Page 50 - Phonebox Magazine January 2007

must remind you that you have ample opportunity to agree, disagree or supplement anything I come up with. Constructive criticism is always welcome for each and every one of us is living on a life-long learning curve. You can ‘have a go’ by e-mailing direct to the magazine, to myself or even phoning in to Three Counties Radio – Tuesdays around 2.00 pm Tel0845-3-000567, or text 07786 203 102. The programme goes out on FM 104.5.
Over to Frank.
The little tribe were last seen arriving close to Clifton Reynes and deciding to abandon their nomadic ways to form a proper settlement.
The Bounds
Whether Hengistan really lived to see his little clan solidly settled and housed is by no means certain. The last clear suggestion of any decision attributable to him was the ‘drop anchor’ order which finally halted the advance some short way up-stream from the escarpment of Clifton Reynes; in all probability they clambered up out of the valley from our Emberton Park to the relatively dizzy height of Weston hill. This hill attracted them by reason of an abundance of Beech which they found more than suitable for their building requirements. Those beeches were to remain a glory for a further millennium as witness the pleasure William Cowper was to describe. The scribe returns again and again to that stand of
beech, clearly his own home was right there and he writes of walking even further in all directions than he could see from that point. His writings are part record of precise landmarks built to his instruction and part reminiscence of things told to his childhood ears of the deeds of earlier events. Following each of his excursions we find him reporting his work to the ‘Moot masters’, these were evidently trusted elders and the boundary of the (later term) Bailiwick was official and binding once but not before they had agreed upon it. They were not simply grabbing space for the little community, they wanted also to check their own capacity to defend their boundaries. In time they went on to get quite legalistic about these matters. But at first instance the defence was of the physical variety so the boundaries were the crests of hill lines to North and South and there were almost uncrossable sectors of marsh up and down stream along the river. The lines thus ran loosely at South from our present Wolverton mill, through Chichely and Quinton to (almost) Bedford, the Northerly bound commenced close to Bromham, and passed through Harold before sweeping towards Northampton following the line of the Nene.
The first building activity was on the slopes of our Weston Hill and the thin string of huts reached down towards the waters edge. A first home at that edge was no sooner built than washed away in what we would
recognise as a flash flood. Within three seasons (years?) the flood plain had been marked down as a thing to respect. To-day we learn that much whilst sucking our lower lip for our own age is trying to set the lesson of the flood plain aside as little more than an old wives’ tale. Crossing the river was a matter of season at first. They waded across in dry seasons and made use of the boats for the rest part. But a settled community had no great need to maintain those long boats. As these fell into decay a causeway came into being and because this was independent of weather it became the established primary through route which Olney is presently seeking to have de-primed. Important buildings and activities soon gravitated towards the crossing point, the North bank was the more securely dry than the South bank which condition we still find. The earliest important or public buildings discernible from the writings are a Moot-place and a covered market. Some brewing activity appears to have been the first employment for the spot we call the Tannery site. Intriguingly there is no early reference to a church. Intriguing because in 643 a writ or bull from Pope St. Leonard 3rd afforded lawful force and authority to preservation of the boundaries of the Bailiwick. Was the authority of the Church at that time seen as primarily ecclesiastical, having only moral force, or had the Papacy already some pretension to temporal power.
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