ANGLO-SAXON SETTLEMENT

We have no certain information about settlement in our districts until the C 7th. Then West Saxons, who called themselves Hwicce, came from the south and Anglians from north and east in small colonising groups.

In the Tame / Rea / Cole basin they met and ultimately settled. Following river terraces, ridgeways and Roman roads, they established themselves wherever the ground was clear and dry enough for ploughing.

Such sites were of course on the sandy or gravelly patches; hereabout the earliest were Moseley, Bordesley, and Yardley, and Tyseley was later.

The 'ley' ending indicates a clearing in wood, necessarily a natural one or one expanded by former inhabitants, where the soil was dry but water obtainable from springs and shallow wells.

Neither the valley floors nor the slopes made suitable sites, but the former were the source of summer grass and winter hay for stock, and the latter of fuel, timber, pannage for swine, and game. The streams could be ponded for fisheries.

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