Revisiting the origins of King’s Lynn, Norfolk

Revisiting the origins of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, UK

Dr. Clive Jonathon Bond

Department of Archaeology

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

The University of Winchester

UK

Introduction and structure

• The King’s Lynn Survey (Clarke and Carter 1977)

• The Contribution of Developer-funded Archaeology

• A Pre-Conquest Landscape (Hutcheson 2006)

• GIS and Long-term Settlement Patterns

• Salt working and Economic Intensification

• Conclusions: Pre-conditions and dispersed Proto-

urban communities nested in a rural landscape?

The King’s Lynn Survey

(Clarke and Carter 1977)

• Aim: ‘The original aim was to see what light archaeological investigations could throw on the origins and early development of the town, the broad outline was already known from documentary sources’

(Clarke and Carter 1977, 2)

• Documents for ‘Bishop’s Lynn’:

-1086 Domesday Book, ‘Lena’ and ‘Luna’

Once held by Earl Harold, ‘in 1086 by Ralf de Toeni in Lynn five sokemen with eight acres of land and three bordars and five salterns and two ploughs’ (S. Lynn)

- Early 14th Century grant, First Register, a history of Norwich Priory in 1101 ‘Salterns’, ‘All Saints’ Church, South Lynn’ and founding of a ‘Priory of Margaret at Lena’ in 1095, ‘sand market’, ‘fair’

• An Important and early Interdisciplinary Study of a medieval/Post-medieval commercial centre: Archaeology - threat-led, 1963-1970; Buildings and Documents

• The Key Chronological Indicator: pottery.

Fisher Fleet/Gaywood River

St Nicholas Chapel

(1146)

R. Great Ouse

Or ‘Lena’

Purfleet

Priory of

St Margaret

(1095) & Saturday

Market Place All Saints’ Church

Millfleet

R. Nar

The King’s Lynn Survey Continued

• Achievements:

- Diverse field methods during piecemeal regeneration: ‘causal discovery’, ‘systematic observations’ and ‘excavation’

- Interdisciplinary: material culture (Clark and Carter 1977), buildings (Parker 1971) and documents (Owen 1984) - 3 vols. of survey

- Excavation samples: pottery, stone, metal and organics, e.g. animal bones, leather, cloth, plant remains and wood

- A model for the development of Post-Conquest (1066 AD) Lynn, incl. wharf/quay development into the R. Great Ouse and on fleets

• Limitations:

- Project aim changed to focus on the ‘more rewarding sites’ on the ‘changing medieval waterfront of the Great Ouse and fleets’

- The ‘origins’ of the settlement were not archaeologically demonstrated; the earliest sites were All Saints, 109-11 High Street and Stonegate: ‘occupation before 1200’ (Period 1) – foreign pottery and Grimston Thetford-type wares

• Unanswered question on the date and origins of settlement:

- Period 0, Before c.1050 was only recorded on 3 excavations: ‘old sea bank’, ‘sand and marsh-like deposits’ (Blackfriars; Windsor, Jame’s Roads). But, ‘Salterns’, as cited in 1086 are a plausible origin…

The Contribution of Developer-funded Archaeology

• The King’s Lynn Survey Excavations n=16; since 1970,

118 excavations or 23.6 per sq. km or 2.8 per year (over

41yrs.)

• Excavations, Watching Briefs, Evaluations are small in

size and often do not go to the bottom of the sequence

• From a sample of 56 projects in King’s Lynn completed

between 1990 (PPG16) to 2009 the new knowledge is:

- Site Periods: 67.8% multi-period, mostly Medieval (13th-

14thC) to Post-Medieval (17th-19thC); 85.7% are

Medieval; 62.5% Post-Medieval; Pre-Conquest (1066 AD)

deposits are rare: Prehistoric n=5; Roman n=2; Saxon 1

- 30.3% Buildings and structural deposits

- 17.8% Ecclesiastical or monastic sites

- 16% Flood silts

- 14.2% Salt workings

• Earliest deposits/artefacts from Vancouver Centre – 11thC

Thetford ware, lower sequence ‘tidal’ and flooding and

dumped deposits; 13th-14thC Salt Working from West

Lynn, to Queen Mary’s Nurses’ Home, Lynn and North

Lynn; 12th-15thC common salt/fresh - water inundation

inter-dispersed with dumping and re-occupation phases

even in ‘urban’ settings, c.1250, The Newlands Survey.

A Pre-Conquest Landscape (Hutcheson 2006)• Topographic Setting: A notional edge of

reclamation is suggested for the 11thC, set at 5m

O.D. contour –an island with St Margaret’s Priory

Church (Bishop’s Lynn); All Saints’ Church (S.

Lynn), west of the Bishop’s Palace at Gaywood

and a ‘Productive’ site at Bawsey

• Pre-Conquest (1066 AD) Community: In the First

Register, Herbert de Losinga, Bishop of Norwich

grants in 1101 a Saturday Market, Fair and ‘soke

over land, marsh and people’ between the Millfleet

and Purfleet’; All Saints’ Church is noted as are

tolls paid to the new St Margaret’s Priory in 1095

– population and tax payments pre-Conquest!

• Bawsey, a Fen-edge knoll and St. James’ Church:

A ditched encircled and prominent site yielded:

coins (8thC sceattas n=70), evidence for metal

working, ‘status’ (styi n=6) and Ipswich Ware

• Middle Saxon Fenland Settlement: Rural mixed

economy specialising in salt, grazing, barley crops,

managed at dispersed Estate administration centres

• The Bishop’s Land, Wealth and Control: Bawsey

is an Estate centre a ‘precursor to King’s Lynn’.

Coin loss = payment of tax, a juridical role.

Norfolk: Coins 650-850 - Ipswich Ware

GIS and Long-term Settlement Patterns

• 1st-11thC Landscape: Silts the ‘Lena’, west-east draining rivers and Fen-edge

• Study Area: 27 parishes between the rivers, marshland and upland; some c.44,000 hectares; 3,266 Norfolk Historic Environment Records

• Scale of Analysis: What of long-term landscape and settlement trends?

The Wash

Fen-edge/Chalk Upland

R. Babingley

Post-11thC Silts/

Pre-11thC Coastline

Fisher Fleet/ Bishop’s Lynn

R. Gaywood

R. Great Ouse

or ‘Lena’

5m O.D. ‘island’

Purfleet/Millfleet

R. Nar

Parish Boundary

GIS and Long-term Settlement Patterns Continued

Prehistoric, n = 403 Roman, n = 331 Early Saxon, n = 33

Middle Saxon, n = 27 Late Saxon, n = 120 Medieval, n = 1008

Data: Norfolk Historic Environment Record 2010

GIS and Long-term Settlement Patterns Continued

• Long-terms spatial trends:

- Prehistoric: Fen-edge and rivers:

lithics, pottery and sites

- Roman: Fen-edge and rivers: coins,

metal objects, pottery, sites

- Early Saxon: Some fen-edge, set back

in upper river valley: metal objects,

pottery, sites, a cemetery

- Middle to Late Saxon: Some fen-edge

e.g. Bawsey, river-side and upper

valley, a Marshland expansion: coins,

metal objects, pottery and sites

• Site Buffer Analysis (at 500m radius):

- Roman to Prehistoric <500m 257/331

- Early Saxon to Roman <500m 29/33

- Middle to Early Saxon <500m 9/27

- Late to Middle Saxon <500 36/120.

The Roman to Middle Saxon Landscape: Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) Data

• Refining the Spatial Pattern:

- Metal artefacts from PAS

- Roman to Early Medieval artefacts:

e.g. coins, brooches, strap ends,

harness fittings, pins n= 709 (in

2010)

- Mapped over typologically and

chronologically distinctive ‘periods’,

1st AD to c.850 AD

• Trends (spatially related):

- Early Roman (black open) – Fen-

edge and river valley

- Late Roman (red open) – Fen-edge,

valley, upper slope

- Early Saxon (blue open) – Fen-

edge, set back, upper valley slopes

- Middle Saxon (blue dot) – Fen-

edge, river, Marshland expansion

• A NW-SE Fen-edge upper slopes set

of estate centres – the Icknield Way

Villas (n=10) and Peddars Way.

Salterns

Roman Landscape and Coin Loss (Portable Antiquities Scheme data 2010)

• Coin Loss: From 247 Roman coins, 197 can be attributed to Reece’s Issue Periods, AD 41-402

• Values Peak: i. 260-275, Gallic Empire to Aurelianic; ii. 330-348 Constantian I; iii. 317-378

Constantinian I to Valentinianic

• Meaning? This patterning is a ‘typical rural pattern’ and c.330-402 represents a poor economy.

Salt working, Rural Economics and Economic Intensification

Salterns Roman

• Salterns Distribution: In Domesday Book

c.180 salterns are recorded in area

• Norfolk Historic Environment Record:

‘Salterns’ or probable salt working, n=132

or 5.2% of total

• Dating: It has always been assumed the

salterns were Medieval or Post-Medieval

• Fieldwork and excavation has

demonstrated:

- Medieval dated sites, mid-13thC-15thC

- Roman dated salt-working sites:

Denver (1st-2ndC); Downham West (2nd-

3rdC); Sandringham; Middleton (late 3rd-

early 4thC); N. Lynn; R. Ingol, Snettisham

• Roman Rural and Dispersed Economic

Intensification, R. Nar and fen-edge:

- Iron Smelting (Sandstone/Carstone),

Wormegay and Leziate, Ashwicken

- Pottery Production, the Nar Valley

Ware, Blackborough End (late 3rdC)

- Coastal grazing and arable farming.

R. Babingley

R. Nar

Roman (?) Salt Working at Plot 13, Hamburg Way, North Lynn

• CAU (Timberlake 2008): Mound A - moulded

briquetage pans; hearth edge, broken and hollow kiln

bar, indicate of a possible Late Roman saltern on west

side of a tidal creek; Mound C – probable late

Medieval saltern.

Romano-British pottery at Raynham House, King’s Lynn

• APS (Cope-Faulkner 2000): From Trench C ‘Romano-British

pottery was found… and represents the earliest artefacts

recovered’. Sadly, the sherds were recovered from the fill of a

modern pit which also included Grimston Ware, brick and tile

- Is this a glimpse of a disturbed Romano-British context adjacent

the 1146 St Nicholas’ Chapel? What should we expect from such

urban compacted contexts inter-cut/truncated by later phases?

- At present no evidence for salt working has been isolated here!

Conclusions: Pre-conditions and dispersed Proto-urban communities nested in a

rural landscape?

• Could the high count for salt-pans in the Domesday Book

relate to areas of Romano-British salt working? Yes

• Is there a rural dispersed but industrial Romano-British

landscape in West Norfolk? Yes – salt, pottery, carstone…

• Could this landscape provide the pre-conditions for

continued dispersed economic intensification in the Early-

Middle Saxon periods? Yes – this is why ‘Continuity’ occurs

• The ‘sand market’ at ‘Lena’ on a beach was a long-known

locale, one of many, but was committed to record by the

Bishop’s First Register. The Bishops of Norwich owned the

rights to a significant set of rural but intensively exploited

economic resources – a process begun in the Roman period

• Late 11thC ‘urbanism’ and a planted town, set in the former

saltern-rich lands north of the Purfleet, part of the Newlands

Survey, c.1250 simply formalised and centralised economics!

The Ick

nield

Way

Villas

Bawsey