Macca - 1300 years ago..

I brought my Saxon people here from across the sea. We came over in an open boat, and paddled up the rivers. The good open land of Britain was already taken by tribes which had arrived long before us, so we had to go on into the thickly forested land in the middle of the country. Following a river (which a British woman we captured called Cole) we found a place where we could settle.

It was an open spot beside a clear spring. The soil was sandy, so there was not much clearing to be done before we could begin ploughing. There is a brook nearby, with marshy meadows, and the forest is not far away. We have made a ditch round our camp, and piled the earth to make a bank inside, putting a stout fence on top. Inside are our huts of timber, with reed-thatched roofs, set round the central pound where the animals are kept at night. My house is bigger than the others, but, like them, has only one room.

There are nearly two score of us at MACCATON, as it is called : family farms like ours are usually named after the leader. We have mow made two large fields, called Elder and Rye-Eddish, on the sandy soil, and fenced them against wild cattle, deer and swine.

Making the fields took several years, and each of the men had a share of each year's new land, which we divided into long strips : so now we all have several strips scattered about the fields, and I have most. We have begun to clear a third field to the east, but this is only partly sandy so we are burning and felling many trees - ridding the land of timber, so we call it Ridding Field.

We brew and make nearly all we need - we have to. Wheat and barley give us bread and ale, the game we hunt gives us meat, fur and bone, whilst our sheep, swine and cattle provide wool, corn, leather, meat, grease, milk and cheese. Iron tools and weapons have to be replaced and these we get from travelling merchants in exchange for our hides : clothes, pottery, and wooden implements are all made here.

It's a hard and dangerous life. Even in this lonely region, where there is plenty of land for the few small settlements, there is sometimes fighting over meadow and water rights, and sea raiders have occasionally come as far as this. We shall soon have to meet the men from the nearest farms and villages to settle where our boundaries are, and then mark them.