Robert Briggs

A partly thematic, partly chronological review -- and most certainly not an exhaustive cataloguing and analysis -- of the evidence for early medieval (5th to 11th centuries CE) buildings and other settlement features known from the aggregated historic and current county area of Surrey in south-east England. This study was inspired by the many important issued raised in Prof John Blair’s monograph Building Anglo-Saxon England (2018) and the Medieval Settlement Research Group 2019 Spring Conference, ‘New Discoveries in the Cambridge Region: Medieval Settlement in the A14 Corridor and its Wider Context’.

A slightly amended version of an essay that was first issued as Annexe 1 of Surrey Archaeological Society Medieval Studies Forum Newsletter, 16 (June 2020). Revised July 2020, with some resultant alterations to the original pagination.

Published assessments of the place-name Dorking have noted it has some interesting aspects, in particular the possibility that it derives from a combination of Brittonic and Old English elements. Despite this, a full exploration of the etymological implications of the early attestations of the name has never been offered, and some ‘tricky’ issues skirted around or ignored. This article revisits all previous suggestions and enters new one into the debate, based upon British and continental European toponymy, as well as the archaeology and topography of the Dorking area. Subjecting all of the possibilities to critical evaluation, it finds the exact etymology cannot be established on the strength of the information presently available, but reveals Dorking to be a name formation of much greater complexity and interest than previously considered.

The purpose of this note is to report a discovery made through the use of LiDAR imagery for England and Wales that is freely available online. The evidence for four separate areas of probable field system earthworks on Puttenham Common (Surrey, England) - which have been visited and corroborated by the author - is outlined before suggestions are offered concerning their origins, changes that occurred over time, and the reason why they have survived as above-ground features through to the present day.

It is commonly stated that the main pre-Norman Conquest use of the Weald was for transhumance – the grazing of certain pastures, to and from which livestock were moved over substantial distances at the beginning and end of a defined season. Often suggested to have been a phenomenon with prehistoric roots, in several ways transhumance seems to have been most important as a socioeconomic institution in the earlier medieval centuries. Integral to such conjectures are those Wealden landholdings often known as denns, which are understood to have functioned as seasonal pastures for pigs or swine – the terms are interchangeable (Bennett 1970, 223) – at a considerable geographical remove from the associated estate centres (notably by Witney 1976 and Everitt 1986). While there is ample evidence that, at the time they emerge into documented history, many of these holdings were being used as swine pastures, the contemporary direct testimony for seasonal usage is slight at best, while the inherent problems surrounding any possible transhumance of swine appear great. Altogether, these call into question the validity of previous conjectures. By looking at a broader range of material, textual and landscape evidence, it can be demonstrated that the denns of Surrey did indeed operate as part of a seasonal grazing regime involving movement of swine into and out of the Weald. Further, there are hints that the regime involved some swine remaining in the Weald after the majority had been driven back to the estate centres, implying the benefit of year-round settlement at the wood pastures for the swineherds.

(Paper co-authored with the late Dennis Turner.)

A handout-cum-research paper I put together for the Surrey Archaeological Society Medieval Studies Forum study day held in Godalming on 11th June 2016. It looks at the composition of the place-name, its earlier status as a group-name, and how this might be meshed with the early medieval archaeology of the Godalming area. I propose that the name was coined earlier than the uptick of material culture during the ninth century CE identified in and around the present town, but there are issues with attempting to connect it to the one piece of earlier Anglo-Saxon archaeology known from its hinterland. The method employed here might be better applied to other -ingas-named places for which there is more plentiful archaeology of the fifth to ninth centuries.

A paper stemming from frustration with the orthodoxy that the polities which preceded the historically-attested Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the seventh century onwards were known as (or can be termed) 'regiones' (forgive the unconventional punctuation, this site doesn't provide the functionality to italicise words). Scholars in the 1980s and 90s were keen to advance or else accept a model of kingdom formation whereby competition between smaller, proto-kingdom units – more often than not labelled 'regiones' – resulted in the emergence of a smaller number of much larger kingdoms, only they made one crucial error; no-one undertook a due diligence exercise to ascertain whether or not the terminology being (re)employed was suitable for application to the pre-historical period circa 550-650, the key period for these postulated “building-block” territories.

By going back to the source material from which such authors have drawn their justificatory examples – early charters, histories and hagiographies – it becomes clear that it is inappropriate to characterise polities of the late-fifth, sixth and early-seventh centuries using Latin words (regio, provincia, pagus) since there is not a shred of evidence for the survival of any of the terms from Late-Roman practice, and plenty of justification for such terminology having arisen in conjunction with the literate culture of the Church begun by St Augustine’s famous mission to Kent at the very end of the sixth century, leading to profound changes to both religious and political elite structures in the two centuries that followed.

When the evidence is collated, sifted through and assessed, in south-east England at least there are positive signs that 'provincia' and 'regio' were used from the latter half of the seventh century in specific ways to refer to specific types of political unit, up until the early ninth century when such significances began to wane and the terms are found used in an increasingly scattergun way. Mercia in particular emerges as the kingdom which time and again sought to impose such structures on the territories outside its heartlands, in marked contrast to its great southern rival Wessex, from which there is no such evidence.

Boundary clauses contained in charter texts of the later Anglo-Saxon period are often cited as evidence of the antiquity and stability of medieval manorial-cum-parish units. However, close topographical interpretation of the line of one such boundary, that of Farnham in Surrey in the ?later tenth century, reveals two proximate instances where land within the estate as delimited by the boundary description came to lie within adjacent parishes/manors. This short paper offers a preliminary assessment for why such changes were made and moreover endured, with a view to encouraging others (yes, that means YOU) to email me with any examples you might know from elsewhere within Surrey or England or beyond - my address is surreymedieval.blog@gmail.com. With any luck, this may one day turn into a published paper (for which any respondents will be handsomely thanked and cited).

***Click on the link below to view the paper and stir your mind into action***

A decade of studying the topography/archaeology/history/geography of the Surrey parish I grew up in has left me with a clutch of discoveries of local and supra-local significance, as well as a host of questions to be answered in the future by myself and any more capable researchers who might be interested in taking up the challenge. The paper (like the extended and extensive research process behind it) takes what is very much a long view to the subjects in hand. So far as the medieval period is concerned, it sets out the evidence that suggests the landscape was recast during a "long twelfth century" which saw Puttenham emerge as a manor, village and parish, but within a more complex and heterogenous local context. Further research should show the degree to which the situation within the parish matched or was at odds with that from other parishes within Surrey and beyond.

***Follow link below to view paper***

"A summary of ten years of trying to figure out how a Surrey village came into being and what/where it was in Domesday Book. Making the most of the limited evidence available (in part as a way of identifying where my research needs to head next), it points to the "village" as having come into being in the post-Domesday period, but with hints that it grew out an earlier, smaller precursor settlement - one of a different name.

***Follow the link below for the paper***"

""This is my attempt, in an informal but nonetheless thorough fashion, to set out an explanation for why certain types of early medieval coins are found in certain locations in Surrey but not in others. I focus in particular on the broad-flan pennies of the second half of the eighth century and early decades of the ninth because, on the strength of the confessedly-limited data available, there is a definite provenancial bias towards places with similar proto-historical characteristics. A careful comparative assessment of these points to common origins as minor, ?aristocratically-founded minsters taken over by the Mercian kings who controlled Surrey more or less continuously for three-quarters of the eighth century, allowing a deepening and strengthening of their political control over the polity (whatever it constituted precisely in this period). The emergence of market-like sites in the immediate hinterlands of these ecclesiastical-cum-political centres was not as I had thought a product of the suppression of profitable internationally-linked trade conducted by the important monastery at Chertsey; the decline - or rationalisation - of the latter was first and foremost a consequence of the shift in emphasis from international to trading activity seen across eastern England during the middle decades of the eighth century. Rather, it was a phenomenon which was in some way associated with the annexation of minor minsters, perhaps as the new royal overlords and their local secular and religious agents sought to provide new fora for exchange as well as the collection of fines, taxes, tolls etc.

Lengthy as the piece is (and as decent an account of the material as I like to think it is), my intention is to combine it with 'Coins, cloth and Chertsey' then maybe, possibly, one day refashion the whole glorious mess into a proper account of coin use and patterns of trade in Surrey from the appearance of the first tremisses and solidi in the sixth century to the impact of the intermittent Viking presence towards the end of the ninth. However, there's plenty of work to be done before this ambition can be realised - and hopefully plenty more coins to be reported and recorded that will serve to beef up the dataset and the conclusions drawn from it.""

***CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW, THERE'S NO PDF TO VIEW/DOWNLOAD (YET)***

""Having hit upon this idea at the start of the working week, I had to wait for the arrival of a conveniently-proximate Easter weekend in order to start writing this piece. I began it late on Good Friday morning and finished it way past midnight on the bank holiday Monday. Needless to say (1) I was late for work the following day and (2) I spent the following two evenings tarting it up into the form you find it in here.

The essay (if you can call it that) accessible via the link below arose out of a series of mental connections that began with a critical assessment of the Anglo-Saxon section of the 2006 Surrey Archaeological Research Framework (learn more about it at http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/recreation-heritage-and-culture/archaeology/surrey-archaeological-research-framework - I will post my comments on its shortcomings and possible future research priorities in due course). This led me first to collate as much of the numismatic data for Surrey in the period circa 450-1100 as I was able to find and then to assess it spatially as well as in terms of how it (cor)relates to the historical and toponymical frameworks of the historic county. The hypothesis which resulted from this - and I stress that this is a long way from being proven - is that internationally-linked, coin-based trade in the area was dominated by one institution, the monastery at Chertsey, whose first abbot Earconwald had the wherewithal and influence to establish a dedicated trading facility at Lambeth, potentially as early as the 670s. Though this was ultimately curtailed by Viking activity in the final third of the ninth century, there are hints that it suffered a serious interruption in the reign of Offa, when coin loss ceased at Chertsey-linked "productive sites" and concentrations are to be found in new locations instead. As well as being the first attempt anyone has made to synthesise and interpret the relevant data for the period from Surrey, the analysis seeks to couch certain place-names and place-name elements (notably Old English hyth) within a datable artefactual landscape which suggests that, in certain cases, relatively fine-grained dating of the coinage of particular place-names may be both possible and demonstrable.""

"""My fourth and final stab at pulling together the assorted strands of evidence germane to understanding Thursley in Surrey as both a name and a place in the Anglo-Saxon period, specifically one that was connected with the cult of the Anglo-Saxon god Thunor.

There are enough scraps of evidence to mount a case for Thursley descending from Old English Thunres-leah - "Thunor's open wood, wood pasture" -  which together just about compensate for Thursley's remarkably late entry into known documentary record. The analysis ranges further thematically and chronologically than is usually the case for individual place-name studies; in fact, as far as I'm aware, no published work has studied an English non-Christian theophoric place-name from so many angles and in such detail (though this might just be me tooting my own trumpet - please feel free to prove me wrong on this point).

The essay is also available from my blog at http://surreymedieval.wordpress.com/work/thursley-revisited/ where more background detail is given, including an appendix listing Late Iron Age and Roman archaeology in the Thursley locality. Either side of my main bout of research into Thursley, I produced less formal but no less fulfilling studies on two nearby probable non-Christian religious place-names of Old English formation: Peper Harow (http://surreymedieval.wordpress.com/work/some-thoughts-on-peper-harow/ and http://surreymedieval.wordpress.com/work/some-thoughts-on-peper-harow/peper-harow-some-further-references/) and more recently Tuesley (http://surreymedieval.wordpress.com/work/what-about-tuesley/). In summary, go look at the blog, there's loads of good stuff on there."""

A long time in production, this paper examines the evidence relevant to the origins of two undated - but most probably early medieval - earthen causeways across the floodplain of the River Wey in Surrey. Although it does not reach a conclusion as to the exact age of the causeways, it does support previously-advanced arguments for their construction to have taken place at some point between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Along the way consideration is given to ritual deposition practices, the acquisition of estates by the saintly Archbishop Dunstan on behalf of religious houses with which he did not always have a strong connection (at least not one which is evident through the documentary sources), and the varying status and character of landlords in the Anglo-Norman period.

At present there is no intention to seek out an avenue by means of which this essay can be published in print. I am on the cusp of commencing a related essay concentrating on (St) Dunstan's many purchases of land in the third quarter of the tenth century, with a particular focus on Send in Surrey, whose purchase around the year 968 is recorded in an Old English memorandum preserved in the archive of Westminster Abbey (= Sawyer 1447), but which was almost certainly bestowed upon another religious institution. Provided I can get copy to the editor by the end of April, this second essay may be printed in abbreviated form in next year's edition of the journal Surrey History.

A primarily-linguistic reassessment of place-names in the historic county of Surrey in South-East England that have been (or could be) suggested to derive from Old English -ingas and the related compound -ingaham. OE -ingas is a plural noun ending that in place-name formations is most often associated with social groups of uncertain status and age, but can be mistaken for elements of different meaning in circumstances where suitable early documentary testimony does not exist.

The purpose of this dissertation is to reappraise previous etymologies of Surrey's supposed -ingas and -ingaham place-names in light of scholarship published in the past 50 years, which has cast doubt on the claim of some to represent the names of social groups - they may be more likely to groups of trees or artificial terraces, for example. This was only possible in cases where there are sufficient published early attestations as to permit their philological/onomastic analysis with a view to testing previously-published etymologies; fortunately, there were only two names for which this was not possible. In cases where the linguistic side of things remained equivocal and yielded options that have a topographical implication, I undertook site visits to see if the present-day landscape might hold the key to determining the best explanation (surprisingly, a couple of times it did).

The research found there is no need for a complete overhaul of the published interpretations of Surrey -ingas and -ingaham place-names, but that even within this relatively small group of 18 examples there is a greater level of diversity of name formations than has been admitted by previous analyses.

(This is a updated, extended 2016 version of a Master's dissertation submitted in 2014, and forms part of the foundations for my current PhD research, as well as the basis for a couple of articles I am in the early stages of preparing for eventual publication.)

Revised version of a paper given under a slightly different title, for which the following was (with a few minor amendments) the submitted abstract. The finished product ended up being rather different in some ways, but it gives you the gist...

This paper seeks to come at the subject of otherness in the landscape from a somewhat oblique angle, by considering through place-name evidence how early medieval social groups successfully lay claim to territory and resources in the face of the competing claims of other groups. The social groups in scope here are those remembered by English place-names descended from Old English (OE) <-ingas>. Though the name formations have been the subject of a great deal of onomastic research, rarely has the focus been on the social groups behind the names. Thus, my ongoing PhD research aims to appraise <-ingas> names and, more importantly, the eponymous groups "in the round" to better understand their origins and status.

In the paper I focus on occurrences of <-ingas> group names in combination with three OE terms for landscape features (<hlāw>, "barrow"; <dīc>, "ditch"; <well>, "spring, stream") as recorded in charter boundary descriptions. Were these compound names coined by the groups themselves or by others? And, in a non-literate culture, when such places were seemingly sometimes far removed from the main group territory, how did particular <-ingas> manage to have their claim to them recognised as legitimate instead of more proximate equivalents? It will be suggested that key to both questions is the construction of group origin stories centred on 'figurehead' personages, which in turn points to a more complex and ideological significance behind <-ingas> name formations than hitherto countenanced in scholarship.

Anyone familiar with English toponymy will be aware that place-names ending in or incorporating inflections of Old English -ingas have been studied and debated for many decades. So, is there anything new and meaningful left to say about them? This paper, and the PhD-level research project behind it, seeks to foreground the social groups behind the place-names in order to try to understand both name formations and group members through archaeology, history, geography and more. An interdisciplinary approach to this topic is not wholly unprecedented, of course; the groundbreaking study by John Dodgson published in the journal Medieval Archaeology is now over 50 years old. However, Dodgson’s article and those in a similar mould that followed it proferred comparatively simple analyses of the spatial relationships between the place-names and limited corpora of Early Anglo-Saxon-period archaeology. Half a century of additional archaeological data, plus a wealth of new scholarship and analytical techniques from several disciplines, afford the opportunity to reassess some of the current orthodoxies about -ingas names. Examples from Oxfordshire and beyond will be used to introduce some of the key themes and questions being appraised in my research: When did -ingas groups come into existence? Why use -ingas to form a group name rather than one of the other available options? How can we best translate this and other group-name endings? And, above all, who were the -ingas of Old English place-names?

(The above abstract was submitted well in advance of the conference. As it turned out, the paper focused less on proffering answers to the above questions and more on introducing the range of relevant evidence and some of the emergent themes of my research. The materiality of -ingas names - you read it here first...)

The transhumance of swine (i.e. their seasonal movement to and from wood pastures set a considerable distance away from estate centres) has been understood as a defining feature of the economic geographies of woodland areas in Anglo-Saxon England. This paper will draw upon interdisciplinary research into the situation that prevailed in the Weald forest of South-East England from the 5th-14th centuries, particularly in the portion that fell within the county of Surrey. It will advance a new model describing an annual cycle of earlier medieval pig husbandry, of which the transhumant grazing of pigs in Wealden wood pastures was one element of a complex and in some ways unexpectedly sophisticated system.

A modified, refined version of the title which appeared in the IMC programme and on the attached session poster, this paper addressed the controversial topic of the significance of Old English <walh>, <wealh> in place-names, specifically those in South-East England identified as being derived from <wēala-tūn> (containing the aforementioned term inflected in the genitive plural). It reviews the diverse range of previous approaches to the matter of its significance in place-name formations, which prioritise one sense over other possibilities (be it "Briton(s)", "slave(s)", or "foreign(ers)").

This paper combines and applies suggestions made by David Pelteret and John Insley, who have argued <wealh> as "slave" was a meaning which arose as a direct result of West Saxon military activity in "British" areas of modern-day South-West England in the ninth and tenth centuries, to the place-name data. By integrating theory on the distinctive nature of the "toponymicon" versus other forms of Old English language, and assessing the archaeological and historical contexts of a quintet of <wēala-tūn> place-names, I argue that what is here termed the Pelteret-Insley hypothesis has not inconsiderable merit when compared to other interpretations.

Furthermore, I suggest previous approaches arguing for translations of <wēala> preferring either "Britons" or "slaves" are too restrictive, and that a more blended meaning also involving the sense "foreign" may be admissible. Ultimately, even when the various forms of data are combined, it is not possible to prove the Pelteret-Insley hypothesis, and other possibilities will remain on the table until new, conclusive evidence is forthcoming.

Building upon several years' research and several changes of opinion in that time (beginning with the essay linked below), this paper set out to do a number of things. First and foremost, to make a case for understanding 'Hebbeshamm' (sorry, can't format in italics), the promulgation place of a charter of King Alfred dated 882, as being commensurate with Epsom in Surrey. The site of the assembly at which this grant was witnessed may be localised at Nutshambles, part of the meeting place of Copthorne Hundred in the south-west corner of Epsom parish. Second, to elevate the charter (which is said to have been created while "on military service") to its rightful place among the precious morsels of evidence for intermittent military operations in the years 878-92, usually thought of as a period of peace and reconstruction. Thirdly, and at such a broader level that it was only touched upon briefly, to suggest previous suggestions about how to differentiate place-names in Old English ham ("homestead, village" etc.) from ones in hamm ("hemmed-in land, river meadow" etc.) in the absence of conclusive early attestations have been misguided and marked by inherent preconceptions.

Old English -ingas is one of those place-name elements that attracts attention from each generation of scholars, who add their own layer of corrections and refinements to what has gone before without ever delivering an all-encompassing explanation of its significance. As with so many areas of onomastics, this is due in no small measure to what can and cannot be done with the available recorded forms of such names.

This paper summarises the findings of the author's recent dissertation for the MA Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies programme at the University of Nottingham, which took a fresh look at the philology of all Surrey place-names suggested to derive from -ingas and the scarcely any less controversial compound ending -ingaham. If time allows, the upcoming PhD project leading on from this dissertation research, an attempt to answer the question "Who were the -ingas of Old English toponymy?", will be outlined.*

*As it turned out, there wasn't time.

This paper seeks (well, now it's been delivered, sought) to highlight and explain the lexical and thematic connections between works of Old English heroic poetry, notably Beowulf, and a Late Anglo-Saxon estate boundary description for Battersea in what is now south-west London, suggesting authors of such "functional" prose not only had knowledge of such verse, but actively sought to emulate it in their own use of language.

The origin story of the priory of St Mary Overy, Southwark (now Southwark cathedral), not only refers to the foundation of the  Augustinian house in the early years of the 12th century but also to two previous ecclesiastical institutions, apparently on the same site. The story owes its preservation to the sixteenth-century topographer John Stow. Having had the story recounted to him by the last prior, Bartholomew Linsted or Fowle, Stow set it down in two different versions in his celebrated Survey of London. The veracity of the foundation story was questioned at the time and, over the subsequent centuries, its stock has fallen still further, to the point where it has barely featured in the wealth of recent archaeological and historical perspectives on the establishment and development of early medieval Southwark. But is this justified?

Stow's two tellings of the story are made up of several elements, careful analysis of which suggests a small number of credible factual elements amidst a profusion of folk etymological fiction, as well as revealing biases in previous published interpretations. Taken alongside other forms of evidence, the results of this reassessment dovetail well with existing historical and archaeological frameworks for the origins of the minster-cum-priory and the proto-urban bridgehead settlement of Southwark, and provide the foundation for the suggestion of an enhanced chronology of the ecclesiastical institutions on the St Mary's site.

Over recent decades, the once-frosty relationship between the disciplines of archaeology and place-name studies has undergone a slow thaw but there remains a long way to go before inter-disciplinary understanding and collaboration is the norm. This presentation will seek to outline the potential for the two to learn from one another in order to inform and transform existing interpretations and research agendas. Focusing on one English county, Surrey, and using the early medieval data available through the Portable Antiquities Scheme as well as excavation results, examples will be given of how artefact provenances and certain place-names or place-name elements may be used to better understand the other and their place within wider processes of settlement, trade and the control and use of land in the Mid to Late Anglo-Saxon period.

An hour-long greatest hits compilation of two previous talks on the subject matter of my 2016 co-authored article (https://www.academia.edu/28324736/Testing_transhumance_Anglo-Saxon_swine_pastures_and_seasonal_grazing_in_the_Surrey_Weald) plus a couple of new thoughts and observations.

The name of the West Saxon burh or stronghold recorded as <(to) Escingum> in Version A of the Burghal Hidage is consistent with the one common to the hamlets of Lower and Upper Eashing in south-west Surrey, England. The burh did not become a town, castle or other immediately-recognisable feature of the local landscape. Since the publication in 1971 of a brief article concerning its site, it is generally accepted to have occupied a promontory of land between the two hamlets. However, the evidence presented in its favour is rather meagre and could hardly be said to comprise a completely convincing case. This presentation reports the findings of the first piece of research specifically on the subject of Eashing burh in over 30 years. After outlining what might be viewed as the shortcomings of previous published research, it brings three other candidate burghal sites into the equation in addition to the accepted one. The various shortcomings of the alternatives are then demonstrated ahead of the presentation of hitherto-undiscussed field-name evidence, contained in documents of the late 16th century onwards, that considerably enhances the claim of the promontory location. This is followed by an assessment of the broader historical, archaeological and toponymic contexts of early medieval Eashing, and consideration of the likely reasons for its selection as a burghal location.

(NB. The research behind this presentation will be set out in much greater detail in a forthcoming journal article)

A first stab at explaining some of my research into Old English -ingas group-name formations, and articulating the aims of my current PhD project. Drawing heavily upon the place-names from the historic county of Surrey examined from an onomastic perspective for my Nottingham MA dissertation, this presentation gave examples of where recent archaeological discoveries (and electronic databases that make details of older finds more accessible) help to provide more fine-grained chronological and cultural contexts for understanding the social groups remembered by Old English -ingas, -inga- place-names. What can the names tell us about the archaeology, and in turn what might the archaeology have to say about the names? Various working hypotheses were summarised, and a typology of -ingas group-name formations was tentatively proposed, in the clear acknowledgement that this was not the product of extensive research done to date, but the basis of future research.

When looking for non-elite people in medieval English society, it is easy to turn to later medieval judicial or manorial records which, even in a poorly-documented shire like Surrey, provide the names and fleeting details about the lives of many people of lower social statuses. But what about the centuries before 1066? This paper took up the challenge of finding evidence (be it material, textual or toponomastic) for ordinary people in Surrey in the Anglo-Saxon period, using recently-reported evidence in many instances, and ultimately trying to name of a non-elite individual. To make things more "interesting", the testimony from Domesday Book relevant to the pre-Conquest period is excluded.

Collectively, excavated cemeteries and burials contain the remains of hundreds of people, the vast majority of whom would warrant being classified as non-elite, although the difficulties of establishing the social status of people interred in furnished and unfurnished graves adds an element of doubt. In recent decades, many settlement sites (or more often one or two buildings representative of a larger settlement) have been excavated, none of which could be termed high-status. A noteworthy facet of the present corpus of evidence is the predominance of Sunked-Featured Buildings, with only three non-sunked post-built buildings from two sites published to date (and these have been interpreted as modest seventh-century farmsteads).

The material culture of furnished graves, buildings and pits suggests a variety of craft activities, especially the production of cloth, alongside agriculture. Stray finds, notably ones reported through the Portable Antiquities Scheme, do much the same. Several of these artefacts exemplify the difficulties of seeing individual artefacts as anything other than "high status" - none more so than a knife blade incised with the name <OSMHND> (Osmund) found on the Thames foreshore at Putney. Where artefact provenances cluster or coincide, it is possible they may denote a lost settlement site.

Place-names containing personal names in combination with habitative generics are often interpreted in a seigneurial dimension, with royal authority as the means by which they came into existence, but this is by no means certain. The same is true of toponyms incorporating group-terms (notable OE <wēala>). It is harder to see the personal names found in points of vernacular estate boundary descriptions in the same proto-manorial terms, but who these people were, how and when they were associated with particular peripheral landscape features is impossible to establish.

Arguably the best evidence comes from a small number of Anglo-Saxon charters. One, a letter written by Bishop Denewulf of Winchester to King Edward the Elder concerning an important estate at Beddington in the period 899x908 (Sawyer 1444), mentions herdsmen, slaves, and the "heathen folk" who laid waste to the property in the 870s, but never by their actual personal names. The other, a paraphrased diploma of 967 (Sawyer 753), describes the forfeit of half of an estate at 'Cealua dune' - probably Chaldon - by a larcenous layman named Eadwold. Of all the many and varied pieces of evidence for "ordinary" Surrey people in the Anglo-Saxon period, it is this second charter that takes us closest to the name and status of such a person in Surrey.

The concept of diaspora has not been applied to group- and place-names containing Old English (OE) -ingas, but they have been to the fore in some of the key discussions of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of post-Roman Britain. This paper considers the contribution made by Walter Piroth in the 1970s, who went against the new orthodoxy established by John Dodgson and others a decade earlier by arguing that many OE place-name formations containing -ingas/-inga can be directly associated with (seemingly) identical or closely similar place-names in 'the Continental homelands'. Piroth's work was heavily criticised by leading English place-name scholars in the wake of its publication, but these criticisms focused on particular methodological errors, rather than on his belief that common name elements equal common "tribal" identities. While debates continue about the scale of Germanic immigration into post-Roman Britain, less attention has been paid to the nature and importance of ongoing connections with the former homelands. As an example of a naming formula found across the Germanic languages, how diasporic are OE -ingas names?

Following an introduction to the linguistic basis and attested uses of -ingas name formations (both toponymic and non-toponymic), the paper moves on to look at the place-name evidence from Sussex, a coastal county more or less coterminous with the historic kingdom of the South Saxons. This allows reference to be made to a number of pieces of locally-focused scholarship produced by Richard Coates, including a response to a 1977 article by Piroth. Several aspects of Sussex -ingas place-names are examined in connection with the notion of diasporic character:

- The nature of the protothemes (first elements) in the names, not all of which are necessarily Germanic in origin;
- The distribution of -ingas/-inga place-names in Sussex of equivalent formation;
- The validity of suggestions about the dissociation of the place-names and the earliest Anglo-Saxon archaeology.

Finally, two contiguous -ingas-named Sussex parishes, Ferring and Patching, are subject to more detailed analysis. This explores the possibility of links between the place-names and important archaeological discoveries (Highdown cemetery, Patching hoard) dating from the period of the Roman-Saxon transition and of non-British manufacture. Date-wise, they can be seen as suggesting current narratives of -ingas place-name formations/attributions - as a secondary phase of "Anglo-Saxon" settlement operating during the sixth century - may not be universally applicable, or rather the likes of Ferring and Patching may speak of the earlier circumstances in which such group-names first came about. But it is still not possible to say with certainty that fifth-century archaeology can prove the contemporary local presence of social groups with -ingas identities. The diasporic credentials of Sussex -ingas names (and the groups behind them) are inconclusive, and new means of assessing and dating them need to be developed.

Metalwork found in watery contexts is something of an "on-trend" topic in early medieval archaeology at the moment, and Surrey is not short on such evidence. Recent studies have often interpreted these finds as votive offerings, a reflex of non-Christian religious practice. For some, perhaps many, artefacts this may very well be the case, but might there be other possible explanations?

Using the extraordinary testimony offered by a portion of an undated, but in formula most probably tenth- or eleventh-century Old English description of the boundary of the Battersea estate in north-east Surrey (now inner south-west London), this paper will make the case for the casting of a sword as a practical and symbolic mechanism for the delimitation of a boundary in a watercourse. The significance of correlates in Old English poetry and historical texts will be highlighted. The applicability of this interpretation to other finds from the Thames, its side channels and tributaries will be considered.

A talk explaining how I have used toponymic - and in particular field-name - evidence to develop an understanding of the past landscapes of the parish of Puttenham, from the Roman period to the present day.

It will be my usual mixing of language, history, geography and archaeology, but on home turf. I'm really looking forward to this one.

"Perched 175 metres above sea level atop one of the most prominent hills in Surrey (if not south-east England), St Martha's church near Guildford is unique for more reasons than its location. The medieval dedication to St Martha has long been suspected to hide an earlier martyrial origin but the suggestions proffered over the years - unknown sub-Roman martyrs or St Thomas Becket - do not hold up under scrutiny.

This talk will (in the space of 20 minutes!) seek to revisit the question and, through the combination of architectural, historical and topographical evidence, outline a novel interpretation connected to an event of international importance in the eleventh century."

Half-hour presentation using the two-decade anniversary of the publication of John Blair's influential book 'Early Medieval Surrey' to revisit and challenge the opening chapter's proposition of the historic county having been preceded by a quartet of so-called regiones. In view of the location of the talk (as well as the idea's acceptance and repetition by a number of leading scholars) I focused on the strength of the arguments for one in particular, Woccingas. Many aspects of Blair's model are found to be in need of revision - indeed the evidence recommends the formulation of a new model to reflect the more dynamic, heterogenous picture that emerges - but through it all Woccingas (or at least the Woking district) remains a credible territorial entity.

The presentation was intended as the precursor to an essay exploring the themes and terminology with greater rigour - the research process and responses to what I said produced several new lines of enquiry that I am still following up. This should be finished within the next few weeks and will be uploaded to my profile in due course.