WHITBY
‘…mecca for Dracula fans mostly unaware of an earlier, dramatic catharsis between opposing moral forces’ (see pages).
TRACTOR AT PORTHMEUDWY
‘It’s nice to see an old Fordson Major looking in such good trim…’ (see pages).
LONDON
‘an emporium for many nations who came to it by land and by sea’ (see pages).
MERSEA ISLAND
‘mile after mile of bright-painted beach huts’ (see pages).
TOBERMORY
‘all brightly coloured houses, crowded jetties and drunks’ (see pages).
DORSET
‘This mannered human landscape of field and hedge, wall and fence, is a very temporary borrowing from nature’ (see pages).
GLASTONBURY TOR
‘We were tolerant of one another’ (see pages).
SOUTH CADBURY
‘Let’s get the Arthurian record straight’ (see pages).
EPPING FOREST
‘one expects at any time to come upon a gingerbread cottage inhabited by cast-off children or lounging, porridge-slurping bears’ (see pages).
THE WALL
‘three plough furrows racing eastwards across the Northumbrian uplands’ (see pages).
Front endpaper map
Back endpaper map
Appendix One : Journey distances
Birdoswald–Jarrow
November 2013–March 2015
83 miles on foot;
0.5 miles by ferry
Rothesay–Kilmartin
October 2013
60 miles on foot;
a short taxi ride;
5 miles on two ferries;
9 miles on a bus;
2 miles by car
Telford–Wrexham
March 2014
98 miles on foot
Falmouth–Mallaig
April 2014
555 nautical miles by boat
London–Sutton Hoo
June 2014
107 miles on foot;
2.5 miles on three ferries;
5 miles by bus
Wareham–Yatton
July 2014
96 miles on foot
Anglesey–Bardsey Island
August 2014
134 miles on foot;
4 miles by boat
Donegal
August–September 2014
612 miles by motorbike;
93 miles on three ferries
Meigle–Canterbury
October 2014 and March 2015
York–Whitby
December 2014
82 miles on foot
Appendix Two : Timeline
250s
Probable date of the martyrdom of St Alban near the Roman town of Verulamium
306
Constantine is declared Emperor at York
313
Constantine declares religious toleration in the Empire
367
A great ‘barbarian conspiracy’ is launched against Roman Britain by a coordinated attack from Picts, Irish, Saxons and rebellious frontier troops
383
Roman general Magnus Maximus proclaimed Emperor in Britain
407
The last emperor to visit Britain, Constantine III, leaves for the Continent
410
Imperial Roman administration dissolves in Britain
418
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes Romans in Britain hiding their treasure and fleeing overseas to Gaul
c.429
Germanus of Auxerre arrives in Britain to counter Pelagian heresy
431
Pope Celestine I sends Bishop Palladius to Ireland to preach Christianity
447
The Annales Cambriae describes ‘days as dark as night’
449
Date, calculated by Bede, for the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain
457
Annales Cambriae records that ‘St Patrick goes to the Lord’
486
Battle of Soissons: Clovis defeats Syagrius, last Roman prefect of northern Gaul, to become king of the Franks; subsequently converts to Christianity; dies c.511
516
Annales Cambriae records the battle of Badon Hill
537
Annales Cambriae records the death of Arthur, Dux Brittonum, in the ‘Strife of Camlann’
547
Annales Cambriae records the death of Maelgwyn of Gwynedd in a great plague
565
Colmcille (St Columba) founds a monastery at Iona
590
Possible date for the Battle of Catræth: defeat of the British Gododdin army at the hands of ?Æthelfrith of Northumbria
c.592/3
Æthelfrith seizes control of Northumbria
597
Colmcille dies on Iona; the Augustinian mission from Pope Gregory arrives in Kent and he and his mission worship in a church built by the Romans
602/3
Augustine meets British bishops; he fails to prevent a schism between the British and Roman churches
615–16
Battle of Chester: Æthelfrith’s armies massacre the monks of Bangor-is-y-coed; King Æthelberht of Kent dies and his son Eadbald apostatises
617
The battle on the River Idle: King Rædwald of East Anglia and Edwin of Deira defeat and kill King Æthelfrith of Northumbria; the Iding princes go into exile in Dál Riata
625
Probable date of the death of King Rædwald of East Anglia; his burial at Sutton Hoo
626
Assassination attempt on King Edwin by an emissary from Wessex; the birth of his daughter Eanflæd
627
632
Battle of Hæthfelth: King Cadwallon of Gwynedd and Penda of Mercia defeat and kill Edwin of Deira; Cadwallon’s army stays in Northumbria for a year; Northumbria apostatises
633/4
Battle of Denisesburn: Oswald Iding returns from exile in Dál Riata with a small army, defeats and kills Cadwallon and is recognised as king of Northumbria
635
Bishop Aidan is sent from Iona to found a monastery on Lindisfarne
642
Battle of Maserfelth: King Penda of Mercia defeats and kills King Oswald near Oswestry
643
Oswald’s brother, King Oswiu, retrieves Oswald’s remains and founds a cult of his bones
655
Battle on the River Winwæd: Oswiu of Northumbria defeats Penda of Mercia; founds six monasteries in Bernicia and six in Deira
664
The Synod of Whitby: King Oswiu of Northumbria declares in favour of Roman authority over Iona
669
Arrival in Britain of Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus—holds office until his death in 690
674
Wilfrid granted land to build a stone church at Hexham in Bernicia
685
King Ecgfrith of Northumbria dedicates a new monastery at Jarrow, and is killed in battle against the Picts at Dunnichen, predicted by St Cuthbert
687
Death of St Cuthbert on Inner Farne
688
King Ine succeeds to the throne of Wessex; rules until 729
691
King Wihtred succeeds to the throne of Kent; rules until 725
699
Guthlac of Repton becomes a hermit in the marshes at Crowland in East Anglia; dies 714
709
Death of St Wilfrid, aged seventy-five
716
Iona agrees to follow Roman orthodox rulings on Easter and other ‘schismatic’ practices
735
Death of the Venerable Bede at St Paul’s, Jarrow, a year after completing his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
757
Offa becomes king of Mercia; rules until 796
793
First Viki
ng raid on a monastery: Lindisfarne on the Northumbrian coast
794
Iona attacked by Vikings
800
Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor
843
Cináed mac Ailpín succeeds to the throne of Pictland, until 858
865
The Great Heathen Army arrives in East Anglia and stays
876
‘In this year Halfdan shared out the lands of Northumbria’—Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
871
The Battle of Ashdown; Alfred becomes king of Wessex after the death of his fourth brother, Æthelred
878
Battle of Edington: Alfred decisively defeats Great Heathen Army
?886
Alfred refounds London, building a burgh at Southwark; signs Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, the Danish leader, who accepts baptism and a boundary north and east of the River Lea and Watling Street
899
The death of Alfred of Wessex, aged fifty; succeeded by his son Edward in Wessex
911
Æthelflæd, Alfred’s daughter, succeeds her husband Æthelræd as ruler of the Mercians
918
Æthelflæd dies
924
Edward the Elder, king of Wessex, dies; succeeded by his son Æthelstan to 939
937
Battle of Brunaburh: Æthelstan defeats the combined armies of Scots, Norse and Britons
942
Hywel Dda – Hywel the Good—becomes effective king of all Wales; dies 950
954
Fall of the Viking Kingdom of York
978
Æthelred II ‘the Unready’ becomes king of England; deposed 1013 by Svein Forkbeard; he recovers the kingdom in 1014 and dies 1016
991
Battle of Maldon: an English army is defeated by Olaf Trygvasson; King Æthelred pays tribute of 10,000 pounds
995
The Community of St Cuthbert brings the saint’s relics to Durham after an internal exile of over a hundred years
1013
Svein Forkbeard becomes the first Danish king of England; dies 1014
1042
Edward the Confessor accedes the throne of England
1066
Harold Godwinsson succeeds Edward the Confessor as King of England; battles at Stamford Bridge and Hastings bring to an end Viking invasions of England and the Anglo-Saxon age
1074
The arrival of three monks at Jarrow signals the revival of Northumbrian monasticism after nearly two hundred years
Notes
1 From ‘The Ruin’, translated by K. Crossley-Holland, The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology, Oxford World’s Classics, 2009.
2 vita: the medieval hagiography, or ‘life’ of a saint. Famous examples include the Vita Wilfridi (Saint Wilfrid) and the Vita Columbae (Saint Colmcille). Plural vitae.
3 The so-called Kentish Chronicle forms part of a narrative sequence in the collection of early manuscripts known as the Historia Brittonum and popularly, if incorrectly, referred to as the work of Nennius. Vortigern is pre-eminent among those British leaders remembered by later historians for their ignominious dealings with the first Germanic warlords who won lands in Britain. The compilation belongs to the early ninth century.
4 From ‘The Ruin’, translated by K. Crossley-Holland, The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology, Oxford World’s Classics, 2009.
5 shieling: a north-country word for a small hut and its associated enclosures, used by transhumant communities, later just shepherds, as upland summer settlements.
6 crannog: a circular wooden dwelling supported on piles driven into a lake bed close to the shore and connected to it by a raised causeway. There are superb reconstructions at the Crannog Centre on Loch Tay, Perth and Kinross and on Llangorse lake in the Brecon Beacons, Wales.
7 St Marnock: originally an Irish familiar name, from my (mo) Ernán. The name Marnock is associated with at least three church foundations, notably that of Kilmarnock; but there are several candidates for the historical figure, including an uncle and companion of Colmcille.
8 Bede, Historia Ecclesiatica,V.12. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford Medieval Texts, 1969; repr. 1994. The monk was Dryhthelm of Melrose who, when asked how he could bear the cold, replied, ‘I have known it colder’.
9 There are other possible candidates for the principal royal fortress of the kingdom—Dunollie, near Oban, is cited as an alternative. But no site matches Dunadd for its wealth and its setting.
10 The exact source is unclear, perhaps somewhere in Francia. Colmcille’s hagiographer Adomnán mentions a glass drinking vessel used by the Pictish king Bruide. Other glass objects from Dunadd include Byzantine tesserae and beads of Irish or Viking type.
11 Princes: those sons of great men deemed eligible for kingship. The Irish equivalent was rígdomna, literally ‘material of a king’.
12 ‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818.
13 The Romans may have introduced rabbits to Britain, but it was only after the Norman Conquest that they (the rabbits) and pheasants began to reproduce significantly in the wild.
14 The Laws of Wihtred, Decree 28, in English Historical Documents Volume I: c.500–1042. Edited by Dorothy Whitelock, Eyre Methuen, 1979, 2nd edition.
15 The civitates were the native tribes identified by Roman military strategists and administrators, through whose chiefs regional control was exercised. They were given undefended capital towns, connected to the road system and their kin given jobs to keep them sweet.
16 The list forms part of the British Historical Miscellany compiled in about 810 from a variety of sources and often published under the name of Nennius with the Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae. Many of the names on the list cannot ever have been cities or even towns—Lindisfarne, for example, was no more than a monastery, though it may once have had a fortress.
17 Wealh, the Old English name for the Britons, came also to mean ‘foreigner’; but since those identifying themselves as Anglo-Saxons seem to have dispossessed many native Britons of their lands and rights, it may at times have carried implications of a lower caste, even a slave.
18 Reginald was a monk of Durham Cathedral, author of hagiographies on Sts Cuthbert and Godric. His otherwise unsatisfactory Vita of Oswald was written in 1165 and derives much of its material from Bede; the raven episode appears to originate in local tradition. John Leland, visiting the site in the sixteenth century, heard more or less the same story. By his day the raven had become a more impressive but less significant eagle.
19 Oswald’s uncle, Edwin, also died a Christian martyr and later became the focus of a cult at Whitby.
20 Edward Lhuyd (1660–1709): a keeper of antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, linguist, antiquarian and naturalist of considerable talents. He is credited with first use of the term Celtic to refer to the ancient Brythonic and Goidelic languages of Britain and Ireland.
21 Augustine, the missionary sent by Gregory to bring the pagan English into the Universal church, arrived in Kent in 597, founded a church there and established sees at Rochester and London before turning his attention to what he believed were the archaic and unorthodox practices of the British church. See Chapter Nine.
22 cantref: more or less the Early Medieval British equivalent of the Northumbrian shire and the later Anglo-Saxon hundred, an estate made up of units from which food renders and services were demanded and brought to a central place, the villa regia; early Wales comprised around forty cantrefi; the ‘trefs’ of which cantrefi were composed has its equivalent in the ‘tech’ of Scottish Dál Riata and, perhaps, the generally larger vill of Anglo-Saxon England.
23 Celia Fiennes, Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary.
24 De temporum ratione (‘On the reckoning of time’), written c.725 at Jarrow. Apart from calendrical calculations and instructions for determining the correct date for
Easter, Bede also explains daylight length and the seasons and gives a historical account of the Julian and Anglo-Saxon calendars.
25 Beowulf, line 1359, from the translation by Michael Alexander, Penguin, 1973.
26 wic: Old English term for a farm or specialised settlement, often found as a suffix: for example, Keswick—‘cheese farm’; Goswick—‘goose farm’. When it occurs, especially with topographic variations, on coasts with gently sloping shores, it seems often to denote a periodic or opportunistic site for a beach market. The Gaelic and Brythonic equivalents may be ‘port’ and ‘strand’—as in the Strand on the River Thames, which may have been the site of Anglo-Saxon Lundenwic.
27 pannage: the practice (and valuable right) of grazing pigs on beech and oak mast (nuts) in autumn; verderer: an official with legal powers to administer forest law and rights and practices on common lands.
28 Bede, Historia Ecclesiatica, I.30, ed. and trans. by Colgrave and Mynors.
29 Richard Morris, in Churches in the Landscape (see Recommended Reading, p. 443) cites two examples of the place name Stokenchurch, in Buckinghamshire and Middlesex, which seem to reflect the presence of a ‘stockade’ church of similar construction. Greensted is sometimes cited as the oldest surviving wooden church in the world.