Anglo-Saxon Tuns and Vills
A good many Britons no doubt settled down with the Saxons as
slaves, and that probably accounts for so many of the natural
features of the country--the rivers and the hills--keeping their
old British names. The British villages must have had names, but
those villages were apparently destroyed, and the slaves would be
settled near the homesteads which the conquerors set up.
In fixing on a place for a "tun" the Saxons would choose a valley
rather than a hill, usually near a running stream, or a plentiful
supply of water. At the present time nearly all over England we can
find villages which have not been touched by modern improvements
and alterations, and most of these show something even now of their
Saxon origin.
For instance, in the county of Rutland there is a village named
Exton, which has for many centuries kept several features which
show its connection with Saxon days. Its name, Ex-ton, seems to
be compounded of the British word "ex", which means "water", and
the Saxon "ton" or "tun", which means the "enclosure"--"the tun
by the water". There, sure enough, flowing by the village, is a
stream, a tributary of the River Gwash; just such a stream as the
Saxons loved. In the middle of the village is the triangular open
space, or village green. Round it the houses are thickly clustered
together, with hardly any garden ground at the back or in front,
and most of them with none at all. Outside the ring of houses are
small grass fields or closes, where calves and cows feed, and
poultry run. These little fields form a kind of ring round the
village, and the hedges enclosing them represent the old fence
of Saxon days, which formed the "tun". Beyond this are wider
pasture-grounds and big plough-lands, stretching away in several
directions up the gentle slopes.
You will be able to find a good many villages which have some
resemblance to Exton; they answer very closely to the Anglo-Saxon
vill and the Anglo-Saxon town, for town and village were laid out
on the same principle.
Now look at some little sleepy country town, and you will see much
the same arrangement as in the village. The wide open space in the
middle, where the town pump stands, and where the market is held,
answers to the village green. Though this is often spoken of as the
Market Square, it is usually more like a triangle in shape than a
square.
The old houses round the market square are built very closely one
into the other, and with queer narrow alleys leading to houses
behind those in front; much in the same way as the houses are
clustered round the village green. Round the outskirts of the town,
at the back of the houses, are small green closes or paddocks.
Beyond them are the larger meadows and pastures; then the wide
corn-lands and woods; and, not far away, the heath or common.
The Saxon settlements, the "tuns" or "vills", whether they
afterwards became what we now understand as "towns" or "cities", or
remained what we call villages, had all the same chief features.
Just as ordinary schoolrooms and railway stations are all pretty
much alike, because they all have to serve much the same purpose,
so the Saxon settlements were very similar in their general plan.
There was the open place, where people met and the folk-moot was
held, surrounded by the houses of stone or wood in which the people
lived. Around these lay the grass yards or common homestead; and,
beyond them, the wide arable and pasture-lands, with patches of
moorland and forest.
But outside the actual "tun" there would be something connected
with the Saxon settlement which you would be sure to notice. After
you had passed the boundary to the tun, you would see no hedgerows
or walls dividing the land into fields. The arable land was one
huge field. Its position would depend, of course, upon the nature
of the soil and the lie of the land. You would not expect to find
it down in the water-meadows, through which the river flowed; it
would be higher up, out of the reach of floods; perhaps on the
hill-sides.
Then you would see the huge field, ploughed in long strips, about
a furlong in length, that is, a "furrow long",[5] and one or two
perches in breadth. Between the ploughed strips would be narrow
unploughed strips, on which, in places, brambles would grow.
The heath-lands and moorlands were uncultivated tracts, where
rough timber and underwood grew, which was cut and lopped by the
people of the vill under certain conditions. There were no formal
spinneys,[6] nor wide stretches of old timber, such as we nowadays
expect to see in a forest. In places the forests contained old
timber, and were thick with undergrowth, and infested with wild
animals, such as wolves and boars. The name forest was often given
to an uncultivated district, not much differing from a rough
common, where sheep, cattle, and swine could pick up a living.
[5] A furrow, or furlong, was, roughly speaking, the distance the
plough would travel up or down the field before it was turned.
[6] Spinneys are plantations of trees growing closely together.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE GREEN, EXTON, RUTLAND
[See page 26]]