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Epsom and Ewell in Saxon Times
In the early years of Saxon settlement, land was given out in return for food rents. Wood and pigs came from Wealden farms, beans from Banstead, barley from Surbiton; these were forwarded to the royal centres. Kingston was established as a palace upriver from London, and the rest of the tribal area south of it came to depend on the old sites of Leatherhead at the crossing of the Mole, and Ewell on the head of the Hogsmill. Meetings for doing justice in this territory were held at Nutshambles, 'the moot benches', on the Downs between Epsom, Ashtead and Headley. Here courts attended by the king's representative could pass sentence of death, originally only on traitors, all other crime being atoned for by fines; but by the 11th century the numbers of the poor who could not afford this price had grown, and several hanged men have been found buried hastily among the pagan graves at Leatherhead and Guildford. The first Saxon settlements were named after important features of the landscape, such as the river's source which gave name to Ewell. When sites were cleared for villages, they were called ham, 'enclosure'; at the foot of the Downs, where springwater rises readily from the chalk, there is a string of these settlements, from Cheam, 'enclosure by the felled trees', to Bookham, 'enclosure among the beeches'. Epsom is named after Ebbi, an early owner of the estate. Other settlements founded later along this dipslope were called tun, 'village'; the lands of Cuddington appear to have been partitioned from those of Ewell. The original rights of the tribal leaders to woodland south of the Downs were partitioned among the lords of the new villages, so that each manor came to include a few farms in the Weald. Kingswood, which remained attached to Ewell, kept its name from the time when it paid royal tribute. Hills or barrows, such as those which gave name to Burgh Heath, were claimed by the warrior class as the homes of ancestral powers. While the rest of the people were adopting Christianity, a few pagan aristocrats required burial under barrows like the one at Galley Hills in Banstead, where the man was laid out with his spear, shield, and a bronze hanging bowl holding apples of immortality. The respect felt for these lonely places on the crest of the Downs appears to have influenced the early Christians, for the cemetery at Headley Drive is in a similar location. The first church in the district is likely to have been established at the royal centre in Leatherhead, from which priests were sent out to consecrate centres for burial and prayer, and to administer the sacraments at local landmarks such as Malden, 'the hill of the cross'. Local churches were provided later at the expense of pious landowners. By 675, when Surrey appears for the first time in written records, all of its tribal regions had been taken over by English colonists who imposed their own law and language on the surviving population. Only a few districts such as Wallington were retained by their original 'Welsh' inhabitants. Some Roman ruins were reoccupied, including the site of the villa and factory at Ashtead, and part of the old Stane Street was kept in order from London to Ewell. Here it joined a trackway leading to Leatherhead, 'the grey ford', which like Guildford commanded a river crossing and so was of interest to the early kings. Although few documents survive, we can find out much from the excavated graves of early English settlers. Leatherhead people buried their dead outside Ashtead; the Ewell cemetery lay uphill from the site of the Roman village. Funerals took the form of either cremation or burial, depending on the god most honoured by the deceased. The Saxons found buried in Surrey were tall and well-nourished, so they must have been making a good living as farmers. The collapse of Roman rule had left many estates untenanted, but land had not reverted to wilderness. Areas such as Epsom Common and Horton which had been maintained as woodland under the old order increased in size, but the light soils of the chalk slopes were kept under plough. At Ashtead several farms bounded by regular roads appear to go back to Roman times; their British owners must have stayed on until the land was claimed by force or inheritance for a Saxon village. The system of open fields, by which all householders farmed long strips held in common on the arable land, was introduced during the emergence of village communities and manorial lords. The creation of village and open field, like that of church and parish, was a landmark separating Saxon tribalism from mediaeval England. In 1986 workmen digging footings for a new housing estate at Headley Drive cut into a grave. The police were informed, as is legally required when human remains are found; but after the coroner, Martin Reeves, was satisfied that the graves were old he notified Bourne Hall Museum of the find. A search in the records revealed that other Saxon burials had been found in this part of the Downs, and the developer was instructed to stop work so that the burials could be properly excavated. The topsoil was removed down to the natural surface of the chalk, so that the outline of each grave was exposed against bedrock. Throughout the excavation, the developers were most co-operative and altered their schedule to begin building work away from the cemetery site. During the first weekend of excavation, five graves were uncovered, one of them containing a small iron knife and the remains of a belt buckle. So work progressed, until by the time that the excavation was over, some 44 graves had been uncovered. Clearly the Headley Drive site had been a large cemetery - a central place to which people from adjoining farms and communities had been carried for burial. It extended beyond the area chosen as a building site to include burials under the adjoining playing field. The building site, too, had become a playground for local children and when the news spread that skeletons were being unearthed, they descended in droves. The best thing to do was to take them into the diggers' confidence and involve them in the work - and during the course of the dig many of these children were a great help. Soon their parents also became interested. At night those graves which had only been partly excavated were covered up: even so, some of the remains were filched by souvenir hunters. At the weekends, visitors were taken on tours in groups of six, and schoolchildren came to visit the site as part of a project to learn about local history and the lives of their ancestors.
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