SAXON SOMERSET
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INTRODUCTION
See also
The Danish Invasions
The Saxon conquest and occupation of Somerset was a long slow process which began with the battle of Dyrham in 577, when the West Saxons defeated the Britons and, by driving them into Wales and the southwest, divided their forces and weakened their powers of further resistance. This victory brought the Saxons to Bath, and perhaps across the river Avon into the northern parts of Somerset. It was now inevitable that, having secured their conquest in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, they would begin to plan their advance into Somerset.

The southwest peninsula, after the departure of the Roman armies, still remained firmly in the hands of the Britons, in spite of the fact that many British families had crossed the Channel to the greater security of Brittany. There was some kind of settled government centred on the Kingdom of Dumnonia, which included Devon, Cornwall and a good deal of Somerset, perhaps as far as the district around Glastonbury. In the southern parts of Somerset which had been under the control of the Durotriges, the breakdown of Roman administration led to the gradual decay of towns, villas and roads. Though people continued to cultivate the land and occupy for a time the crumbling villas, the whole fabric of the Roman way of life had gone before the Saxons came.

After nearly a century, the next great Saxon advances began with two important battles, the first at Bradford-on-Avon in 652 and the second in 658 at Penselwood, the densely forested area on the eastern boundary of Somerset. These victories opened the way into Somerset through the forests and marshes to the river Parrett, but the clearing and settlement was a slow and gradual process. To drive the Britons back into Devon, a further two-pronged attack was made in 682, when Centwine cleared the western coastal area of Somerset as far as the Devon border, and another army pressed along the English Channel coast from Dorset to Exeter. The final stage in securing the conquest of Somerset was carried out by Ine, King of the West Saxons, and completed with the victory over Geraint in 710.
Map of Anglo-Saxon Somerset
Little is known of the process of settlement, the felling of trees, the clearing of scrub and the first ploughing of the virgin soil in the valleys. Sites for homes and villages were selected, with adequate water supply and with meadow land and pasture for their cattle. A considerable amount of woodland was left to supply timber for houses and implements, as well as to provide pasture and pannage for pigs. From this time, with little written evidence to give the details, began the foundation of the historic county of Somerset. Some areas were in part already occupied by Britons who had survived the early fighting and were accepted by the Saxons. The Laws of King Ine, which deal mainly with penalties and compensation for wrongs, are also concerned with the frontier conditions of early settlement in a conquered country. These laws gave legal rights to the 'Welshmen', the Saxon term for the Britons, but only as secondclass citizens, securing a scale of compensation for offences committed against them much lower than that which applied to the Saxons.

It was during the two centuries following the reign of Ine that the Saxons founded many of the towns and villages in Somerset. The boundaries of the estates surrounding these settlements, covering over 1000 miles across all kinds of country, are recorded in Charters which still survive, Some estates, like the Bishop of Winchester's great manor of Taunton, were vast and became administrative hundreds. At Wrington, the boundaries recorded in a Charter of 904 have been retraced and found almost to coincide with those of the modern parish. The site of a palace at Cheddar, used by Saxon kings who hunted on the Mendips, has recently been excavated. The foundations of a long rectangular timber hall, with associated domestic buildings, were uncovered.