundary vills along the Leake, which joins the Trent at before passing Wysall, the hōh or ‘spur’ of the Kingston. These, including Leake itself, West wēoh (wīh or wīg), yet another Old English (Helen) and East (Mary), interpose between term for a temple. At a stretch, all these names the Soar (and almost immediately the Trent) might have related to Vernemeton, whose site and a group of vills at the valley’s upper end was indeed appropriated for Christian use, which comprised the detached wold division Bartholomew-fashion. After burials there with of Nottinghamshire’s Broxstowe hundred. Germanic-style grave-goods came a chapel, They also face Leicestershire lands across the on a hilltop known as The Wells, described Fosse. The rest of the upper Leake valley is in William Camden’s Britannia. Peter Liddle occupied by the large parish of Wymeswold tells me the site has yielded Anglo-Saxon (church, Mary; fair, Peter and Paul), which metalwork of a type associated with clerical looks like a continuation of the Loughborough- vestments. Moreover, land at Willoughby-on- related townships of Prestwold and Hoton. the-Wolds was held in 1066 by Ernwy, probably A plausible hall-place for the Ratcliffe the king’s clerk of the same name who held and Leake group is neighbouring Gotham decayed minsters elsewhere in England. This (Lawrence), to which Barton and Clifton on hints at a valuable chapel endowment – if not the Trent seem related. These occupy the also an income from pilgrims – which survived angle between the Leake watershed, the Trent into the eleventh century. One possible and the Flawforth Brook. On the other bank factor for the continuity of Vernemeton as a of the stream is its eponymous, isolated and devotional place is the longevity in this district ruined church (Peter) at the junction of three of communities whose Romano-British identity parishes. Coming this close to Nottingham was recognised by landlords describing confronts the investigator with an inescapable themselves as Anglian. They include Walton- challenge. Turning the map on its head, how on-the-Wolds, Cumberdale in Wymeswold, far south would one construe a pre-shiring Cumberlea in Seagrave, and Tralleswellehul territory based on Nottingham? in Burton-on-the-Wolds. The Lower Soar regio’s outer bounds Vernemeton stands at a transitional point must remain a matter for future research, but on the Fosse, a meeting point for those among its possible post-Roman origins are clear. A the Corieltauvi, ‘peoples of the rivers’, who inhabited the Trent and Soar valleys. A trading Romano-British settlement developed at place is also plausible. Venonae and the Quorn, on the opposite bank of the Soar from temple at Market Overton would fit the same Barrow but in its parish, and Stanford-on- model – as might some as yet undetected Soar’s church was built over a villa, respecting pre-Christian structure beneath the church at its layout. Moreover, where the young Leake Breedon. stream crosses the line of the Fosse (in the Nottinghamshire parish of Willoughby-on-the- 3. Inner Leicestershire/‘Legora’ Wolds which fills the narrow gap between the South/‘Pēotlingas’ Fosse and Wymeswold parish) lay Vernemeton, Another issue dogging any presumption of ‘the great grove’, with its attendant settlement a territory centred on Barrow, Rothley and on the road itself. Loughborough is its relationship with early 15 medieval Leicester, whose post-Roman Fosse where Cosby’s parish meets Croft was desertion is under re-examination – and the the dynastically and supernaturally significant same applies south of Leicester, too. Here the Guthlac stone where the men of Guthlaxton starting place for reconstructing the territorial wapentake assembled. Bearing in mind the geography is Croft, probably the Mercian seemingly humble status of Huna’s cot and council assembly place in 836. Archangel the modest size of St Michael’s, it is worth Michael’s church sits not on the summit of considering whether Narborough’s burh might Croft’s strikingly high and isolated hill, but by its have surrounded an early monastic site, as stream.12 Stephen Mitchell suggests the cræft suggested for Loughborough. The Bishop of (‘machine’) was a mill powered by a Roman Lincoln’s Domesday manor at Leire also has lock feeding Leicester’s aqueduct, the Raw interest because its name points to a spring, Dyke (Mitchell 2009). Whatever royal estate a source of the Legra, the river (otherwise supported the assembly’s needs had been the Soar) which gave its name to Leicester. fragmented by 1066. Eleven carucates at Croft Conceivably the spring had been sacred to the itself were almost equally divided between the river-deity. However, the bishop’s successors antecessor of William I’s castellan and sheriff, did not enjoy the advowson of the church, Hugh de Grandmesnil (possibly Earl Waltheof whose siting within the settlement looks or his shire reeve), and the royal servant conventional. Harding, succeeded here as at Hinckley by Fragmentation may have been accompanied Earl Aubrey of Northumbria. Detached parts by settlement shifts. A lost Domesday manor, of Harding’s holding, associated in the 13th Legham (presumably sharing the first century by the advowson of St Michael’s, lay element of its name with Leire), and a farm- in Broughton Astley at Sutton-in-the-Elms (the name Langham, in Cosby, hint at earlier ‘south tūn’). This transgresses the arbitrary arrangements. Some slight survivals of royal boundary along the Fosse which divides rights persisted in Croft’s neighbourhood. On parishes and townships from Monks Kirby to its south-western flank is Stoney Stanton and Narborough. the latter’s probable daughter settlement, Other cross-Fosse, and more importantly, Sapcote; immediately west of Croft is Potters cross-Soar tenures linked Stoney Stanton and Marston, whose common boundary with Leire, and Sapcote and Frolesworth, while Stoney Stanton is interdigitated. Potters parts of Croft’s near-neighbour Huncote lay and stone-cutters would be natural specialist in Cosby – presumably the areas later known communities on an important royal estate. as detached parts of Narborough parish. In a Stoney Stanton and its outliers at Primethorpe further example of separated lay and religious and Sutton were held in 1086 by William I’s functions, Narborough was a manorial Steward or Bursar, Robert Dispensator. The constituent of Huncote while Huncote was a clincher was also at Sutton: land of the king’s chapelry of Narborough (All Saints, but with alms. a midsummer fair of John the Baptist). The ‘northern enclosure’ seems relative to Croft. Its Further signs of fragmentation are the inclusion with Huncote and Cosby in an earlier two oddly-shaped, dovetailing groups of estate of Croft would also make sense of the settlements further west which coalesce around otherwise odd egg-timer shape of Croft (with Barwell and Kirkby. Despite its proximity Broughton) and Thurlaston with Normanton, to Croft, Potters Marston, together with its medieval parishes which paid their tithes western neighbour Elmesthorpe formed a long to Croft. Since Thurlaston and Normanton salient of the parish of Barwell (Mary), three- reached, as Huncote and Narborough did, into and-a-half miles to the west, of which they the heart of Leicester’s royal forest, it is easy were both chapelries. However, Elmesthorpe’s to see Croft as a base for hunting like Rothley name and the shape and character of its and Gumley (see below). Cosby’s ancient northern boundary make it clear that it was a patron Helen was the model of queenship daughter settlement of Earl Shilton. Barwell’s (the church was part of the endowment of St six miles wide parish surrounded Earl Shilton Augustine’s, Leicester, below), and on the on three sides, but the latter was a chapelry of Barwell’s northern neighbour Kirkby Mallory. 12 Lloyd 1973 listed Croft’s patron as Peter, which would suit the royal hall, but did not specify The obvious conclusion is that Barwell and his source. Kirkby, whose medieval parish was similar 16 in extent, were two parts of an larger, earlier Hinckley (Bowman 2004, 109-11). However, entity, whose coherent shape is demonstrated this could only be part of a much larger territory, with the addition of Barwell’s further chapelry one that by 1066 was dominated by three of Stapleton and Peckleton, another chapelry large landholdings: those of Coventry Abbey of Kirkby. and previously Earl Leofric (Barwell, Burbage, Potters Marston, part of Kirkby Mallory); This does not look like a straight-forward Harding (Croft, Hinckley, Nuneaton, Sapcote); secular-religious pairing, however. Certainly and predecessors of Hugh de Grandmesnil Barwell, by its name and its gift to the canons (Shilton, Peckleton, and the rest of Kirkby). of Coventry, appeals to an intuitive guess that it occupies an ancient site of worship or Another explanation for Barwell’s peripheral ritual. Kirkby, ‘the church bý’, looks more like location is possible. An odd tongue of Hinckley, a church’s endowment than a secular caput or almost cut off from the rest of the parish, a church site in its own right. Neither its Anglo- stretches to within 100 yards of Barwell church Scandinavian name nor its location gives any and is difficult to explain unless it relates to the obvious sign of antiquity as the present All geography of the intercommoned area. If so, Saints was built in 1220 on the lord’s demesne Barwell church and the manorial core sat on (Dugdale 1693, 832). It is possible that it was the edge of, if not within, the intercommoned chosen as the religious centre for a secular and conceivably once disputed area. They are lordship based at Earl Shilton (Peter) at a time isolated from a further settlement core further when that lordship obtained parochial rights north where several roads and pathways meet independent of some previous ecclesiastical at Goose Green. Barwell gives no evidence of dependency on Barwell. being a major focal settlement, so there must In 1174 Kirkby’s demesne lord was constable have been good cause for the church’s siting. of Leicester castle – possibly hereditary service It stands prominently atop a steep slope which tenure, since the Conqueror’s castellan, Hugh is part of the Soar/Anker watershed. Just to de Grandmesnil, held the bulk of Kirkby, and the east is a chalybeate spring – the ‘Boars also Shilton – which had its own castle. Shilton, Well’ which gave Barwell its name? The partly- whose church occupies a site consistent with curved churchyard is offset from the rectilinear the castle’s bailey, is later found attached to manorial precinct. A cremation urn was dug Leicester castle and including a tenement tied up in the close immediately to the north, and to finding a keeper of the king’s court there. Romano-British roof tiles in the large rectory Peckleton was associated with custody of garden on the west, from a building which part of Leicester Forest, so Kirkby parish as a need not have been domestic. St Mary’s whole related to royal administration. potentially occupies an isolated ritual site of great antiquity, suitable for a tribal boundary Barwell and Kirkby look like two early meeting place like the Harrow brook hærg or parochial centres in a large but fragmenting ‘shrine’ only two miles away at Hinckley. ‘multiple’ estate, serving royal and reeve’s tūn centres at Croft and Shilton respectively. Lower Sence/‘Pēotlingas’ Counter-intuitively, both are peripheral to their Another cross-Soar parish linked Enderby with medieval parishes. Kirkby church looks like its chapelry Whetstone. On the west bank a component of a regular manorial village of the river at Aldeby stood St John-by-the- complex. Possibly an earlier (?pre-nucleation) Water (so called in 1528), unusually a chapel church/chapel lay close to the Roman with burial rights and not far from a Romano- road linking Leicester and Mancetter. An British cemetery. Eindrithi’s bý (Margaret) appropriated roadside shrine site is conceivable looks like the grazing hamlet of Narborough, – neighbouring Stapleton’s name may refer while Whetstone’s boundary zig-zags as if to a stapol or post, sculpted to represent a through Cosby’s fields. Should Blaby and its cult figure, and intriguingly its patron is the daughter-settlement Countesthorpe join this shrine-destroying Martin. Barwell stands on group? Blaby could be Whetstone’s bý, but the edge of an area once intercommoned with they also make a coherent block with Foston, Hinckley, Burbage and Earl Shilton’s daughter whose hilltop church overlooks them, with settlement, Elmsthorpe. Paul Bowman has a chalybeate spring close by. Bartholomew, suggested a pre-Conquest estate comprising dedicatee by 1754, would suit an ancient three ‘primary vills’, Burbage, Barwell and ritual site, and Nichols reported a statue of the 17 apostle on the west wall of the tower, but two organisation on a large scale. Bruntingthorpe wills of 1527 call it St Edmund’s. also had four socmen in Smeeton, a probable The question is important because it early chapelry of Saddington later taken into is unclear how the suggested territorial Kibworth parish, which paid Saddington unit around Croft related to the group of a pension in consequence. Saddington similarly sized, interlocking settlements belonged to the Queen’s Fee, which is on the headwaters of the Whetstone and intriguing since the holder of Knaptoft and Countesthorpe brooks, immediately south most of its chapelry at Shearsby was Harding, of Blaby-Countesthorpe-Foston. The group Queen Emma’s Butler. Saddington’s patron is is bounded by a major tributary of the Soar, Helen. Knaptoft’s dedication (the church has the Sence (or Glen), the estates or sokes long been ruined) may have been Peter, if not centred on Great Glen and Great Bowden, Peter and Paul, since Peter is patron of its and the Soar-Avon watershed. The focal pensionary daughter church at Arnesby, where his figure stands on the eastern gable. settlements, the Peatlings, Magna and Parva, appear to preserve the name of a kin-group, An anomaly in Knaptoft’s ecclesiastical the Pēotlingas. St Andrew’s, Peatling Parva geography is that its parish included part or all is set in a small, raised, hemispherical yard of its south-western neighbour Walton, which with its rectory in an adjoining rectilinear plot. by the late middle ages was pastorally served Reorganisation is suggested not only by the by Kimcote in return for an annual payment townships’ similar size and polygonal shapes, from Knaptoft’s rector. That gave rise to but also by boundaries which zig-zag as if the combined civil parish of Kimcote and through the strips of open fields, as between Walton, with 24 of its 84 yardlands attributed Peatling Magna and Arnesby. That the to the ecclesiastical parish of Knaptoft. Thus relatively late founding of daughter settlements Knaptoft extended beyond the watershed was a cause is strongly hinted by the names into the area which otherwise neatly fits into Arnesby, Shearsby, Willoughby, Ashby, the drainage of the Swift with Lutterworth and and Bruntingthorpe. A clue to underlying Misterton. A further anomaly is the inclusion in land-use is the series of roughly parallel Kimcote parish of a detached portion, Cotes de routeways fossilised in lanes, boundaries and Val (Domesday Toniston), in the far north-west property lines linking the southern outskirts of corner of its western neighbour Gilmorton. The Leicestershire and the higher ground along straightish line which shadows the Soar/Avon the Soar-Avon watershed. Seasonal stock watershed and defines the southern edges of movements, even transhumance come to Bruntingthorpe, Peatling Parva, Ashby Magna, mind, mirroring those suggested across High and Dunton Bassett, may not be the territorial Leicestershire. A plausible solution is that this boundary that at first sight it seems. It is more coherent group of settlements represents an plausibly explained as the relict line of a road area of intensive grazing on both high ground linking the Romano-British settlement on the and meadows – the ‘water leys’ evidenced in Gartree Road at Port Hill, Medbourne, with the name Willoughby Waterlees – related to Venonæ on Watling Street. If Kimcote and the Croft landed-unit. Gilmorton are added to the Peatling group of There are traces of remaining royal lordship settlements, whose aggregated Domesday in this district in the form of ‘king’s alms land’ assessment was 108 carucates and 5 bovates, at Peatling Magna (tenanted in 1086 by a royal that total rises to 141 carucates and 5 bovates, clerk, Godwin) and at Shearsby. The latter was close to Bowman’s ideal 144. However, this transgresses the suggested integrity of the a probable chapelry of Knaptoft, whose name, prominent spur site and chapelries suggest settlements around Lutterworth and Misterton, a substantial residence. Bruntingthorpe, a and threatens to mix the putative lands of the likely daughter settlement of either Knaptoft Peatlingas and Lillingas. What is certain is or Peatling Parva, ‘belonged to Leicester’ in that Walton’s name establishes a time horizon 1086 ‘with its customary dues’ and had land consonant with British speech, perhaps in the 13 archaically measured in hides. This pre-Danish late sixth, early seventh century. 13 Cf. Margaret Gelling’s comments about Hints, survival, sometimes with carucates added to on Watling Street near Lichfield (Gelling 1988, hides, is arguably an echo of royal or comital 101). 18 Central sector interpreted as an aisle, Columba, teacher of There is a splendid symmetry to the tenurial Cuthbert (died 597). and parochial geography of Leicester and its The congruity of Leicester’s outer suburbs neighbourhood. Its longitudinal axis is the Soar, comes into sharp focus as their topography with the Roman and medieval walled town and lordships are explored. Leicester’s tilted to the diagonal in the river’s meander. A eastern suburb and East Field constituted lateral axis runs outwards from the town’s north the inner half of the Bishop of Lincoln’s and south sides. Occupying the innermost Domesday holdings, the so-called Bishop’s segments of the respective quadrants were Fee, the parish of St Margaret’s. The outer Leicester’s East Field (in St Margaret’s parish) half was St Margaret’s chapelry, Knighton. and South Field (in St Mary de Castro) east Problematically, these lay like diagonally of the river, and west of the river a part of St related squares on a chessboard, meeting Mary’s which included the lost Bromkinsthorpe only at their common corner. If the Bishop’s plus friths and commons plausibly associated Fee is treated as a detachment from the parish with Aylestone and Braunstone, and finally and lordship of Belgrave, as the symmetrical the area which included Beaumont Leys and geography suggests, this allows Knighton to the abbey of St Mary-in-the-Meadows, a be associated with the neatly contiguous South Beaumont foundation. Moving outwards along Field, in St Mary’s parish, and in the other the Soar, on its eastern bank north of Leicester direction with the equally neatly placed (and lay the Beaumont manor of Belgrave; to the tenurially linked) Wigston Magna and Oadby. south Aylestone. Both parishes had chapelries Possibly Knighton was received in exchange on either bank. Extending the envelope west for Kibworth (see above). The bishop is to the Rothley Brook, the south-west quadrant an unlikely original holder of the cnicht’s was completed by Glenfield parish, the north- tūn, which provided the board of the junior west by Thurcaston. Across the brook, this household retainers of a royal or comital lord. entire sector faced the parish of Ratby and The South Field, while including the burgesses’ coterminous lordship of Groby – what Tom common (an echo of the retainers?), was part Cain (1990) has argued was the core of a of the endowment of the Newarke College, royal estate. East of Leicester, the lateral axis presumably by Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and follows the Roman Gartree Road, apparently plausibly in descent from Robert Beaumont as slicing through another, equally large royal Count of Meulan (holder of Aylestone) rather estate, probably the place of the Mercian than as Earl of Leicester, supplanter of Hugh council assembly ‘at Glen’ in 849. It included de Grandmesnil’s son Ivo (holder of Belgrave). a retainers’ tūn, Knighton, a probable reeve’s Interestingly, therefore, Knighton’s boundary vill at Wigston, and beyond them in the upper with Aylestone apparently zigs-zags through basin of the Sence the probable royal centre, (?common) open fields. Great Glen. The whole district is 17 miles St Cuthbert’s, Great Glen, has an Anglo- across and eight miles wide. Saxon sculptural fragment and was mother The area’s medieval dedications reveal church of Great Stretton and probably the striking symmetries, too: Belgrave’s Peter and other relationally-named vills, Little Stretton, Paul (icons of Romanitas) and Aylestone’s King’s Norton, Burton Overy, and Carlton Andrew (Peter’s brother); Ratby’s ancient Curlieu, plus Gaulby and Illston. However, patron Gregory (apostle and first patron of the advowson, as Jill Bourne has pointed out, the English, representative of the Roman lay in the twelfth century with the lordship of church, died 604) and Great Glen’s Cuthbert Wistow (Bourne 1996, 147-64). The ‘holy (abbot of Lindisfarne, patron of Northumbria, place of Wigstan’, reputed stream-side place representative of the ‘Celtic’ church, died 687). of the king’s assassination on June 1, 849 Gregory and Cuthbert are mirrored in the (quite possibly during the assembly at Glen), dedications of the lost church immediately east later had chapelries at Kilby, Fleckney, and of St Nicholas, ‘under two roofs conjoined by Newton Harcourt, but may not then have had medial columns’: its patronal saint Augustine, a church. Wigston Magna, on the other hand, disciple of Gregory (also died 604) – both had two Domesday churches, one of them often associated with royal churches – and doubtless St Wigstan’s on the hill, potentially the titular of the other half of the church, best a pre-Christian locus, a likely resting-place 19 for the royal corpse on its way to Repton of St Mary’s, Leicester, have been taken for burial, and still a pilgrimage centre in the by Cain as evidence that Ratby was a royal sixteenth century. Wigston, demesne caput estate centre (Cain op. cit.). St Bartholomew, of Hugh de Grandmesnil as successor to the Kirby, recalls the Christianising role of Confessor’s nephew, Earl Ralph, was still Gregory, whose church at Ratby stands in one then archaically assessed in hides. Though corner of a large enclosure. Ratby’s probable its daughter settlement Oadby was divided extent to the Soar/Anker watershed and the from Great Glen by the Old Mere, that may highest point of Charnwood is revealed by a be a Romano-British relict, since it runs at pensionary payment from Markfield (‘boundary right-angles from the Gartree Road. North veldt’), names, and topography. of the road, Houghton-on-the-Hill, Evington, Rather than two royal estates, the evidence and Stoughton-Thurnby (another secular- demonstrates one. Glen’s arable pole in the religious pair) probably belonged to Glen: east complemented a pastoral pole reflected Evington is separated from Leicester’s East in the bý names Ratby, Groby, Kirby. Between Field by Spinney Lane ridgeway. Thurnby’s the Soar and Rothley Brook was interposed hilltop church was anciently Holy Innocents, Herewode, the ‘army-’ or ‘people’s-wood’ an exceptionally rare medieval example of which became Leicester Forest and in which this dedication. Some vaguely remembered the burgesses had timber and grazing rights. multiple devotion, even martyrial or pre- Eight townships met where the Roman road Christian, is not impossible. to Mancetter crossed high ground – known Wigston’s boundary with Aylestone and its later as Kingstanding, where royal parties shot chapel Glen Parva also zig-zags as through at game. Ratby/Groby’s shared interests in furlongs, as it does with Newton Harcourt on Charnwood may indicate a relationship with the east. Was ‘Ægel’s tūn’ also in the Glen the Barrow-Rothley-Loughborough entity, but estate? Glen Parva’s name suggests so. In nearer at hand is its relationship with Belgrave, 1066 Aylestone was divided between Ælfgifu, earlier Merdegrave, ‘wood with martens’, widow of Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia after his suggesting a hunting lodge. Belgrave’s parish father Leofric (her chief demesne in 1086) (Peter and Paul) was extensive, including one Leofwin, and Saxi, a royal thegn, tenant- South Thurmaston and Birstall. The ‘burh in-chief of Narborough/Huncote. His manor place’ overlooked the Soar – a desirable here became the caput demesne of Robert elite location. St James’, anciently St John’s, Beaumont, whose men obtained Leofwin’s stands on an east-facing slope with evidence land, plus holdings in Blaby and Whetstone. of an east-end crypt adduced by Steve Mitchell St Andrew’s beside the Soar occupies an (Mitchell 2012, 11-14). appropriate site for communal baptism – its Belgrave’s tenant in 1086 was Hugh yard a quarter of the village core – and had a de Grandmesnil, possibly in succession to further chapelry at Lubbesthorpe. If Aylestone Waltheof. Ulf, Edwardian holder of Ratby was part of Glen, the same must apply to and Groby, may have been Waltheof’s tenant; the large parish of Glenfield (‘clean, cleared’, these lands too went to Hugh. An important a different etymology), which included anomaly in the geographical coherence of the Braunstone, and with which Aylestone’s lands Queniborough-Syston block of vills, discussed interlocked. earlier, is its incompleteness without Belgrave. Glenfield may once have been superior The latter’s parish seems to have been carved to Groby, which it faced across the Rothley out of an existing landscape sometime after Brook, and was part of the same estate in 920, since it took in southern Thurmaston, Cain’s view (Cain 1990). Kirby Muxloe, a a tūn acquired by someone with a Danish Glenfield chapelry, faced Ratby. Jurisdictional name. However, Leicester’s East Field, also and other links bound Ratby/Groby to these associated with Belgrave, may have been laid and other vills from Desford to Glen Parva. out at the time of the town’s repopulation. The Nevertheless, Ratby’s antiquity cannot be Humber Stone may give a clue, if it preserves doubted and Peter Liddle has raised the the name of the east Midlands ealdorman possibility of an early church at Groby. Bury Hunbeorht documented in 832 and 852. Camp is a probable Iron Age enclosure, and Humberstone shares Belgrave’s dedication, rights in Ratby of Bromkinsthorpe in the parish Peter and Paul. A further possibility is that

20 Belgrave’s parochial boundary adopted the street, direct from the East Gate to St Nicholas. surviving outline of one of Roman Leicester’s Construction over, and in alignment with the fields, overriden by the settlement which entrance and exercise hall of the baths, and became Thurmaston and where a large ‘Anglo- incorporation into its westwork (and property) Saxon’ cemetery was established. of the baths’ ceremonial and ritual entrance, the Jewry Wall, indicates foundation by high Leicester authority. Richard Morris’ suggested baptistery All the foregoing suggests the booking out in the baths (Morris 1991, 20, fn. 32) would to regional ealdormen of royal land around have allowed it to function as an episcopal Leicester, outlying Glen and other seminal vills church, candidates gathering as was usual in – and the city itself – remaining in the hands of a western narthex, processing to their baptism, the king. The mother church of this large area and returning for the eucharist through an is almost certain to have been in Leicester. arch appropriately once embellished with a Its parochia and assets were probably used sculpture of Janus – ‘dead in Christ, in Christ to endow St Mary de Castro, whose name made alive’. indicates association with the castle, like St Peter’s, Stamford, and countless other castle East of the baths stood the Forum and, chapels across Europe. St Mary’s was perhaps directly east of this church, the Basilica. Later built after the reconquest of the Danelaw. burials occurred near the basilica’s western Soon after 1066 it became a secular college end, where St Augustine’s must have stood and subsequently its assets were transferred – again with high authority. Were basilican to the new abbey. walls appropriated? Did it form an axial pair with the episcopal church, like St Paul’s and St The early mother church’s identity has Augustine’s in London? In his 1098 account puzzled scholars. There can be no doubt that of its blind anchorite, Goscelin described Roman Ratae had a bishop, probably operating St Augustine’s, Leicester, as ‘notable’ and from a private house before Constantine made parochial (serving St Nicholas’ parish?) Christianity the state religion. Thereafter (Goscelin 1688, 429-30, I, cap 8.53). In Alan church building took place in the empire’s cities alongside the transformation of temples, Thacker’s view, promotion of Augustine’s Bartholomew-style. In Leicester a colonnade cult began in the 730s, with the Council of found north of the tower of St Martin’s has Clovesho (very likely Brixworth) honouring been architecturally assigned to that period him with Gregory and ordering observance of and might be part of a basilican appropriation his feast (Thaker 1999, 383-84). Augustine of a temple, since a pit filled with animal was later revered by Edward the Elder’s son bones was found under the floor of the Æthelstan (died 939) and Cnut. Columba’s tower. St Martin’s respects the Roman street presence could have commemorated Wilfrid’s alignment, not that of Guildhall Lane. Though Northern origins, Offa’s bid for an archbishopric St Michael’s origins are obscure, burials in its at Lichfield (founded by the Northerner Chad), probable cemetery respected a rectangular peace between English and Danish Mercia, the Romano-British building near which was found Northerner Waltheof’s earldom – or something a curse plaque invoking a deity Maglus. St else. Margaret’s appears to stand in an extra-mural After Leicester’s bishop decamped to Romano-British cemetery, conceivably over a Dorchester rather than submit to Danish Christian grave chapel. Why was this place authority, existing churches inevitably suffered chosen for the later (?post-Danish) suffragan neglect. The building of Mary de Castro and cathedral (to which Pentecostal processions the gift of Cosby’s church to St Augustine’s were directed from the intramural churches) may both have been part of ecclesiastical and the East Field for the Bishop’s Fee? Allen restoration. As manorialisation hastened the Chinery has supported the suggestion that the break-up of minster parochiæ, new parishes bishop was awarded part of the land of the across the Glen estate reduced Leicester’s Danish borough (Chinery 1986, 43-48) – land parochia, arguably that of ‘St Nicholas’ (known in Belgrave in fact. as such only since 1220), to a rump. Even What happened to the Mercian cathedral? within Leicester’s walls, there were four Its continuing importance is confirmed by the privately-owned churches in 1086. In 1107 line of Leicester’s main medieval east-west ‘St Nicholas’ was assigned to St Mary de

21 Castro, which could have acquired its extra- settlements, resolves numerous issues of how mural parish much earlier as part of its own individual villages relate to their neighbours. endowment, perhaps by episcopal agreement In summary, Leicestershire is essentially in return for the site of St Margaret’s and the the valleys of the Soar and Wreake plus Bishop’s Fee. such large peripheral parts of other regions Conclusion that one guesses at fossilised results of Leicestershire’s territorial building blocks, like divide-and-rule. This would explain why its tectonic plates, constantly shifted, overrode, boundary slices through Belvoir Vale, and fused and fractured. Nevertheless, helped follows Watling Street, dividing Hinckley by the resilience of ecclesiastical boundaries from Nuneaton and Lutterworth from Rugby. and sites, they resolve into a few essential Fortunes of war played their part. That ‘all the groupings, variably influenced by landform army that belonged to Northampton northward and land-uses. The density of primary to the Welland’ surrendered to Edward the churches mirrors settlement. Thirty-one within Elder in 921 implies that north of the Welland Leicestershire lie east of the Fosse, where there was part which did not. Playing off better soils are found, only 17 to the west. If Danish and English Mercians may explain we apply Roberts and Wrathmell’s zone of why still in the mid-eleventh century so much heavy nucleation, which includes the south- of Leicestershire was in the hands either of west, (Roberts and Wrathmell 2000) the split the Northumbrian earl, or of the Leofricings, becomes 39/9. descended from ealdormen of the Hwicce in the southwest Midlands. Leicester reveals itself as the hub of a large, coherent territorial unit. A royal villa From a century before the Danes’ arrival, estate balanced an arable, hidated economy Offa’s hand may well be visible in the parcelling in the east with extensive wood-pasture in the out of the medieval open fields over large areas west. To the south was well-watered dairy land of Leicestershire, imposed on an essentially perhaps with seasonal herding. Its mixed- Iron Age landscape – long strip fields replacing 14 farming potential probably contributed to the areas enclosed by headlands. Furthermore, complex breaking-up of one or possibly two hints in roads, pre-enclosure lanes, boundaries, underlying royal estates, followed by Danish and property lines along the Fosse, the Gartree reorganisation. Road, and other Romano-British routes leave one curious if Offa’s predecessors inherited This is the land of the Legora, the people an imperial estate extending over parts of the on the river which gave its name to Leire. The later county and beyond it. Was it obtained Leicester-folk sound British, like the Weogoran from a king who was minting coins at Leicester of Worcester. ‘Inner’ Leicestershire might – see the moulds found in Bath Lane – and preserve something of Ratae’s territorium as meeting his peers at the shrine of the Hallaton Worcester’s extramural parish of St Helen’s hoard? Perhaps it passed into the fisc without appears to preserve that of Vertis. Barry Cox conquest, bequeathed to Rome or the emperor suggests that downstream from Leicester the by a client who knew them well. We may even Legor/Leire became the Soar – reinforced know his name (or that of a close relative), and by the Lear legend recorded by Geoffrey of have part of his ceremonial uniform, thanks to Monmouth. Again, the constituent units are the coins from Hallaton and the parade-ground coherent: arable lands along the Soar and helmet ritually buried with them. Wreake, rising to the Wolds, wood-pasture in Charnwood, and grazing with strong likelihood Strong regal interests could explain why of transhumance along the ridges and valleys Leicester, Croft, Glen and Gumley constitute of High Leicestershire. Frequently in this a unique cluster of Mercian council meeting study, the model of two hāms in a landed unit, places, why Peter (with or without Paul) and suggested to me by Charles Phythian-Adams, Helen were significantly more frequent here has looked promising – reminiscent of summer as dedicatees, why William I’s sheriff Hugh de and winter residences, the Welsh hendref (‘old Grandmesnil acted without an earl, and why steading’) and hafod (‘summer place’). At 14 As Oosthuizen (2006) is showing in the local level, application of Cullen, Jones Cambridgeshire. Suggestions of such headlands and Parsons’ (2011) interpretation of býs as survive in the fields of Great Bowden, but may be polyfocal, pastoral, and I would add daughter geological. 22 holdings of, and place-name references to the counterpart, through fear but also attachment queen and queens’ courtiers are a running to family graves and memories of life-changing theme. Marc Anthony Meyer, discounting the encounters. Some central places had large concept of a ‘queen’s demesne’, nevertheless parochiæ but it is peripheral places, often noted certain estates ‘held by successive suiting ritual, which equally arrest the eye. [Anglo-Saxon] queens’, and this of course They include Barwell, Leire, Peatling Parva, includes Rutland (Meyer 1993, 75-113, at 104). Knaptoft, Thurnby, Billesdon, Tilton, Scalford, Buckminster, and former temple sites at Market Royal assemblies required the presence Overton/Thistleton and Willoughby-on-the- and provisioning of the royal retinue and Wolds – perhaps also Breedon and Burrough those of the earls, bishops and abbots who Hill. Isolated churches, those on river islands counselled the king and ratified decisions. and promontaries, beside rivers, in enclosures, This is one possible reason for Leicestershire’s and at places with names redolent of pre- rich ecclesiastical geography. Early churches Christian religion, these too require further include basilicas, minsters (whose collegial or investigation. Re-use or development of monastic organisation is largely lost to view), religious loci at Romano-British settlement sites chapels and oratories – estate centre churches – Mancetter, Tripontium, Market Harborough, like Great Glen and Croft probably originated and Leicester – also demand attention. Are we as chapels attached to notables’ halls. Another to assume that the sixth-century inhabitants of pointer is that though vunerable to founders’ the Waltons, Bretbys and Walcots were not at fortunes, early churches often occupied sites least nominally Christian, looking for episcopal of enduring emotional significance. This may baptism and pastoral care? The emerging partly explain the distance of so many parochial picture is of a transformative society in which churches from the optimally-sited manorial priests, kings and people were setting out the and administrative centres – religious-secular territorial and spiritual bounds and needs of pairings are a notable feature of this survey. Supernatural power routinely trumps its mortal their local worlds.

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