1 Introduction
Without written sources it is difficult to know how exactly beacons functioned. It might be assumed that they raised the alarm, warning of imminent danger or the threat of approaching foes. Presumably, there was also an expected response: to run for the hills or to mobilise armed forces; but however likely such notions might be, it is extremely difficult to reconstruct with any certainty the systems in which beacons operated.
The present paper argues that by examining the spatial pattern of beacon chains alongside that of places of military assembly, it is possible to discern different systems of civil defence in early medieval England. Moreover, it will suggest that developments in these two institutions can be linked, in some cases directly, but more often only by reference to the cadastre of administrative districtsâthe shire and smaller units known as hundredsâfrom which armed forces were drawn, and to the strongholds that these troops garrisoned. By comparing all the elements of the defensive landscape some context for beacons can be gained.
The analysis is situated alongside a powerful historiographical tradition: one that regards the reign of King Alfred the Great (871â899) as a key moment in the development of the English state, and its military institutions in particular. Many scholars have argued that Alfred constructed a defensive ring of strongholdsâin Old English (OE) burhâaround his kingdom of Wessex.1 While this belief has not been substantiated by archaeological means, it remains likely that the burhs were operational in the early 10th century, at which point they
2 Beacon Systems in Viking Age England
Earliest discussions of beacons in early medieval England were mainly confined to the study of place-names, in particular those containing the OE elements weard âwatchâ and *tÅt âlookoutâ, and their later derivatives. These elements are commonly compounded in place-names with generics denoting vantage points, such as dÅ«n âflat-topped hillâ, beorg ârounded hill, moundâ, hlÄw âtumulus, moundâ, and in fewer occasions with habitative elements such as hÄm âhomestead or settlementâ, -setl âhouseâ or -ærn âbuildingâ. A number of place-names containing these elements are recorded by the 11th century, notably in charter boundary clauses, giving the impression that they were current in place-naming during the early medieval period. Even if they are not recorded in sources until later times, the likelihood is therefore that they date back at least to the Viking Age. This observation has enabled several place-name scholars to reconstruct regional beacon systems, for example for the Isle of Wight,3 Devon,4 Rutland and Lindsey,5 often plotting these early place-names alongside beacons known from later sources.
Undoubtedly the most influential discussion of early beacon systems in this vein was a paper by David Hill and Sheila Sharp.6 They listed references to beacons in early sources and then outlined the elements of an extensive network of beacon sites covering Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, capable of sending news of a seaborne viking attack from the coast to the interior of Wessex within just a few relays (Figure 10.1, B). Early place-names formed an important part of the reconstructed system. Of the 23 beacons identified, most have names unrelated to military activity, but seven of them have beacon elements affixed to their names. All three on the Isle of Wight, for example, have names probably
Nets and lines of early medieval beacons discussed by: A: Baker 2011; B: Hill and Sharp 1997; C: Gower 2002
ILLUSTRATION: S. BROOKES
Notably, all of these proposed systems take the form of nets of widely-spaced beacons providing important long-range signalling. As Hill and Sharp note, the nets are interlocking and therefore the whole system is unchangeable: remove one beacon and others need also to be moved. That same characteristic allows the whole system to be dated by the oldest recorded beacon, as links all must have been used contemporaneously. In these nets, most of the putative beacon sites are on areas of high ground with commanding views over the countryside, and on average the links between them are 10â20 km. They tend to cover whole shires, with dense networks of beacons on the coast relayed inland via key beacons. They also tend to include beacons close to the borders of the shire, perhaps emphasizing a desire to provide areal coverage of the entire administrative district.
These shire nets of beacons can be contrasted with another form of beacon system discussed by Gower,9 Baker,10 and Reynolds and Brookes.11 In each of these cases, more closely set beacons form linear chains running alongside significant long-distance routeways connecting strongholds. In Gowerâs analysis, 13 beacons were identified on either side of a 95 km-long stretch of Roman road known as Stane Street that connects Chichester and London, both major towns by the 10th century (Figure 10.1, C).12 Baker identified a similar arrangement of beacons every 5â10 km alongside 120 km of the Icknield Way,13 a long-distance ridgeway known by early 12th century as one of the Kingâs Four Highways (Figure 10.1, A).14 This chain leads into Wallingford, one of the largest strongholds listed in the Burghal Hidage which controlled one of the main crossings over the River Thames. Finally, Reynolds and Brookes in a case study of the Avebury region of north Wiltshire, reconstructed a local chain of beacon relays between
Significantly, excavations at Yatesbury, at the western end of this latter chain, provided archaeological support for the existence of a beacon. Fieldwork revealed a late Anglo-Saxon circular enclosure of c.200 m diameter with evidence for a possible beacon platform on the western edge of the circuit. This was a turf-built barrow of Early Bronze Age date that had been reshaped in the Viking Age to create a flat surface, with evidence for fire-reddened soil extending to a depth of up to 0.3 m. A ditch, which had been cut into the lower part of the mound, contained two distinct layers of charcoal-rich and burnt soils separated by a layer of cleaner soil, indicating at least two major episodes of burning or at least clearance of burnt debris from the mound. A large unabraded sherd of oxidised stamped pottery of Late Anglo-Saxon date was recovered from the basal fill of the ditch.16
It is possible that the two systems, as characterised here, are the result of the different methods by which beacon networks have been identified. Place-names in England have been collected, analysed and published on a county-by-county basis as part of the English Place-Name Societyâs Survey of English Place-Names (SEPN), so it is possible that shire-level networks are in part an artefact of the ways in which these place-name have been collected.17 Nevertheless, a comprehensive search through all published SEPN volumes highlights clear discrepancies in the density of beacon place-names across different regions (Figure 10.2).
Beacon place-names in England
ILLUSTRATION: S. BROOKES
While there are hints of patterning in the terms used to describe beacons, the overall distribution of place-name forms does not really suggest regional linguistic variation. Neither is there a straightforward historical explanation. East Anglia, for example, is recorded as the target for numerous viking raids, yet it has very few OE lookout place-names. Concentrations in the Upper Thames region and south Pennines, by contrast, can conceivably be related to borderlands established between the English and Danes in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, or perhaps even between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the 8th and 9th.
The same plot would also seem to highlight particular routeways that were under intense surveillance, for which some historical context could be postulated. In the 870s and 880s the Danish Great Army travelled along the Icknield Way on at least three occasions,18 so it would make strategic sense to monitor movement along this route in the decades around 900. As one of the straightest
By contrast, beacons on the coast are much harder to fix in time. Ifâas seems likelyâthey were designed to alert populations of the approach of hostile fleets, suitable contexts can be found at any point between the 8th and 11th centuries. It is, however, notable that in their survey of early accounts, Hill and Sharp identified âsea-watchesâ being referred to directly only in later 10th- and early 11th century sources. Perhaps in keeping with this observation,
3 Beacons and Military Mustering Sites
The notion that there are different types of beacon system preserved in the evidence can be further examined by reference to military mustering sites. In a series of papers John Baker and I have argued that there is documentary and topographical evidence that suggests the mobilisation of forces for civil defence changed over the course of the 9th and 10th centuries, from a system based largely on shires to one organised on hundreds and strongholds.20 In the 9th century narrative accounts suggest that the main defensive forces had a regional, shire-level identity and were mobilised ad hoc when required. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle21 we hear of shire armies such as the WilsÇ£te (802), SumorsÇ£te and DornsÇ£te (848), the men of Hampshire and Berkshire (860), often led by the local ealdorman and mustered for specific defensive operations. The most famous account of such a mobilisation is that carried out by Alfred the Great in 878 as part of his preparations for the Battle of Edington. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: â[Alfred] rode to Egbertâs Stone (Ecgbryhtes stan) to the east of Selwood, and there came to join him all Somerset and Wiltshire and that part of Hampshire which was on this side of the seaâ22â
Several locations have been suggested as the likely location of Egbertâs Stone â all of them close to the corner of Somerset, Wiltshire, and Dorset.24 Amongst the candidates we have suggested Moot Hill Piece, in Gillingham hundred, in Dorset, named presumably from its function as an assembly place.25 Moot Hill Piece has a very distinctive topographical form shared with several other places, termed âhanging promontoriesâ.26 It is also similar to a category of sites, found particularly north of the Thames, that are named with specific reference to armed groups, in OE here- or fyrd-.27 These place-names are surprisingly rare in pre-11th century sources but are typically in close proximity to important route-ways, are often at the points where the edges of two or three shires meet, and have an affiliation with monumental sites or places of early ceremonial importance (Figure 10.3). To this class of site should also be added Cwichelmeshlæw, which is located adjacent to the Ridgeway close to the former boundary of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, and was venue of a shire assembly in 990â2,28 and site of a failed confrontation between the West Saxons and Danes in 1006.29 Together these sites suggest the existence of a shire-level system of mobilisation that should be set alongside that of shire-level beacons and military units; that is the system that would seem to have been utilised by Alfred in 878. Indeed, the account of 878 suggests there may even have been an inter-shire system to coordinate large-scale mobilisations.
Shire-level meeting places
ILLUSTRATION: S. BROOKES
This system can be contrasted with that of linear chains of beacons focussed on burhs. The careful positioning of beacons alongside routes leading into strongholds arguably reflects a greater tactical concern than simply raising the alarm. This system facilitated communication between neighbouring strongholds, enabling the coordination of garrisons stationed there. The closer spacing of beacons could also provide more geographically specific details about enemy movements, as is also suggested by the fact that many of these beacons
The closer spacing of these beacons has already been noted, but it is also striking that the locations of these beacons bear some relationship with administrative territories known as hundreds. Hundreds are first recorded in the mid-10th century and appear to have been introduced as an organized
Close inspection of one of the best recorded beacon chains serves as an example of how beacons and hundreds were connected (Figure 10.4). As reconstructed by John Baker the Icknield Way system comprises at least 15 beacons in the central England shires of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, continuing after a gap in the evidence into Cambridgeshire.33 The extents of individual hundreds within these shires can be approximated by combining evidence from Domesday Book of 1086, supplemented by the boundaries of estates, parishes, and hundreds mapped at later dates.34 Of the 29 hundreds this chain crosses, 23 have good connections to one of the 15 beacon sites. Many beacons appear to be located on the boundaries between neighbouring hundreds, or are located in small detached parts from more distant hundreds, in a way to suggests their locations are respected by the hundredal geography, providing access to people from each territory. This is indeed the case of the earliest recorded beacon place-name in this chain: Warren Hill in Nuffield, Oxfordshire, recorded as wearddune âwatch-hillâ in the mid-10th century charter bounds of Newnham Murren.35 By Domesday, this boundaryâand the beacon atop itâwas formalised as that between the neighbouring hundreds of Ewelme and Langtree.36 Finally,
The beacon system of the Icknield Way, showing Domesday hundreds and their meeting-places
ILLUSTRATION: S. BROOKES
Given the ephemeral archaeological signature of both beacons and meeting-places it may be impossible to prove the existence of this system through fieldwork, but, given the seeming association between beacon sites, hundredal administrative arrangements and places of 10th- or 11th century hundredal assemblies, it is not unreasonable to suggest that many hundred meeting-places were used as sites of military muster coordinating with beacons. In that case, it might be suggested that a very regular system of civil defence existed by the 10th century, comprising mobilisations focussed on major strongholds,
Perhaps significantly, the identification of a further phase of putative coastal watches around the year 1000 also coincides with the appearance in the sources of new forms of administrative districts, known as âship-sokesâ (sipessocna), responsible for building or manning ships.38 The evidence for these arrangements is much more fragmentary than for hundreds, and most of these districts cannot be reconstructed on the ground. David Hill39 has plotted two: one from a note on the provision of shipmen from estates belonging to St Paulâs, London (c.995â8),40 and a second from a writ of Bishop Ãthelric complaining of losses sustained by the bishopric of Sherborne, Dorset, in respect of lands which contributed to the ship-scot (scypgesceot) (c.1001â12).41 In both cases these districts are significantly larger than hundreds, and this can be connected with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 1008 that states âthe king ordered that they should build ships all over England: that is, one warship (scegð) from three hundred and 10 hidesâ.42 Perhaps in keeping, a triple hundred of Oswaldslow, in Worcestershire, is also recorded as owing ship-soke in aâalbeit spuriousâcharter of 963.43 Whatever the precise details were, it seems plausible that ship-sokes were groupings of pre-existing hundred territories, with the scaling up of manpower and resource a concomitant of these more local arrangements.
4 Conclusions
All defensive systems are designed to counter particular threats, but so too do they rely on infrastructure, systems of mobilisation, and communications. In the foregoing I have described how an appreciation of any individual element of the defensive response requires us to consider also its relationships to other aspects of the human and strategic landscape. How beacons intersected with
Nor are defensive measures necessarily static. In this case, the scale and form of warfare in the 8th century was significantly different to that of the 11th, not least in the size of the armies and the nature of conflict involved. While early on in this period isolated raids, often on coastal and riverine locations, were the main threat, from the later 9th century, more concerted campaigns aimed at conquest, required a different response. By studying beacons alongside mustering and communication we can consider the sequence of military innovations taking place in the Viking Age.
The evidence presented here shows it to be an evolving system, which Table 10.1 attempts to summarise. Crudely put, ad hoc shire-level mobilisations, that appear to have characterised the 8th and earlier 9th centuries, would seem to have been supported by more widely-spaced and prominent beacons. These were supplemented in later centuries by increasingly localised administrative measures, reflected both in the size and regularity of hundredal organisation, and the intensity of surveillance over land and sea. The connectedness of these lookouts with strongholds in use during the late 9th or 10th centuries, and their location in areas (such as central England) that written sources indicate were the venue of West Saxon military campaigns at that time, is suggestive of an active use of such observation posts by King Alfred and his immediate descendants. This is not to say that such sites were previously non-existent, or that they were not (re)used subsequently.
Schematic classification of defensive developments in Viking Age England
| Date visible from | Military units | Mustering sites | Beacons | ?Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8th/e. 9th century | Shire | Shire-level âarmyâ sites | Shire-level mobilisation | Responsive |
| l. 9th/e. 10th century | + Burghal garrisons, ?and hundreds | Burhs and hundreds (divisions of shires) | Local/linked to burhs. Emphasis on controlling inland movement | Containing |
| c.1000 | + Ship-sokes | [multi]-hundredal/manors/burhs | Regional/devolved to groups of manors. Emphasis on sea-watch | Excluding |
A similar enhancement might be indicated by lookouts and the organisation of shipbuilding requirements around 1000, that suggest an increasingly maritime orientation to defensive measures. In both scale and ambition, a national system of ship-sokes, supported by a local manorial class, may reflect an increasing belief in the effectiveness of coastal defence in a way that is not apparent in earlier centuries. In keeping, it is from around this time that a scaling-up in the size of naval fleets is visible in the sources.46
In all these chronological stages, beacons and lookouts are likely to have played a key role in signalling and coordinating armed responses, but finding them requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Here I have suggested that, when used together, place-names, written evidence and landscape archaeology can provide sufficient clues to reconstruct elements of signalling and sighting systems. This shows that they are an intrinsic element of civil defence, and thus deserve as much study as fortifications, linear earthworks, and other elements of the military landscape.
Bibliography
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E.g. David Hill and Alexandre R. Rumble, eds., The Defence of Wessex: the Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996); Richard P. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Ryan Lavelle, Alfredâs Wars: Sources and Interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Warfare in the Viking Age (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010); John Baker and Stuart Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage. Anglo-Saxon Civil Defence in the Viking Age. History of Warfare Series 84 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Fredrik William Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897), pp. 502â3.
Helge Kökeritz, The Place-Names of the Isle of Wight (Nomina Germanica) 6 (Uppsala: Appelbergs Boktryckeriaktiebolag, 1940), pp. LXXVâLXXXI.
Percy Russell, âFire Beacons in Devon,â Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art 87 (1955), pp. 250â302.
Barrie Cox, âYarboroughs in Lindsey,â Journal of the English Place-Name Society 28 (1996), pp. 50â60.
David Hill and Sheila Sharp, âAn Anglo-Saxon Beacon System,â in Names, Places & People, eds. Alexandre R. Rumble and A.D. Mills (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1997), pp. 97â108.
Rune Forsberg, âOn Old English Äd in English Place-Names,â Namn och Bygd 58 (1970), p. 21.
Peter Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an annotated list and bibliography (London: Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 8, 1968), nos. 258, 383, 487, 565, and 680.
Graham Gower, âA suggested Anglo-Saxon signalling station between Chichester and London,â London Archaeologist 10, no. 3 (2002), pp. 59â63.
John Baker, âWarriors and Watchmen: Place-Names and Anglo-Saxon Civil Defence,â Medieval Archaeology 55 (2011), pp. 258â67.
Andrew Reynolds and Stuart Brookes, âAnglo-Saxon civil defence in the localities: a case study of the Avebury region,â in Early Art and Archaeology in the Northern World: Studies in Honour of James Graham-Campbell, eds. Andrew Reynolds and Leslie E. Webster (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 561â606.
Gower, âA suggested Anglo-Saxon signalling stationâ.
Baker, âWarriors and Watchmenâ.
Alan Cooper, âThe Kingâs Four Highways: legal fiction meets fictional law,â Journal of Medieval History 26, no. 4 (2000), pp. 351â70.
Reynolds and Brookes, âAnglo-Saxon civil defenceâ.
Reynolds and Brookes, âAnglo-Saxon civil defence,â pp. 572 and 575.
See https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/ [accessed July 2024].
See maps in David Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981).
John Baker and Stuart Brookes, âOverseeing the sea: some West Saxon responses to waterborne threats in the South-East,â in The Maritime World of the Anglo-Saxons, eds. Stacy S. Klein, William Schipper and Shannon Lewis-Simpson (Essays in Anglo-Saxon Studies) 5 (Tempe: ACMRS, 2014), pp. 37â58.
John Baker and Stuart Brookes, âExplaining Anglo-Saxon military efficiency: the landscape of mobilisation,â Anglo-Saxon England 44 [for 2015] (2016), pp. 221â58.; Stuart Brookes, âAssembly practices in 10th-century England: continuities and innovations in military mobilisation,â in Change and Continuity in tenth-century Western Europe, eds. Igor Santos Salazar and Catarina Tente (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2023), pp. 53â63.
Michael Swanton, trans. and ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London: Dent, 1996).
Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A 878, p. 76.
Baker and Brookes, âExplaining Anglo-Saxon military efficiencyâ.
John Peddie, Alfred Warrior King (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 135â42.
John Baker and Stuart Brookes, âMonumentalising the political landscape: a special class of Anglo-Saxon assembly-sites,â Antiquaries Journal 94 (2013), p. 157.
Baker and Brookes, âMonumentalising the political landscape,â p. 157.
Baker and Brookes, âExplaining Anglo-Saxon military efficiencyâ.
Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1454.
Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1006; Margaret Gelling, The Place-Names of Berkshire, 3 vols (EPNS) (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1973â6), pp. 481â82; Howard Williams, Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 207â11.
H.R Loyn, âThe Hundred in England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,â in British Government and Administration: Studies Presented to S. B. Chrimes, eds. H. Hearder and H.R. Loyn (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1974), pp. 1â15; Tom B. Lambert, Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 133â39.
Felix Liebermann, ed., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen I (Halle a. S.: Max Niemeyer, 1898), pp. 192â94; Dorothy Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, c. 500â1042, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 429â30.
Baker and Brookes, âExplaining Anglo-Saxon military efficiencyâ.
Baker, âWarriors and Watchmenâ.
Stuart Brookes, Domesday Shires and Hundreds of England [data-set] (York: Archaeology Data Service, 2020). https://doi.org/10.5284/1058999.
Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 738. The charter is dated to 966 and thus broadly contemporary with the Hundred Ordinance.
Stephen Mileson and Stuart Brookes, Peasant Perceptions of Landscape: Ewelme Hundred, South Oxfordshire, 500â1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 119â21.
For further discussion of the military organisation of the hundred system, see inter alia Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation.
Nicholas J. Hooper, âSome Observations on the Navy in Late Anglo-Saxon England,â in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, eds. Christopher Harper-Bill, Christopher J. Holdsworth and Janet L. Nelson (London: Boydell, 1989), pp. 203â14.
Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 92â93.
Agnes Jane Robertson, ed. Anglo-Saxon Charters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), no. 72.
Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1383.
Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, E, p. 138.
Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 731.
T.R. Slater, âControlling the South Hams: the Anglo-Saxon Burh at Halwell,â Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art 123 (1991), pp. esp. 76â77.
Paul Rainbird, âOldaport and the Anglo-Saxon Defence of Devon,â Devon Archaeological Society Proceedings 56 (1998), p. 161 and fig. 4; Paul Rainbird and Denise Druce, âA late Saxon date from Oldaport,â Proceedings of the Devonshire Archaeological Society 62 (2004), pp. 177â80.
Morten Ravn, Viking-Age War Fleets (Maritime Culture of the North) 4 (Roskilde: Viking Ship Museum, 2016), pp. 100â01.