The Bronze Age to 1066

The previous instalment of our potted chronicle led us up to the Bronze Age (in Britain, about 1800–500 BC). There is no history specific to Langham from the Bronze Age to the reign of William the Conqueror. In about 800 BC the Celts brought iron-working here and with it the very beginnings of the Iron Age. Wave after wave of Belgic immigrants established the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes in the south-east, while the Iceni held Norfolk and parts of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.

The Roman conquest of Britain started in 55 BC, but it was not until AD 43 and the invasion under the Emperor Claudius that it proceeded in earnest. At that time the Iceni entered into an alliance with Rome; four years later they rebelled after the governor threatened to disarm them. The rebellion was quashed. In AD 61 their pro-Roman king, Prasutagus, died: in his will he left his kingdom jointly to the Emperor and his own daughters. The Romans seized it all, flogged his widow, Boudica (or Boadicea), and caused her daughters to be raped by slaves.

Boudica, Norfolk’s queen, led the Iceni and the Trinovantes in an uprising:

… a terrible disaster occurred in Britain. Two cities were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover, all this ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, a fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame. … the person who was chiefly instrumental in rousing the natives and persuading them to fight the Romans, the person who was thought worthy to be their leader and who directed the conduct of the entire war, was Buduica, a Briton woman of the royal family and possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women. … In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire.

— Cassius Dio, Roman History

Image credit: Keith Marshal; licence

Her army sacked Colchester, London and St Albans before its almost complete annihiliation by Suetonius Paulinus and his legions; Roman dominance of this part of England was restored and remained complete.

The Romans were active in north Norfolk, as evidenced by the remains of their fort, Branodunum, near Brancaster, which was constructed in the 230s. Around 383 the Romans began to withdraw from Britain: by 410, when Rome was under sustained attack from the Goths, Britain was abandoned altogether and its inhabitants were told to look to their own defence from foreign invasion.

In 449 the Saxons arrived under their leader, Hengest. The Dark Ages followed; in 537 St Augustine brought Christianity to these shores. Meanwhile, in what is modern-day Scandinavia, the dynamism and success of Viking culture created a need for expansion to new territories. On 8 June 793 the devastating raid on Lindisfarne marked the beginning of over a hundred years of Norse plunder and settlement, particularly along the east coast. Langham, which by 800 probably owned that name or something very like it, would have been especially vulnerable because of the local harbourage.

But the Northmen had a far more profound effect on Langham than that. Viking incursion into France began in 820. In 911 Rollo, a charismatic and ferocious Viking leader, besieged the city of Chartres, which the Vikings had already sacked and burned in 858. The siege was defeated, but the subsequent peace negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. Rollo was granted territory in France that became known as Normandy – the land of the Norsemen. In return he swore allegiance to the French king and promised to convert to Christianity and protect the Seine and hence Paris from incursion by other Vikings.

Rollo’s great-great-great-grandson was none other than William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy. Following the death of Edward the Confessor, he laid claim to the English throne, invaded in 1066, defeated the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings and killed Harold Godwinson, their king. Norman control of England was secured.

One of the Conqueror’s earliest acts to was order a catalogue of his spoils. Commissioners were sent all over the country. The results of their ‘Great Survey’ are recorded in what was called, from the twelfth century onwards, the Domesday (or Doomsday) Book. Actually there are two Domesday Books: ‘Little Domesday’ and ‘Great Domesday’. Little Domesday covers Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.

Langham’s entry is the first known written source in the history of our village. It falls within the ‘H de Holt’ or Holt Hundred. A ‘hundred’ was an administrative division rather like a county.

As you can see, in the entry the place is called ‘Langaham’; the name derives from the Old English lang (long) + hām (village homestead), suggesting a linear structure which still finds expression in Holt Road; North Street perhaps came later.

What the Commissioners found is explained in detail on this page, which is well worth your time.

The most profound Norman effect on Langham and indeed the whole of England was the introduction of feudalism, and that and its repercussions will be the subject of the next episode in this chronicle.