Anglo-Saxon Colonisation

Teutonic mercenaries were already in Britain from the late third century, and the first Saxon kingdoms were set up after AD 450. Major immigrations came during the next century. It was not until after 577, when British resistance in Gloucestershire was broken by Ceawlin, that the Midland shires were open to colonisation from the south. Thereafter a large group of West Saxons, who called themselves Hwicce, settled in Worcestershire and west Warwickshire, making their capital at Worcester. From primary settlements on clear terrace sites beside the Severn and Avon later generations of landless men, younger sons and newcomers, pushed up the steep slopes of the Plateau rim, using two crumbling Roman roads.

In the Rea and Cole valleys these people made contact with Anglian folk, whose way had been along the terraces of the Trent and Tame. Again the Birmingham region was last to be settled, of least attraction and requiring most work to make it productive.

From Bromsgrove, itself a forward settlement, no fewer than 18 daughter and grand-daughter colonies were made in what later became the manors of Northfield and Kings Norton, while another Saxon group moved down the ridge on the east of the Cole to establish Yardley. All these communities were to be included in the Hwiccan kingdom : and the initial division between them and the Anglian groups who later formed the federation called Tomsaetan (Tame-dwellers) was confirmed in 650 by the diocesan separation between Worcester and Lichfield. The shires' foundation some three centuries later would still be influenced in part by this early tribal differentiation.

Among the Tomsaetan were probably the folk of Birmingham, Aston, Erdington, Handsworth, and perhaps of Edgbaston and Harborne. All these were in the Anglian kingdom of Mercia, which conquered the Hwicce in 628 but did not destroy their realm. There is no reason to suppose that the Anglians and their Hwiccan neighbours hereabout, few in numbers, of similar speech and culture, were normally at odds with each other.

9.1. Map 4

They did not necessarily kill off, though they may have enslaved, such Britons as were here when they came : this we know because, though all settlement names are now Anglo-Saxon, some of the natural features have Celtic names. These could not have survived if the folk who used them had not been here to pass them on to the newcomers. Thus some hill and river names are Celtic : the only close examples seem to be Tame (dark), Barr (hill-top) and -don (hill) as in the ear1iest form of Winson - Wynesdon, but there are many others farther afield.

The sites chosen for settlement were well-drained gravel terraces above the flood-plains of the largest streams, and lightly-wooded patches in the primeval woods. Where the soil was too sandy or stony for forest, a camp would be made and a crop harvested in the first year, though the soil might be poor. Original settle-ments are traceable today by their names : those ending in -ley (open space in wood), -worth (wood), or -field (land cleared for crops). Fairly near about we find Warley and Metchley, Bearwood, Handsworth and Northfield.