From Oakham to Mandalay

All Saints Church in Oakham is a long term supporter of the Church Mission Society (CMS). It has recently been allocated two new mission partners, both working in Myanmar (formerly Burma). CMS have requested that the church does not publicise these links, as the partners work in a dangerous and sensitive situation. Nonetheless we pray for them and support them as best we can.

Very recently, after a service of Morning Prayer in which the mission partners were remembered, I happened to look at a plaque on the wall of the chancel just behind the pulpit, over one of the clergy stalls. The plaque’s location, and the plaque itself are shown in the photographs below.

The typography of the plaque makes it quite difficult to read, which is presumably the reason I have never done so in the past, despite the fact that I have sat in front of it on numerous occassions. But on reading it, I noted that the church in 1906 already had a link with Burma. The plaque reads as follows.

To the glory of God and in memory of Henry Arthur Jerwood, scholar and prefect of Oakham School; a faithful and beloved curate of this parish and a zealous missionary. The lamps in the chancel and sanctuary are erected by his schoolfellows, friends and parishioners. He died serving in obedience to his Master’s call at Mandalay on March 26th 1906.

Mandalay is the second largest city in Myanmar, 600km north of the capital Yangon (formerly Rangoon) and is the centre of a largely Buddhist area. Our current mission partners are thus not the first links that the church has had in that area.

Henry Arthur Jerwood

Can we say any more about Henry Jerwood? His basic biographical details can easily be traced on Ancestry. He was born in 1878, the eldest child of Rev. Thomas Frederick Jerwood (1846-1926), Rector of Little Bowden and Dorothea Elizabeth Longsdon (1853-1942) who were married in Yorkshire in 1877. The couple had a number of other children, amongst them Helen Dorothea Jerwood (1880-1965), who will be mentioned below, Rev. Frederick Harold Jerwood (1885-1971) who was to become Chaplain at Oakham School, amd Major Hugh John Jerwood MC (1890-1918) who was killed in action. The latter had a son, born in 1918 after his death – John Michael Jerwood (1918-1991), a businessman and philanthropist, who was to become a significant benefactor of Oakham School, and a number of the school facilities bear his name.

Henry Arthur attended Oakham School, as his father had done before him, and his brothers were later to follow him there. He matriculated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1897, taking his BA in 1902 and his MA in 1905. He took some time out just before he graduated to fight in the South African (i.e. Boer) War from 1900 to 1902 with the Suffolk Regiment.

Clergyman and Missionary

After graduation, Henry Jerwood attended the Clergy Training School in Cambridge (the early name of Wescott House) and was ordained deacon in 1902 and took up the curacy at All Saints church in Oakham, a town with which he would have been very familar from his schooldays. The chronology of his training and ordination as deacon and priest is not wholly clear from the sources. In 1905 he applied to become a missionary to Burma. We can trace his short career there through the pages of the Quarterly Paper of the Rangoon Diocesan Association (RQP), a nationwide organisation that supported the work of missionaries in Burma, and was affiliated to the Society for the Promulgation of the Gospel (SPG). These are all available as pdfs in the SOAS missionary archive. As an aside, those who, like myself, dabble in historical matters, are hugely indebted to the patience and the perseverance of the archivisits who made such material available. In RQP 34, June 1905 we read the following under the heading Reinforcements, which says something of the military mindset of the organisation.

…….The Rev. Henry Arthur Jerwood, B.A., of Sidney Sussex ‘College, Cambridge, and the Clergy Training School, was ordained in 1902, to the Curacy at All Saints, Oakham, in the Diocese of Peterborough……

The Rev. A. Jerwood, at present an assistant Curate at Oakham, will join Mr. Fyffe at Mandalay~ a man stout and , vigorous in body and stout of heart, who went to South Africa when the war broke out, and did his part there man fully, and will carry to his work in Burma the same vigour he gave to South Africa and Oakham.

In the next edition (RQP 35, September 1905) we read that, as a consequence of Jerwood’s departure, Rev H J C Knight, the Commissary of the Rangoon Diocesan Association (who recruited for the Association and was living in Jesus Lane in Cambridge), preached at All Saints on Sunday July 30th. The collection of £3 4s was given to the R.D.A.

Then in RQP 36 from December 1905 Jerwood’s arrival in Burma is noted, under the heading News from the Front, again another military metaphor.

The newcomers have arrived, and are settling down to work, the Rev. H. A. Jerwood and Mr. Hart with Mr. Fyffe at Mandalay, the Rev. R. J. Stone at Bishop’s Court as Chaplain, the Rev. R. G. Fairhurst at S. Luke’s, Toungoo, and the Rev. W. H. C. Pope at Rangoon .

We also have the following description of the work in Mandalay,

The Buddhist Field – The Winchester Brotherhood has been founded at Mandalay, on the general lines of the Indian Community Missions, for systematic study of Buddhism and work in the field. The Head, Rev. R. S. Fyffe, has at present only one Brother (Rev. H. A. Jerwood). These two men are the only English Clergy for Missionary work in the chief town of Upper Burma, a city of 180,000 souls. They need at once two men of (if possible) a studious type, of patience, hope, and brotherliness. There is work to do while learning Burmese. The Brothers have passage and outfit paid, maintenance, lodging together, and £40 a year.

The mention of Jerwood in RQP 37 for March 1906 is very brief and simply says that he had taken over the role of Principal at the School run by the Winchester Brotherhood from Mr. Hart, who arrived in Burma at the same time as he did. Jerwood died on March 28th 1906. We read his obituary in RGA 38 June 2006, written by the Commissary Rev H. J. C. Knight.

Though most of our readers will have read the Bishop’s notice of Mr. Jerwood in the Mission Field for June, our R. Q. P. ought to have some notice of him. He was born on February 25th, 1878, the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Frederick Jerwood, Rector of Little Bowden. He must have owed much to his home. On hearing from Bishop Montgomery that he had fallen asleep, his father was able to write “we hope to send another son.” and assuredly in homes that can speak thus:

“The father’s passion arms the son, And the great work goes on, goes on.”

All his school days were spent at Oakham School; thence he entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. While yet an undergraduate he served in the S. A. war. On his return he graduated, entered the Clergy Training School, and was ordained to Oakham in 1902. Last autumn he went to Burma, calling at Delhi {where his sister was working under S. P. G. in the Cambridge Mission), and other Brotherhoods, and joined Mr. Fyffe at Mandalay in December. On the 28th March last he passed from us. The cause of his death was a rare type of paralysis – nothing climatic. The Bishop and the Rev. R. J. Stone, who was with him at the C. T. S., were in Mandalay at the time.
His body rests near the graves of the Colbecks.

We had looked for great things from his ministry in Burma. His qualities of simple manliness, unaffected and robust piety, a very-single-hearted devotion, unselfishness, courage and affection, drew men to him. These, and his unfailing cheerfulness, promised much for our Winchester Brotherhood. He went out “for life,” and so his home gave him. His letters from Mandalay were always touched with humour, and were full of hope and determination. It is easy to pray “Thy will be done,” while we have no disappointments or reversing of our purposes; but it is hard really to bow to the surrender of such a man. When Bishop Maples was drowned on Lake Nyassa. on the very day of his arrival as Bishop of Likoma, Augustine Ambati wrote, “God liked to take him, to make white (i.e., consecrate) so the waters of the lake.” Even so may Mr. Jerwood’s death in Mandalay be one more consecration of the city. To his friends – there and here – it will be one more tie binding us to the missionary spirit, and the forward march of the Church. It is good to know that Mr. Garrad, whom God has moved to carry on his torch, will be, we believe, in every way a brother to Mr. Fyffe. Those who loved H. A. J. will pray “The Lord bless his going out and coming in. ”

H. J. C. K.

The sister in Dehli that is referred to is Helen Dorothea. At the time she worked for the Cambridge Mission of SPG, but was later to work for the East India Company in Dehli. She remained in India all her life, dying in 1965.

Some final thoughts

Interesting as it is to find that All Saints had a link with Myanmar one hundred and twenty years before our current one, and to read Arthur Jerwood’s interesting and ultimately tragic story the aspect that has struck me most in the preparation of this post, is how very different our current Christian culture is to that of 1906. As noted above, military metaphors are often used in the RQP, and indeed the whole publication shows an extremely ordered and extensive organisation that itself has a military flavour. The form of Christianity that one finds in its pages is a very muscular and forceful one and whilst one can admire the earnestness and zeal of those determined to bring the gospel to those who had never heard it, the tone of the publication reflects the colonial era of its time, and the implicit superiority of European (and particularly British) civilisation and culture to that of the “natives”. Howerver, whilst I find this aspect more than a little repellent, I do wonder if we have lost something over the last century, in terms of our zeal and enthusiasm for the mission of the church, both at home and overseas. The words of Revelation 3.15-16 come uncomfortably to mind.

The street topography of early Oakham

Introduction

In the monograph “Oakham Lordshold in 1787”, Clough (2016) considers the map of the town of Oakham in Rutland produced for Lord Winchilsea in that year. This is the earliest map to show significant detail of the urban topography of the town, and from it Clough was able to infer some aspects of its late Anglo-Saxon / early Norman topography, in particular the existence of two enclosures encompassing the castle and the church, and the castle and a large portion of the town. In this post. I take his considerations somewhat further and, by considering the likely Anglo-Saxon road network around Oakham, infer some further features of the Anglo-Saxon urban topography.

Oakham connections

Cox (1994) in his extensive survey of Rutland place names, identifies a number of settlements in the Oakham area that were likely to have been in existence in the sixth and seventh centuries i.e. early on the Anglo Saxon era. These are as follows.

Place names ending in -ham, meaning village or estate. These include Oakham itself; Langham and Wymondham to the north west; Greetham and Grantham to the north east, Empingham to the east and Uppingham to the south.
Place names ending in -dun meaning a large hill, of which the only one in the vicinity of Oakham is Hambleton.
Place names associated with the Anglian tribe of the Hwicce of which Whissendine to the north of Oakham is the only one locally.
The villages of Brooke, which has an early attestation, and Braunston, which incorporates an early form of Anglo-Saxon name and has possible Roman antecedents.
The -well names meaning spring, and in particular Ashwell, although this might be slightly later than the others.
The major settlements in the wider region either with proven continuity since the Roman period or are of an early form- Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln and Stamford.

In what follows we presume that in the Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods, Oakham had road / pathway connections to these early settlements that are, broadly, the predecessors of those we see today at least out of the settlements themselves. Country roads are very conservative topographical features and change little over the centuries. Within, and on the entry to settlements, they would however have been more prone to change, because of building and commercial developments. In these terms we will consider seven such roads that converge on Oakham and in particular we attempt to trace the “natural” course of these roads into and through the town, again assuming that these are the courses that would have been followed in the Anglo-Saxon period, rather than the courses that have developed over the centuries.

But first a broader point is worth making. Oakham was in the ninth and tenth centuries was in many ways at the centre of the Danelaw, with roads passing through it that connected Leicester in the west to Stamford and Lincoln in the east, and Northampton in the south with Derby and Nottingham in the north. As such, it is likely to have been of some strategic importance, particularly during the period when King Edward and Lady Aethelflead finally defeated the Danish armies in the area between 910 and 920.

The Anglo-Saxon roads

The roads that we are considering are shown in Figure 1 on a copy of the 1787 map as given in Clough (2016). These are as follows.

Figure 1. The proposed early road layout

Road 1 from Belton and Braunston (and beyond that Leicester) that runs up what is now Braunston Road and West Road (formerly known as Cow Lane) and joins Road 2 to the west of Oakham.
Road 2, the current Cold Overton Rd from Knossington, runs in a west to east direction, across what would become many centuries later the railway crossing and into Oakham. If the line of the road is continued, it runs along Dean Street (A) towards the church (B), and not along High Street. This straight alignment is very clear from the satellite view of figure 2. I will argue below that High Street was a relatively late development and was laid out in the Norman period. I have then shown the road running to a point in the current market place (C) in front of the castle (D) although this last stretch is conjectural.
Road 3 is the road from Melton Mowbray (and Derby and Nottingham beyond) through Wymondham and Langham. The modern approach to Oakham is via a sharp 90 degree turn along the railway down towards the level crossing. It will be seen below that this route was actually in place in the 16^th century at the latest, so it is not a modern development. However, here we take the natural line of the road to continue from the north of the area marked as the Parks (E) towards the sharp kink in the modern Northgate (F) and then following Northgate and Church Alley to a junction with Road 2 in the Market Place. Again, this natural course is very obvious on the satellite view of Figure 2. This seems a much more natural route into the centre of the town.
Road 4 is from Ashwell and Greesham (and beyond that Grantham) that is taken to follow the existing course of Burley Rd. east of the castle to a junction with Road 5.
The course of Road 5 from Stamford and Empingham has changed significantly over the centuries, as it was moved to loop around Catmose Hall. Clough conjectures that it used to entire town through either or both of Bull Lane (G) or Tanners Lane (H) to the north of Bull St. We choose the latter course here as it allows this road to meet those from the west in the Market Place.
Road 6 from Uppingham and Preston follows its modern course to the end of Mill St. (J) and then cuts across to meet the other roads in the Market Place,
Road 7 from Brooke and Riddlington follows the current course of Mill St. to a junction with Road 6 (J).

Figure 2. Satellite views of the western and northern approaches

The Saxon / early Norman enclosures.

Figure 1 also shows two enclosures. The black dotted lines is a (very) conjectural boundary of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, based on the discovery of boundary ditches at K, L and M summarised by Clough. The purple solid line is the enclosure surrounding the castle and the church identified by Clough, largely on the basis of the flooded ditch at N (that has also been identified in archaeological investigations). Taken together these two enclosures would seem to represent the extent of the Anglo—Saxon and early Norman settlement. The strategic and defensive position of the castle (and in particular the Motte in the south east corner P) adjacent to the meeting point of the roads through the town is very clear. The most striking point about the proposed reconstruction is the absence of the High Street – its anomalous orientation with regard to the other roads suggests it postdated the original road layout. South Street was however likely to be in existence early as it marks the southern boundary of the enclosure. Note its original course ran straight from the west to the east, and did not diverge to the south east at its eastern end.

Changes in the Norman period

Figure 3. The post-conquest road layout

Figure 3 shows the road system and enclosures in the later Norman period. Clough identified the enclosure outlined in green that contains the castle and the portion of the town to the south. He speculates that the pattern of enclosures was changed when the manor was relinquished by (probably) William II and divided between Lordshold and Deanshold (the Dean referring to being that of Westminster Abbey), with the results that the church and the castle holdings were separated. This enclosure was again identified on the basis of a flooded ditch at Q. Clearly the function of this enclosure is very different and seems to be about controlling the movement of people and goods through the town (presumably for taxation purposes). It is like that this is the period when the current High Street came into existence. The Speed map of 1611 (Figure 4) shows “Bargate” at R, (built into the current Flores House) where presumably people and goods were assessed . The road system has also been changed to ensure all traffic flows along High Street. In the west, Road 3 was rerouted, probably in the first instance to follow the current line of Park Lane (S) down to Road 2. At some point the area named as the Parks was enclosed (both routes are shown on the 1611 map), and the route would again have been changed to run around this area, resulting in the modern road configuration (T). The current traffic chaos around the level crossing on the Cold Overton Road thus has its genesis many centuries ago! The combined roads 2 and 3 were then rerouted along the new High Street, rather than down Dean Street. To the east, it is likely that the Stamford Road was rerouted to come into town via what is now Bull Lane.

Figure 4. The Speed map of 1611

Loose ends

In this final section we note a number of what might be called loose ends in the above argument – the lack of destinations for one of the identified roads; the lack of direct roads from a significant place in the locality and the nature of the town “gates”.

A road to nowhere

Road 2 approaches Oakham on a straight route from the west, and within the town becomes Dean Street. But where was it coming from? There are no settlements out in that direction that can be confidently given an early date. Two thoughts come to mind – either that it was part of a somewhat roundabout route to Leicester, or that it was the route to what can be surmised to be early fortifications of the Rutland border to the west (where a number of names indicate beacons). There are no doubt other possibilities.

The route to Hambleton

There are clear indications in Domesday that the major settlement in the area at the time was Hambleton, and it was suggested above that this settlement was of an early date. As far as can be ascertained from the fairly recent maps that are available, the route there was a 90 degree junction of the Stamford Road (see the 1900 Ordnance Survey map of Figure 5). However the map shows a pedestrian way to the west of the junction that cuts of a corner and is a much more natural way to Hambleton. It seems possible that the Stamford Road bifurcated at that point with branches to Empingham and Stamford to the north and Hambleton and Ketton to the south, but that this junction was supressed during the enclosures. So Road 5 might better be referred to as the road to Hambleton, Empingham and Stamford

Figure 5. The road to Hambleton (from 1900 Ordnance Survey map

The gates

“Gates” is an ambiguous word. It can either refer to a physical gate to the town, or be a derivation from the Norse -gata simply meaning road. Bearing this in mind, Clough identifies two gates – an East gate at the entry of the Stamford Road into the enclosure around the present Bull Lane, and a West gate – the Bar-gate mentioned above. The road system was clearly arranged to direct all traffic through these, and resulted in quite a small central enclosure.

Now, whilst no south gate has ever been identified, from the earliest maps, there is a Gibbet Gate shown on the Speed Map on Stamford Road (Figure 4). This is someway outside the enclosed areas, and is this case the word gate probably simply defines a road rather than anything else. albeit one leading to a somewhat grisly destination.

The name Northgate, however, appears on a number of maps. On the Speed map this is positioned somewhere near the railway crossing, and on later maps, the current Northgate is known by either that name or by Northgate Street. Again, this could either refer to an actual gate to the town, or simply a way to denote a road. But if there was an actual North Gate, where was it? In my view, the most likely position is at the current sharp junction of the modern Northgate – F in figure 1, on the original Melton Road and at the possible confluence of the Saxon town and Castle / Church enclosures. A modern photograph is shown in Figure 6 below – taken from the east showing the possible location of the north gate (the thatched cottages) and the line of the road from there to the castle.

Figure 6. The possible location of the north gate

References

Clough T. H. McK. (2016) ” Oakham Lordshold in 1787 – A map and survey of Lord Winchilsea’s Oakham estate” Rutland Local History & Record Society, Occasional Publication No 12

Cox B (1994) “The place-names of Rutland” English Place Name Society

Public Transport in Oakham from the 1960s to the present

Introduction

In this post we will consider how bus and train transport in Oakham has changed from the 1960s to the present day, for both good and bad. To do so, we will use a variety of historical resources, primarily old bus and rail timetables. We will look at four time slices – at the state of the railways in the early 1960s i.e. before the Beeching cuts; at the bus services and train service provided in the late 1960s, after Beeching but before bus deregulation; in the late 1990s after rail privatization and bus deregulation; and the current situation. The time slices chosen have in effect been determined by what information is available. However, between them they give a clear picture of how bus and train services in Oakham have developed (or perhaps degraded) over the last 50 to 60 years.

Sources and limitations

For the early 1960 rail services we use the following sources:

London Midland Region timetable for 1963 and 1965 (personal collection);
Bradshaw’s Guide 1961 (from Timetable World).

These are quite comprehensive and give a full coverage of the rail services at that time, which is of course before the Beeching Report and associated closures. The sources for the late 1960s are both taken from Timetable World:

London Midland Region timetable for 1969;
Bus timetables for the late 1960s.

Whilst the rail timetables can again be expected to be comprehensive, the bus timetables are probably less so. Finding services through Oakham requires a search of the index for bus companies operating in the area. It is possible that I have missed some potential sources of information, although I believe I have captured most of the main services. What I have almost certainly missed are any very local services operated by small operators in the Oakham district, which simply do not appear on the Timetable World web site. The bus timetables are from the years 19868 and 1969 with one exception from 1973 (for a Saturday only service). For the late 1990s we obtain information from the following sources:

Railtrack Great Britain timetable for 1999 (from Timetable World);
Great Britain Bus Timetable 1999 (personal collection).

The Great British Bus Timetable is a compilation of services from across Great Britain. It admits that it excludes local operators and services of a purely local nature, so again the bus information might not be fully comprehensive here. For the current situation we used information for bus and train times that is available on the web as follows:

Operators

In the analysis that follows, we will identify bus and train operators by a two letter code.

BL – Blands of Cottesmore – a local bus company based in a village to the east of Oakham.
BA – Bartons or Barton Tobin Hood – a large regional bus company based around Nottingham, but with a garage in Stamford.
BR – British Rail – the National pre-privatisation rail operator.
CB – CentreBus – an East Midlands regional operator.
CC – Cross Country Trains – the current franchise operator of trains through Oakham, with a wide nationwide network.
CT – Central Trains – a previous operator of trains through Oakham, based in Birmingham with a wide regional network across the Midlands.
EM – East Midlands Railway – the mainline train operator serving the East Midlands cities, that runs occasional services through Oakham (and is, bizarrely, the firm responsible for running the station).
KI – Kinchbus – a small Loughborough based bus company
LR – Lincolnshire Road Car – a large regional company in the 1960s, primarily based, as might be expected, in Lincolnshire.
MR – Midland Red Leicester – the regional operator of the very large Midland Red network that operated buses across the wider Midlands area.
RC – Rutland County Council – which currently operates a small number of services for which no franchise partner could be found.
UC – United Counties Omnibus Company – a large regional company primarily based in the Northampton area.

Analysis

In what follows we consider the public transport services through time in four categories:

Local interurban services to Stamford, Melton Mowbray and Uppingham;
Regional services to Peterborough, Leicester, Nottingham, Grantham and Corby;
Long distance services to Birmingham, Cambridge and London;
Miscellaneous services for which information is incomplete – very local services, long distance coaches etc.

For the first three categories we present the data in tabular form in a consistent format, and then discuss how these have evolved over time. Discussion of the latter category is inevitably rather more diffuse due to the lack of much historical information.

Local interurban services

Tables 1 to 3 show, in standard form, the bus and train services between Oakham and Stamford, Melton Mowbray and Uppingham. Journey times and number of journeys / day are shown. Clearly there are both train and bus options to Stamford and Melton Mowbray, but only bus options to Uppingham. The bus journeys in 1969 and 1999 were provided by major bus operators for which Oakham was at the edge of their operating area – United Counties in Northampton, Lincolnshire road Car, Bartons in Nottingham, Kinchbus in Loughborough. Currently they are provided by more local operators – primarily Blands, but with Rutland County Council running the current Oakham to Stamford service. The bus journey times and service frequencies have remained similar over the period (although note that the former can vary significantly depending on what villages are served on the way between urban centres. The loss of Sunday services is obvious from the data in the tables. What is not so obvious is the fact that evening services on all the bus routes have been significantly cut over the study period.

By contracts the train services have seen major improvement. The Leicester to Peterborough shuttles stopped at all the village stations before Beeching and the journey times between Oakham and Melton Mowbray and Stamford were of the order of 20 minutes. By 1969 these stations had closed and the journey times significantly reduced. This reduction has continued up to the present with faster stock being introduced on the line and, most significantly, the number of journeys has increased by a factor of two with the introduction of hourly through Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport services. These improvements have however resulted in a significant loss of connectivity to the villages where stations were closed in the 1960s.

Table 1. Oakham to Stamford

Uppingham to Stamford via Ridlington, Wing, Oakham (Railway Station Crossing), Exton, Whitwell, Empingham and Great Casterton. UC also operated service 280 with one return journey on Fridays only from Oakham to Stamford vis Edith Weston.
Oakham to Stamford via Whitwell, Empingham and Great Casterton.
Oakham to Stamford via Whitwell, Empingham and Great Casterton. BL185 has one service from Monday to Friday and four on Saturday. RCR9 has five services Monday to Friday.
Leicester to Peterborough East via Syston, Frisby, Melton Mowbray, Saxby, Ashwell, Oakham, Manton for Uppingham, Luffenham, Ketton and Collyweston, Stamford, Helpston and (for some journeys) Peterborough North.
Leicester to Peterborough via Melton Mowbray, Oakham and Stamford
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough.
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough. Also, two early morning / late evening EM services from Nottingham to Norwich calling at Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough (not included in table).

Table 2. Oakham to Melton Mowbray

Melton Mowbray to Oakham (Station Approach) via Whissendine, Ashwell and Langham. Also, four journeys / day Oakham to Langham only.
KIRF (Rutland Flyer) Corby to Melton Mowbray via Uppingham, Oakham and Cottesmore; BA2 Uppingham to Nottingham via Oakham, Langham, Whissendine and Melton Mowbray.
BLR1 Corby to Melton Mowbray via Uppingham, Oakham, Langham and Whissendine; CBR2 is Oakham to Melton Mowbray via Exton, Cottesmore and Whymondham. Also, one BLR4 service per day Melton Mowbray to Peterborough via Oakham and Uppingham (not shown in table).
Leicester to Peterborough East via Syston, Frisby, Melton Mowbray, Saxby, Ashwell, Oakham, Manton for Uppingham, Luffenham, Ketton and Collyweston, Stamford, Helpston and (for some journeys) Peterborough North.
Leicester to Peterborough via Melton Mowbray, Oakham and Stamford.
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough.
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough. Also, two early morning / late evening EMT services from Nottingham to Norwich calling at Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough (not included in table).

Table 3. Oakham to Uppingham

Uppingham to Stamford via Ridlington, Wing, Oakham (Railway Station Crossing), Exton, Whitwell, Empingham and Great Casterton.
KIRF (Rutland Flyer) Corby to Melton Mowbray via Uppingham, Oakham and Cottesmore; BA2 Uppingham to Nottingham via Oakham, Langham, Whissendine and Melton Mowbray.
Corby to Melton Mowbray via Uppingham, Oakham, Langham and Whissendine

Regional interurban services

In this section we consider the evolution of services from Oakham to the major surrounding conurbations of Peterborough, Leicester, Nottingham, Grantham and Corby (Tables 4 to 8). With regard to Peterborough and Leicester, the same remarks can be made as in the last section in terms of the rail services, with steadily decreasing journey times and a major improvement in service frequency. For both towns there have only ever been occasional and sporadic bus links, addressing specific leisure, employment or educational needs, with long journey times. Direct services to Grantham were an early casualty of service rationalization and were not provided after the early 1970s.

In the early 1960s train services were provided from Nottingham to Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Corby, Kettering and beyond. Services on this line were a major casualty of the Beeching closures and there are now only very limited rail services to both Nottingham and Corby. Whilst there was quite a good bus service from Oakham to Nottingham in 1999, operated by Barton, this did not last and there are now no direct bus services to that city. There are, however, regular services to Corby that run through Oakham to Melton Mowbray. In 1999 these were provided by Kinchbus and marketed as the Rutland Flyer. Now the service is operated by Blands. Journey times are of the order of 40 to 50 minutes.

Table 4. Oakham to Peterborough

Melton Mowbray to Peterborough via Langham, Oakham, Uppingham and South Luffernaham.
Leicester to Peterborough East via Syston, Frisby, Melton Mowbray, Saxby, Ashwell, Oakham, Manton for Uppingham, Luffenham, Ketton and Collyweston, Stamford, Helpston and (for some journeys) Peterborough North
Leicester to Peterborough via Melton Mowbray, Oakham and Stamford
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough.
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough. Also, two early morning / late evening trains from Nottingham to Norwich calling at Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough (not included in table).

Table 5. Oakham to Leicester

Saturdays only. Oakham (Station Road) to Leicester via Braunston, Knossington, Cold Overton and Melton Mowbray.
Leicester to Peterborough East via Syston, Frisby, Melton Mowbray, Saxby, Ashwell, Oakham, Manton for Uppingham, Luffenham, Ketton and Collyweston, Stamford, Helpston and (for some journeys) Peterborough North.
Leicester to Peterborough via Melton Mowbray, Oakham and Stamford
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough.
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough. Also two early morning / late evening trains from Nottingham to Norwich calling at Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough (not included in table).

Table 6. Oakham to Grantham

Oakham (Railway Station) to Grantham, calling at Cottesmore, Greetham, Market Overton and Thistleton. Also 3 journeys from Oakham to Cottesmore only.

Table 7. Oakham to Nottingham

Nottingham to Uppingham via Melton Mowbray, Whissendine, Langham and Oakham.
Nottingham to Kettering, via Old Dalby, Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Manton for Uppingham, Gretton, Corby and Kettering, Two or three of these were from Nottingham (and beyond) to London St Pancras.
Nottingham to Norwich calling at (Leicester), Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Stamford and Peterborough (early morning and late evening only)

Table 8. Oakham to Corby

Corby to Melton Mowbray via Uppingham, Oakham and Cottesmore.
Corby to Melton Mowbray via Uppingham and Oakham
Nottingham to Kettering, via Old Dalby, Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Manton for Uppingham, Gretton, Corby and Kettering. Two or three of these were from Nottingham (and beyond) to London St Pancras.
Melton Mowbray to London St Pancras calling at Oakham and Kettering.

Long distance services

The three long-distance services we consider are Oakham to Birmingham, Cambridge and London (Tables 9 to 11). All of these are rail based. The first two reflect the changes described above to the Leicester to Peterborough services with a significantly increased number of services and steadily reducing journey times. The London situation is very different. When services ran from Nottingham to London via Oakham in the early 1960s, there were four trains to and from London each day. After Beeching these were withdrawn completely and it is only in recent years that one journey, from Melton Mowbray to London has been reinstated. Thus whilst there has been considerable improvement in east / west connectivity, north / south connectivity has been reduced to a nominal level.

Table 9. Oakham to Birmingham

Birmingham to Cambridge / Norwich via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough.
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough.
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough

Table 10. Oakham to Cambridge

Birmingham to Cambridge via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough.
Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough. Birmingham to Cambridge / Stansted Airport via Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Stamford and Peterborough

Table 11. Oakham to London

Nottingham to Kettering, via Old Dalby, Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Manton for Uppingham, Gretton, Corby and Kettering. Two or three of these were from Nottingham (and beyond) to London St Pancras.
Melton Mowbray to London St Pancras via Oakham and Kettering

Other services

When looking at the information available from the sources listed above, it is clear that there are two broad categories of bus service that are not fully represented – very local services in and around Oakham and the nearby villages; and long-distance coach services. With regard to the former, it is known that local companies such as Blands provided specific services to places of work and education and indeed that still continues in the latest timetable. These are usually one or two journeys a day with no wider public transport relevance. Als Rutland County Council operate a minibus Rutland Hopper service around the town to out-of-town stores and local villages.

It is also clear that some long distance coaches operated through Oakham, but these are not easy to find, usually occurring in specific operators timetables. For example, in 1968 Barton operated a long-distance coach service between Corby and Glasgow (presumably for steel worker s to visit families), with daytime trips on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday, and overnight trips on Friday and Saturday, that picked up and dropped off at the Crown Hotel. Similarly in 1969 Trent Motor Traction, based in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire ran weekend services from Derby and Nottingham to Southend on Sea, Cambridge and Clacton that ran through Oakham, picking up and setting down at the Market Place. There were no doubt other similar occasional services.

Conclusions

So what can one conclude from the data presented above? Firstly with regard to rail services, it is clear that there have been major improvements in connectivity to the east and the west, with reducing journey times and increased frequencies. That being said, current reliability and punctuality is poor and requires improvement. Services to the north and south have however seen major degradation and are now only represented by one journey a day to London. With regard to bus services, in some sense these have seen little change, with journey times and frequencies on most routes remaining broadly constant, at least on weekdays. That being said, there have been some losses – to Grantham and Nottingham in particular, Sunday services are non-existent and evening services have been severely cut back, Perhaps more importantly the service times and frequencies that were acceptable in the 1960s now simply represent a very basic service that is not attractive to most car-owning travelers.

Oakham roofs

Introduction

This post concerns roofs¹ – specifically those on the High Street of Oakham in Rutland. I find the upper floors of urban streets quite fascinating in their form and variety. When walking through towns however, one rarely looks upwards – indeed most of the time you would risk colliding with other pedestrians or walking into the road if you did. It is the shop fronts and their contents on the lower floors that command attention of course. But above them, the buildings themselves are sometimes stylish, sometimes idiosyncratic, sometimes merely odd – and usually worth a look. In what follows I show two galleries of photographs, both looking at the upper floors of buildings on the north side of Oakham High Street, taken from the pavement on the south side. The first gallery is a series of photographs from east to west (the junction with Burley Street and the Market area to the Wetherspoons pub), and the second from west to east. I am not really in a position to comment on the buildings in architectural terms, so the photos are simply presented for the reader’s interest and enjoyment.

¹ I am fairly sure that when I was at school I was told that this was spelt “rooves”, but Google informs me that this is an archaic word, no longer used in practice. I fear I am thus labelled as archaic, which is probably true.

From east to west

From west to east

All the photos were taken by me, but I am happy for them to be used by others, with a proper acknowledgement.

Ghost signs

A new interest of mine – the old, faded painted signs on buildings whose function has changed. There are just a few photos for now, and I will add more as I come across them. For those interested there is a much greater selection at this Historic England site.

And from November 2024, the sign in Mill St, Oakham has been repainted or perhaps resurrected or re-embodied?

A walk around Oakham

The walk

This is a picture blog, that simply gives pictures of a walk around Oakham. This is not a walk that takes in the traditional historical highlights, although some of those are included, but is rather one in which I show the things that have caught my eye, mainly on my wonderings about the town with the dog. So it is a little idiosyncratic, but I hope will be of interest to some. Except where otherwise indicated, the pictures were all taken by me, and I am happy for them to be used by others, properly credited of course.

The map

The map below shows the approximate locations from which the photographs (A to R) were taken, superimposed on an up to date map from Open Street Map.

The pictures

The first picture is of the listed Midland Railway bridge and level crossing (Picture A) a source of endless frustration to drivers, and, as the location of the meeting of five roads, a horribly hazardous place for pedestrians. There must be a better way of doing traffic management here. Picture B is the Midland Railway Signal Box, which was the inspiration for the Hornby Railway model. Turning along Northgate, there are three pictures of rose bushes (Pictures C to E), some cultivated, some not. but in early summer their cumulative effect is striking. Picture F is of a house a little further along Northgate, with a wonderful display of creepers and climbing foliage.

The next six photos all figure All Saints Church in one way or another. Picture G is a photo taken from Northgate on a misty evening where all that can be seen of the tower is a small floodlight area. The thatched cottages on Northgate can be seen in the foreground. Picture H shows the spire of the church from the garden of the Wheatsheaf pub opposite on a pleasant summer afternoon. Picture I (from here) shows the Green Man stone capital within the church – one of a series of wonderful capital carvings I have blogged about elsewhere. Picture J shows a possible Anglo-Saxon Saxon cross built into the south porch of the church. The identification is very speculative, but the cross is very similar to other, demonstratively, Anglo-Saxon examples. Pictures K and L shows t wo views of the Castle Great Hall, Old School and Church, from Cutts Close and the Castle grounds. I have argued elsewhere that these might be an indication of an early church group in the area. Click on the pictures to see the full extent of the photographs.

Pictures M and N show two nice examples of ghost signs from Catmose Street and Mill Street – faded, painted signs indicating a former usages. Picture O shows the Old Drill Hall on Penn Street which is impressive despite looking as if it could do with a bit of TLC. Picture P, also on Penn Street shows row of houses with a pleasing skyline. South Street Railway Bridge (Picture Q) is hardly beautiful, but very functional ,offering a way over the railway for pedestrians old and young, cyclists, mobility scooters, prams, shopping trolleys etc. For obvious reasons it is know in my household as the “slow bridge”. Finally Picture R (from here) shows the chapel of St John and St Anne – a medieval foundation serving the sheltered housing around it. It is the only place I know where the minister presiding at communion can watch, through the west window, the tops of passenger and freight trains passing within a few yards of the outer wall.#

Further posts on aspects of Oakham can be found using the button below.

Midland History Blog Posts

A possible Anglo-Saxon church group at Oakham in Rutland

Amended on 8th May 2024 to include further details of Our Lady’s Well.

In her book describing the architecture and liturgy of the Anglo-Saxon church in England (1), Gittos describes, in some detail, the existence of what she calls “church groups”. By this she means the practice of constructing a number of churches close to each other in some sort of relationship, which can be demonstrated archaeologically at a number of sites around England, primarily from the early Anglo-Saxon period. These usually take the form of two or more churches aligned on one axis (usually approximately east / west), sometimes with other churches on a parallel axis a few hundred metres away. The alignments can also include crosses or other monuments. Typical examples can be found at St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, with the linear group of St Peter and St Paul, St Mary and St Pancras and the non-linear groups at Hexham and Ripon. These are of course from a monastic context. Gittos hypothesizes that these churches were used for different aspects of the liturgy, with processions between them. A similar linear arrangement can be shown to have existed at the secular Yeavering site.

Figure 1. All Saints Oakham (from the south)

Readers of my blogs will know that I recently moved to Oakham in Rutland and have become a member of the parish church of All Saints (Figure 1). In looking at the layout of the church and its environs, it seems to me that there are some topographical hints (and I would put it no stronger than that), that this was the site of an Anglo-Saxon church group. The oldest part of the current church, the south porch, visible at the left of the photograph of figure 1, dates from around 1190, but the church almost certainly stands on the site of an Anglo-Saxon predecessor (2). In the wall of the south porch, there is what was thought to be a consecration cross, but it is visually very similar to the one shown in Gittos (p 239) from Earls Barton in Northamptonshire, that is demonstrably Anglo-Saxon (Figure 2). If the Oakham cross is Anglo-Saxon, it was presumably taken from the Anglo-Saxon church in the rebuilding of the late 12th century.

Figure 2. The crosses at Earls Barton (left) and All Saints Oakham (right)

All Saints now consists of a nave, transepts and chancel, with side chapels to either side of the chancel – dedicated to the Holy Trinity to the north, and to the Virgin Mary to the south. The original Norman church just consisted of the nave with the current transepts, the latter acting as side chapels (the communion niches, which would have been next to the altars, can still be seen). The earlier Anglo-Saxon church was probably of similar shape and dimensions.

The first hint that the church might once have been part of a group arises from the fact that it lies within a substantial enclosure that now contains the Hall, inner bailey and outer bailey of Oakham Castle, as well as the church and church yard. This can be seen in Figure 3. The interesting fact is that the Great Hall of the Castle, regarded as possibly the best surviving example of Norman Domestic Architecture (Figure 4) lies fairly precisely on the same axis as the church, and eighteenth century maps show a postern gate in the wall on the alignment, offering access between the Great Hall and the church.. There seems to be no reason for these features, other than whatever was on the site before the hall was built was in some way associated with the church. Interestingly, early sources indicate that there was a chapel within the Great Hall (3) to which specific individuals held right of appointment, which suggests that it was more than simply a domestic chapel. One can thus conjecture that there was a church / chapel on this site before the castle was built in 1190.

Figure 3. The church and castle enclosure (from 1900 Ordnance Survey Map)

Figure 4. The Great Hall of the Castle from the south

The second indication that there was a church group comes from extending this alignment to the west. This takes it through the medieval site of Northgate, shown in Speed (4) as a large open area with a small drawing of a cross on a plinth (Figure 6). Whilst the cross is somewhat south of the strict alignment (although due west of All Saints), its presence is again suggestive. Note that alignment of the church and the castle shown on the map is not accurate and does not represent the situation on the ground. The area around Northgate was bisected by the building of the Midland Railway in the 1840s and, if the Speed map is accurate, the location of the cross was at the position of the current signal box. This is itself a grade II listed building and the prototype for model railway signal box construction kits (Figure 6). Whether or not this is enough to make up for the loss of the cross must be left for the reader to decide.

Figure 5. The Speed map of Oakham (the cross can be see on the left of the picture)

Figure 6. Oakham signal box at the site of the Northgate Cross

The third hint is the building to the north of the church, but on a roughly parallel axis that can also be seen in Figure 3. This is the original Oakham Grammar School, dating from just after the Reformation. It is built on the site of two former Guild chapels – one dedicated to St Mary, and one to St Michael the Archangel (3). The former included a toft, possibly the Guild Hall, and the latter at least was quite substantial, having dimensions of 60 feet by 30 feet. (3). Their topographical relationship to All Saints echoes that at Hexham and Ripon, referred to above. Perhaps here we have survivors of other ancient chapels that were part of the overall church group. Figure 7 shows a modern (i.e. May 2024) photograph of the castle (on the left), the old school (in the centre) and the church of All Saints (on the right) from the north side of Cutts Close Park (once the outer bailey of the castle). Visually they form quite a striking arrangement.

It also seems that there were another two pre-Reformation guilds at All Saints – one dedicated to All Saints itself, and presumably centred on the high altar, and one to the Holy Trinity, presumably centred on the chapel of that name within the church itself. How the Guild chapel of St Mary relates to the chapel with the same dedication in the church itself is not clear.

Figure 7. The castle, old school and church

Reference (3) also indicates that there were pre-Reformation processions to a well dedicated to St Mary a “quarter of a mile to the north of the church”, and to an image of St. Michael, possibly within the chapel of that name – another of the characteristics of church groups identified by Gittos. The well still exists. It is shown on the 1880 and subsequent Ordnance Survey maps as “Our Lady’s Well”, actually almost half a mile north east of the church (Figure 8) with a straight path across Cutts Close and the Burley Road forming a direct and prominent link between the church and the well. It is not currently accessible being in an overgrown area managed for wildlife. Our Lady’s Well and All Saints church are on quite an accurate midwinter sunset / midsummer sunrise alignment. Whether or not this was intentional I will leave for others to judge. If it was then it suggests some sort of ritual activity at the site that predates the Anglo-Saxon era.

Figure 8. Our Lady’s Well and All Saints Church (from an 1880s OS map – the church is in the bottom left and the well in the top right).

At this point it is also worth noting that there is another surviving chapel in Oakham – that of the medieval Alms Houses of St. John and St Anne. This is however, not on the same alignment as the cross, church and castle and is some distance to the south west, and not likely to be part of any group. Neither is it in any sort of solar alignment with All Saints, being too far north to lie on the All Saints / Lady Well alignment. But the dedication is rather odd and perhaps hints at an earlier history.

So we can conjecture that we have here the surviving topography of a church group, with one church on the site of the current church in a linear alignment with one on the site of the Castle Great Hall and a cross at Northgate, and two on the Old School site where the guild chapels once stood. A church or chapel on the site of the current chancel of the church of All Saints is also a possibility. In making this suggestion we are of course making major assumptions that all the current buildings stand on the site of Anglo-Saxon originals, for which the evidence, such as it is, is very weak. There is also no evidence that there was ever monastic activity at Oakham, which seems to have been the context of many early church groups. So the suggestion that we have here the remains of a church group, attractive as it is, must only be regarded as very speculative.

References

Gittos H (2015) Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford University Press, 978-0198737056
Aston N (2003) All Saints’ Oakham. A guide and history. Friends of All Saints, Multum in Parvo Press.
Victoria county History (1935) A History of the County of Rutland: Volume 2, Oakham. From British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/rutland/vol2/pp5-27#h3-s7
Speed J (1611) Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine. Modern version by Nigel Nicolson (1998) The counties of Medieval Britain. A Tudor atlas by John Speed. Pavilion Books Ltd.

The origin of Rutland

Preamble

The study of local history is often a very personal affair. I recently moved from Lichfield to Oakham in Rutland, and have thus naturally become interested in the local history of the area, about which I previously knew very little. In particular the early, pre-Domesday, history of the area intrigues me. The nature of the now the county of Rutland in that period is far from clear. At Domesday in 1086 (1), it was divided between “Roteland” – the two northern wapentakes of Alstoe and Martinsley, which were recorded as a detached part of Nottinghamshire, and the southern hundred of Witchly, which was part of Northamptonshire (Figure 1 – from (2)). In a detailed study Phythian-Adams (3,4) argued that there was a deeper underlying unity and that Martinsley and most of Witchley formed the dower lands of late Anglo-Saxon queens, and possibly Mercian queens before that; and that a royal hunting forest stretched over these two regions. He hypothesized that the division of the region took place during the Viking period in the ninth and tenth centuries and this division was incorporated into the newly formed counties in the area in the late 10^th and early 11^th centuries. In addition, the whole region is also remarkably free from Danish place names, despite being firmly within the sphere of influence of the Five Boroughs of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Stamford, again suggesting a shared history of some sort.

Figure 1. Rutland at Domesday (from (2))

(1 indicates Alstoe Wapentake; 2 is Martinsley Wapentake, and the remaining area is Witchly Hundred.)

Be that as it may, Phythian-Adams was unable to make much headway into the origin of the land unit that was to become Rutland prior to the Danish invasions. He suggested that it might be a small polity similar to those listed in the area of Middle Anglia in the Tribal Hidage (5), that most enigmatic of documents that I have discussed elsewhere, but was unable to say any more. He also demonstrated that there were a number of settlement names on the western county boundary that could be interpreted as watchtower / beacon or something similar, suggesting a contested boundary with whatever polity lay to the west. In addition, he noted that where the Roman Road known as Ermine Street crossed the county boundary, there were significant Roman settlements at Great Casterton and Thistleton. Roman towns on boundaries seems to have been a characteristic of the Roman east midlands, possibly to control the boundaries of different tribal areas, which again suggests that the Rutland area had an identifiable identity at that period as a sub-region of the Corieltauvi tribal area.

In this blog post we revisit this issue of the early origin of Rutland through rather a different approach – by looking at the topography and river catchments of the area, and the interaction with the eastern fenland tribal areas that have been extensively studied by Oostthuizen (6). We will conclude that in these terms, the areas that were to become Rutland and the Lincolnshire “Part” of Kesteven formed two coherent neighbouring territories with rivers that drained into the highly managed fenland boundary and the polities of the Tribal Hidage that existed there and were important in maintaining the fenland habitat. In addition, a VERY speculative reanalysis of the Tribal Hidage gives two possibilities identifications of these territories.

Topography

Figure 2. The Welland catchment

Figure 2 shows a map of the catchment of the River Welland, produced by the Welland Valley Partnership (7). On it we have superimposed

the boundaries of the modern County of Rutland and the Lincolnshire area of Kesteven (dotted red lines)and the location of the town of Stamford (red circle);
the tentative boundary of the Tribal Hidage region of the Spalde (around Spalding) – Oostthuizen suggests that this represented by the hundred of Elloe in the Lincolnshire part of Holland.
The locations of the western “defensive” settlements mentioned above (green circles).

It can immediately be seen that the Martinsley and Witchly areas of Rutland, together with the area around Stamford, is effectively the area of the major part of the Upper Welland catchment and its tributaries, the Eye, the Chater and the Gwash, with the exception of a relatively narrow strip to the south of the Welland. The position of Stamford just outside Rutland in a narrow strip of Lincolnshire has frequently been noted as being anomalous, and consideration of a number of late Anglo-Saxon estate holdings suggest it was once part of the Rutland with significant estate links to the area. In topographic terms, the boundary between Rutland and Kesteven would make much more sense if it were to the east of Stamford. The defensive settlements can be seen to be at the upper end of the catchment, close to the watershed.

The area of Kesteven contains the catchment of the Glen that feeds into the Welland below Stamford. The Welland then feeds in to the fenland region of the Splade. This is of some significance. Oostthuizen shows that this area was heavily utilised for agriculture, with communal rights to use specific areas of the Fen for grazing. There are indications of the control of rivers and drainage channels in this and other fen boundary areas. This is of importance, as it implies that the Spalde would have every incentive to ensure some degree of control of the contents of the Welland and its tributaries, particularly in times of drought and flood, to ensure the productivity of their region. Thus, the two areas of Kesteven and Rutland would have been of some importance to the fenland economy of the Spalde, which points to the need for some sort of level of organization, either as separate polities, or as upland extensions of the territory of the Spalde, even if only with the status of a modern drainage authority. This in turn suggests that the origin of these two areas could arise from their topography as important catchments for the fenland economy. There is an anomaly here however – the wapentake of Alstoe is outside this catchment, with its streams flowing to the Soar and the Trent. Taken with the fact that this area was not part of the lands of the Anglo-Saxon queens, or of the Royal Forest, tends to suggest that it was not part of the original land unit.

But can we say any more about the nature and names of these two areas of Rutland and Kesteven? To that question we now turn.

The Tribal Hidage

I have discussed the nature of the document known as the Tribal Hidage elsewhere – see here and here. Almost everything about this document is disputed in one way or another and great care needs to be taken in its interpretation and any conclusions that are drawn from it must be viewed with some circumspection. In its various versions, it consists of what was probably a Mercian or Northumbrian tribute list of various polities of a wide range of sizes (Table 1 reprinted from here), some of which can be identified and located, whilst the locations of others are disputed. It is arranged in two lists – a primary list and a secondary list, both, as far as can be judged proceeding a roughly clockwise direction (Figure 3 reprinted from here). Its date is as uncertain as any other aspect of the document, but for me the early date of around 620 proposed by Higham (8) seems the most logical.

Table 1 The Tribal Hidage

Figure 3. The order of the primary and secondary lists in the Tribal Hidage

Now in the primary list we have, at P7 and P8, the south and north Gyrwa. These can be located with some confidence in the Peterborough area, around the River Nene. The Spalde are at P11. Between The Gyrwa and the Spalde at P9 and P10 on the list, we have the East and West Wixna. These have not been located, with some writers placing them around Wisbech or the Norfolk edge of the fen to the east. However, their position in the list would suggest a location between the Gyrwa and the Spalde. As these two polities bordered each other, this is a bit tricky, but to identify them with Rutland and Kesteven is broadly consistent with the order of the list.

But there is another possibility. As mentioned above, the Tribal Hidage consists of two lists. In the Primary list, after the Hicca at P16, which can be located around Hitchen, there is the Whitgara. In the map of figure 3 I did not suggest a location for this. However, in the view of some scholars, such as Hart (5) this is an obvious reference to the Isle of Wight. In placing the unknown entities of P18 and P19 (Noxgaga and Ohtaga) in the Leicestershire / Northamptonshire area, I conveniently ignored this suggestion (on the basis that if some evidence doesn’t fit, it is best ignored – which I observe is a common practice of historians!). But if in fact the identification with the Isle of Wight is accepted, this means that the Primary list has two parts – the rotation round the north of Mercia, and then possibly three large entities in the south – Wight, Noxgaga and Ohtaga added on at the end. This would match with the suggestion of Hart who placed the latter two in the Surrey / London area. Pushing this line of reasoning a little further for the Secondary list, if this was again in two parts, we would have a rotation around the south and east of Mercia, and then a list of major subject kingdoms beginning with East Anglia running around the east and south of England. This in turn opens up the possibility of not having to consider placing S7 to S10 in the South Midlands in order to proceed from S6 (Faerpingas) in Oxfordshire to East Anglia (S11) in a reasonably logical way, but they could be allowed to be in the East Midlands where there is something of a hole on the map. Of particular interest are S9 and S10 – the East Willa and the West Willa. Hart places these in southern Cambridgeshire and argues that the name Willa is cognate with the name of the Well stream, a major waterway in the area. An identical argument could apply for polities next to the River Welland ie Rutland and Kesteven. However , the chain of assumptions is a long one, and this identification should be regarded as very speculative.

Concluding remarks

A consideration of the topography of the Welland Catchment, suggest that this may have been what defined the boundaries of what were to become Rutland and Kesteven. In the early Anglo-Saxon era, both these polities would have been important to the economy and agriculture of the Fenland boundary, and especially the region of the Spalde. In addition, it seems possible that we could identify Rutland and Kesteven with the Tribal Hidage polities of either the East and West Wixna, or the East and West Willa. Of these, the first two fit most naturally into the order of the Tribal Hidage, whilst the last two are most linguistically likely. But neither may be correct!

References

Thorn F (1980) “Rutland Domesday*”, Domesday Book 29, series editor John Morris
Prince Yuri Galitzine (1986) “Domesday Book in Rutland – the Dramatis Personae”, Rutland Record Society, ISBN 0907464 05 X
Phythian-Adams C (1977) “Rutland Reconsidered’ in Ann Dornier, ed., “Mercian Studies”, Leicester, 63-84
Phythian-Adams C (1980) “The Emergence of Rutland and the Making of the Realm“, Rutland Record 1, 5-12
Hart C (1971) “The Tribal Hidage”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 21 (1971), 133-157
Oosthuizen S (2017) “The Anglo-Saxon Fenland”, Windgather Press
Welland Valley Partnership (2013) “Enhancing the River Welland“,
Higham N (1995) “An English Empire – Bede and the early Anglo Saxon kings”, Manchester University Press.