A Kentish jaunt

It’s odd that you can live for three decades in a country the size of England and still never have visited whole corners of it. 

Kent is one of those corners for me. Last week I ventured down to the mysterious lands beyond the M25 with my brother, a fellow Roman nut.

Cantia incognita

A typical Kentish scene

Growing up in Worcestershire, we heard all manner of tales about the Kentish folk. People spoke of them as Pliny and Martianus Capella had once spoken of the Blemmyes of Nubia: ‘They have no heads,’ they said, ‘and their eyes and mouths are on their chests.’ Some claimed that no such place as ‘Kent’ even existed, or if it did, it was probably in France.

So it was with great excitement and trepidation that we hurled ourselves over the Dartford Crossing, half-expecting to fall off the edge of the world.

As it turned out, Kent is lovely, even in the gloomy greyness of January. We only had one full day to explore, and had a few places we definitely wanted to see. For the most part these weren’t the usual tourist sites, which was useful, since a lot of those places are closed on winter weekdays.

Landing site

First stop was the beach between Walmer and Deal, the (probable) landing site of Caesar in his two expeditions to Britain. Nowadays this is a heavily stepped shingle beach that feels very exposed to both seaward and landward weather, hardly ideal for a massed landing of the two legions that Caesar brought over from Gaul in 55 BC.

When Caesar returned in 54 BC, he brought five legions; the later Claudian conquest involved about 40,000 troops, including both legionaries and auxiliaries.

Compare this with the size of the Norman invasion army in 1066, which probably numbered fewer than 10,000 men - the size of Caesar's initial 'scouting' force. Yet with this tiny army, Duke William was essentially able to conquer England after a single pitched battle. This highlights one of the most striking things about early medieval warfare, i.e. how small-scale everything got after the collapse of the empire.

Anyway, back to the Romans. The landing site was probably different in Caesar’s time, though, as this part of the Kentish coast has shifted and changed a lot over the centuries. The beach may have been sand instead of shingle, and sheltered somewhat by sand bars off the coast. In any case, Caesar chose the same site for his full-scale invasion the following year.

There's a modest monument to Caesar close to the beach, an unassuming flat sculpture with his head in profile. As you can see from the picture above, it could do with a bit of a scrub.

Hillforts

It was during his second invasion that Caesar ventured properly inland, fighting a skirmish next to a river usually identified as the Great Stour outside Canterbury, and capturing a hillfort that is commonly thought to be Bigbury. It’s the strongest contender, at any rate.

View from the Stour - the slight rise on the left skyline is the optimistically named 'Bigbury' hillfort

There isn’t much of archaeological interest to see at Bigbury now. The summit is occupied by leafy lanes and idyllic houses and gardens, and few of the surviving ramparts are accessible, though some were excavated in the 1970s. It was useful to visit the site, though, just to get some idea of its size and setting. As hillforts go it’s not an especially formidable one, which is why Caesar apparently captured it so easily (having 20,000 legionaries probably also helped).

The south gate at Oldbury - from this imposing entrance, the path runs up a narrow channel with ramparts on either side

Much more impressive was Oldbury in west Kent, just off the M26. This much larger hillfort dates from around the same time and may also have been captured by Caesar’s troops. Nowadays the entire hill is laced with tracks and bridlepaths snaking through dense woodland, so it’s hard to get a sense of the overall scale from the ground – that is, until you find yourself confronted by the surviving ramparts, which are still intimidating after two thousand years. When first constructed, even grizzled Roman legionaries must have found them a fearsome prospect.

Museum

A slave about to strangle her mistress...?

Canterbury Roman Museum was also a highlight, with its fine reconstruction scenes and selection of genuinely interesting artefacts. I've added a selection of photos from the museum below.

My own favourite items were the most mundane: a messy chi-rho scratched on the bottom of a dish, and an iron hinge-pivot that was found in situ during an excavation of one of the Canterbury city gates.

(I didn't know I could get so excited about a hinge-pivot, but being trained as an archaeologist does weird things to you.)

There’s clearly much more Roman stuff to see in Kent. Two sites I really want to visit, both sadly closed this time, are Richborough Roman Fort and Lullingstone Roman Villa – they’ll be top of my list on the next trip. If you have any other recommendations, leave a comment below!

The early Christian chi-rho symbol inscribed on bottom of dish

The wonderful hinge-pivot

If you squint, you might be able to make out the tiny chi-rho inscribed in the bowl of the lower spoon

Roman mouse

A late Roman soldier

Roman Canterbury at its height in the second century

Anglo-Saxon Canterbury, c. 700 - note the remains of the theatre, and the new cathedral complex in the distance

Blood and Bone: England and Germany in the Dark Ages

I should probably start by apologising for the title.

In the eighth century there was no ‘England’ (unified only in the tenth century), there was no ‘Germany’ (unified in the nineteenth century), and we early medievalists really don’t like the term ‘Dark Ages’.

Right, now that’s sorted, let’s talk about blood and bone.

Two World Wars and one World Cup

Judging from the current ‘ding-dong’ (as Mary Beard referred to it on BBC Radio 4 last Sunday morning) between Michael Gove and Richard Evans about public remembrance of the First World War, it’s clear that the historical relationship between England and Germany is going to be popping up a lot in the news over the next four years.

It’s sad that the modern English perception of Germany is still so dominated by the World Wars. (‘Two World Wars and one World Cup’, as the football chant goes.) The medievalist, to whom any history after about 1789 is basically journalism, naturally takes a longer view. He or she might see the wars of the twentieth century as a regrettable blip in the relationship between two populations who historically have a great deal in common.

Out of Germany 

Image from Wikipedia Commons

More than a thousand years ago, the Venerable Bede, an Anglo-Saxon monk living in Jarrow about A.D. 730, wrote down one of the earliest known accounts of ‘English’ origins. He believed that the English – or the Anglo-Saxons, as we normally call them – only came to Britain across the North Sea about three hundred years earlier.

“Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany [Germania]: Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight. From the Saxons, that is, the country which is now called Old Saxony, came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. From the Angles, that is, the country which is called Anglia, and which is said, from that time, to remain deserted to this day, between the provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, are descended the East Angles, the Midland Angles, Mercians, all the race of the Northumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of the English.”

Bede is known as ‘the Father of English History’ for this work, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He was writing two centuries before the Anglo-Saxons were finally brought together into a single kingdom called ‘England’. Even so, he viewed the Anglo-Saxons as a single people, unified by three things:

1. Language (English, or ‘Old English’ as we now call it) 
2. Religion (the newly introduced Christianity) 
3. A common origin in ‘Germania’ (what are now the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark)

The Roman coastal fort at Portchester (Hants), one of the mythical landing places of the Anglo-Saxons

It’s strange to think of now, but Bede still saw his own people essentially as immigrants. (This is why Anglo-Saxonists like myself rip our hair out when the BNP and other right-wing groups talk about the English as the ‘indigenous’ inhabitants of Britain – but that’s a topic for another time).

Lingua Germanica

So the Anglo-Saxons and the various peoples of ‘Germania’ were basically cousins. In fact, Bede writes as though the Anglo-Saxons were of pure Germanic descent, but that certainly wasn’t the case; from the very beginning the immigrants had intermarried with the pre-existing population of Britain.

In terms of language, though, he was spot-on. The closest ‘relative’ to modern English is Frisian, a dialect of Dutch. If Eddie Izzard can go to Frisia and, speaking only Old English, manage to buy a brown cow (or brúnu cú) from a local farmer, then his eighth-century counterpart would have had no trouble at all making himself understood across the North Sea.

Christians and pagans

An ancient oak in Reinhardswald, near Kassel

But there was one big difference between the Anglo-Saxons and their distant cousins in Germania: religion. The peoples across the Rhine had never been fully converted to Christianity, and were largely still pagan. They were devoted to gods like Thunaer and Wodan, and given to arcane rituals in forest groves and at natural springs.

This was a big deal for devout Christians like Bede. Judgement Day was coming, and it was crucial to spread the ‘light of salvation’ to every corner of the world. How could the Anglo-Saxons stand by and let their close relatives dwell in darkness, and be doomed to eternal damnation? Something had to be done.

And so from the 690s onwards there was a stream of charismatic, idealistic Anglo-Saxon missionaries across the North Sea, determined to bring the Word of the Gospels to the ‘ignorant’ pagans of Germania.

There were men like the Northumbrian Willibrord, who became Bishop of Utrecht and was buried in his monastery of Echternach, in modern Luxembourg; or like Boniface, originally from Devon, who led a 33-year mission that stretched from Frisia to Bavaria, became an archbishop and the foremost representative of the pope north of the Alps, and is now patron saint of Germany. Or there were remarkable women like Boniface’s relative Leoba, the miracle-working abbess of Tauberbischofsheim, who won the respect of bishops and kings alike, and ended up a saint herself.

There is something distasteful about these figures to modern liberal sensitivities. They smack of later European missionaries to Africa, with their patronising, contemptuous view of indigenous religions, and their unashamed desire to impose Christianity on people who did not always want it.

But there is no denying their courage. Germania was not always a safe place. Two of the first missionaries to enter Saxony were stabbed to death and dumped in the Rhine. In 751, pagan rebels burned more than 30 of Boniface’s churches to the ground. Boniface himself was eventually murdered by brigands in Frisia, butchered along with about 50 of his companions, whose corpses were left scattered in the marshes of Dokkum.

Blood and bone 

Despite all this, the missionaries kept coming. One priest in Wessex, hearing that there might be a new mission into Saxony, wrote an excited letter to the Anglo-Saxon bishop of Mainz:

Modern statue of Boniface at Fritzlar

“If a door of divine mercy should be opened to the region of our people – that is, among the Saxons – be sure to inform us of the matter. There are many who would like to hurry this door with their help, with the assistance of God.”

Our people, he wrote. This Anglo-Saxon priest, even though his ancestors might have left Germania three hundred years earlier, still viewed the continental Saxons as family.

Before his martyrdom Boniface also wrote back home, urging the Anglo-Saxon church to support his mission with their prayers, so that God would “convert the hearts of the pagan Saxons to the faith”. “Have pity on them,” he wrote, “for their repeated cry is: ‘We are of one blood and bone’.”

This, I think, will be a useful phrase to keep in mind over the next few years, as the centeneries of the most terrible battles of the First World War pop in and out of the headlines.

Of course we must never forget the lessons of that war. But at the same time, we should take the long view and see it for what it was: an awful violation of a relationship between two peoples whose common roots, in history as well as in culture and language, go far deeper than the mud of the Somme.

Hardknott Pass - a Roman vanity fort?

Taking a shiny, brand-new rented car up the steepest road in England seemed like a good idea.

At least, until I started to do it. That was when I saw that the 1:3 gradient wasn’t the issue. The steepness is fine. The issue is everything else: the coiling switchbacks; the one-car width of the road; the naked verges that mean there is nothing between you and the rocky valley floor 500 feet below; and, worst of all, everyone else who is trying to come down the same narrow road at the same time as you, and is equally reluctant to have their car turn into a tumbling metal coffin – a fate narrowly missed by an American tourist on neighbouring Wrynose Pass a few months back.

To drive over Hardknott Pass, you need two things: a head for heights, and good clutch control. A sturdy handbrake also helps.

It doesn’t hurt to pray in advance for dry weather, either. If you do, I’d recommend making a sacrifice to Mars, because the main reason to put yourself through the trial of Hardknott Pass is to visit the Roman fort situated near its summit.

View from the fort, looking east to Hardknott Pass half a mile away

At the roof of Roman Britain

This fort, Mediobogdum, is easily one of the most impressively situated Roman forts in Britain. Actually, probably not many forts in the entire empire could compete with its dramatic setting. The peaks of the Lake District rise like thunder on every side, an ominous backdrop of scree and broken shoulders of volcanic rock. The monotony of grey stone and russet-brown grass is broken only by the shining patches of snow that hide in mountainside clefts and hollows until the end of spring.

Remains of the bath house (left) and the south corner of the fort (right)

If a Roman defined civilisation in terms of urban life and cultivation, then this landscape was as barbaric as it came. Rocky it may be, but every other step lands you in a bog, especially after the winter when the ground is saturated with meltwater. There is hardly a level patch of ground to build a single house, never mind an entire fort. Clearly, nothing much is going to grow up in this miserable soil, with the cold wind whipping over the pass.

But when did the Romans ever give up so easily? Despite its remoteness, despite the challenges, with typical bloody-mindedness they built a fort up here in the AD 120s. This was around the same time as the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, so there was a serious amount of engineering ‘can-do’ in the air. They built a road, drained the boggy ground, hauled rocks from the peaks, and threw up a fort that looked as tough as the mountains around it.

Outside the fort they even levelled an area larger than a football pitch by cutting into the side of the mountain – though quite why they did this is a mystery. It is generally interpreted as a parade ground, which makes me wonder if Mediobogdum was a specialised training fort, a place to drill recruits and toughen them up before sending them to guard the rugged northern frontiers of Britain.

The 'parade ground' above the fort

Abandoned

Even so, the fort was only occupied for a short period, probably no more than a generation. Then it was abandoned. This says a lot about the remoteness of the setting, guarding a mountain pass that could not have seen a great deal of traffic at the best of times. Impressive, sure, but not a practical use of military resources.

I’m guilty of a sleight of hand in The Lion and the Lamb, where I have the fort being reoccupied in the fourth century. This probably never happened. True, some fourth-century coins have been found at Mediobogdum, which makes me feel a bit better, but they might just as well be evidence of passing traders making use of the abandoned ruins.

Yet all you have to do is visit this place, a monument to Roman determination at the roof of Britain, look up at the looming mountains and down into the deep haven of Eskdale to the west, feel the sharp air gusting in from the coast, and imagine how it would have been for the soldiers trapped in this fort through the bitter grip of winter – and then you can forgive a little dramatic licence.

Eskdale, with the Irish Sea just about visible on the horizon