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The original unit of settlement among the Anglo-Saxons
was the tun or town, which in its simplest form had been
little more than an enclosure surrounded by a wall or a
hedge. The town moot, a meeting of the inhabitants,
appointed officials to administer the common law and the
business of the town. Later came the hundred (roughly 100
hides, a hide being an area of land big enough to support
one family) and the shire, which under the Normans became
the county. Each Saxon town sent its reeve and four best
men to represent it in the courts of the hundred and shire.
As the Christian church established itself in England,
beginning with King Ethelbert’s conversion in Kent, a new
level of organisation was needed for ecclesiastical purposes.
This was the parish from the Greek paroikia, the dwelling
place of the priest. By and large township and parish
coincided though with bigger populations one town might
be divided into two parishes. Parish boundaries today might
trace an Anglo-Saxon estate of 1000 years ago, which in
turn might be following outlines laid down in the Iron Age
but the boundaries were often re-jigged in the enclosures of
the 17th century, which were in part an attempt to deal with
the complex,
unpopular
issue of
tithes. You
may have
come across
tithe maps
of your local
area that date
from this
time.
Up The Creek
The new churches of the 6
th
century onwards were
often built on the site of pagan shrines to harness
peoples pre-existing devotion to a particular place hence
the presence of wells and ancient yew trees in many a
churchyard. Missionaries like St Augustine and St Cedd
built cathedral churches, not cathedrals in the modern
sense but more like
mother churches
for evangelising
missionaries to venture out from into the pagan wilds.
Outposts of these mother churches were built and known
as collegiate churches or minsters and finally, once
enough locals had been turned, parish churches were
built.
The first parish churches were built not by the church but
by the local Lord or Thegn. Indeed an accepted way of
becoming a Thegn was to build a church, especially one
with a tower as a defensive measure against the threat of
Danish invaders. This probably accounts for why in
Essex there are eight ancient parishes (and one lost
hamlet) all called Roding after the Saxon chieftain Hroda
who having sailed up Barking Creek from the Thames
was probably quite keen that no other invaders were
allowed to follow unmolested.
The Beginning of the Parish System
A local Anglo-Saxon landowner might have had his
own chaplain as was probably the case at St Martin’s
Canterbury, (right) recognised as England’s oldest parish
church in continuous use. Even before Augustine arrived
from Rome the church had been the private chapel of the
Christian Frankish Princess Queen Bertha, who was
married to the pagan King Ethelbert of Kent.
Green Man roof boss
Rochester Cathedral