Introduction

There was no doubt in the mind of Bede that London was both a city (civitas) and a trading place (emporium) in the early eighth century, a river port that was the destination for long-distance trade ‘by land and sea’. Towns, trade, navigable rivers and seaways were closely associated across western and northern Europe in the early medieval period. The aim of this chapter is to investigate those connections and explore the wider role of water in the urban environment and in the everyday lives of Anglo-Saxon town dwellers.

There is an extensive literature on many aspects of Anglo-Saxon towns, but despite many decades of research, basic questions remain about urban origins and urban economies. Martin Biddle defined a research framework for Anglo-Saxon towns in 1976 which remains relevant today. The documentary evidence is fundamental but limited in quantity, so it is through detailed surveys of individual towns and archaeological excavations that knowledge has advanced. One focus of this chapter is the location of many Anglo-Saxon towns on navigable rivers. The reasons for such sitings included military strategy and new administrative arrangements, but through the Anglo-Saxon period it was access to navigable rivers and the sea that was important for economic development. Rivers and seaways formed the principal trade routes of the early medieval period, and it was the successful exploitation of these routes that was key to the economic prosperity of towns at this period.

The study of towns in Anglo-Saxon Britain must take into consideration the extensive urban landscape of Roman Britain. Many Roman towns had been established on navigable rivers, at fordable or bridgeable locations, and the larger towns had stone walls. At the outset of the Anglo-Saxon period the Roman towns lay abandoned, in many cases after a long period of decline. Urban life had ended in any meaningful sense, but there was an impressive legacy of urban ruins.