"Canterbury Before the Normans" by David Buckingham

 This history of Canterbury, Kent, covers a period ignored by many other histories. It makes clear how Canterbury rapidly gained importance as a crossroads town for the Romans (by 300 CE its population might have been as many as 9,000 compared to 20,000 today), only to be almost completely deserted by the Saxons until it regained its importance as a religious centre with the coming of St Augustine. 

It is well written for the general reader. The ideas are well explained; I really understood why Canterbury was important for the Normans and why the Jutish invaders, being simple farming folk, abandoned it. The influence of geography on human settlement was clear (as was the influence of chemistry on manufacture, for example when he was discussing the Iron Age). 

I was a little surprised that it mentions the theory that the Bayeux Tapestry was created in Canterbury as fact (“The finest example of Anglo-Saxon graphic art was the world's most complete and complex ‘tapestry’ made by calligraphers and needlewomen in Canterbury.”): David Buckingham is a professional historian and I would have thought he would have been slightly more circumspect; many modern scholars agree with the PoV but not all as David Reekie makes clear in Saint, Bishop and Concubine.

There are lots of lovely photographs, many in colour and a couple of useful maps.

Some of my favourite bits:

• “During the last centuries of the Iron Age the future citizens of Canterbury found that the later Castle Street quarter of the city was an attractive location. It lay on higher ground above the marshy banks of the Stour river. The early choice of this site was possibly dictated by the availability of a river ford which led down Water Lane and across the marshes and Islands which later became the medieval home to the Franciscan Greyfriars. This ancient Crossing led to the prehistoric track way up to the North Downs. It was in this quarter, which later became the heart of the Iron Age ‘city’, that the Romans later found ground firm enough to build their great multi-storied theatre of baked clay bricks.” (p 24)
• Jutish ancestors were “Hengist, the stallion, and Horsa, his equine mare.” (p 67)
• Mouth of Faversham creek “faced the Isle of Harty which, legend has it, featured in the classic adventures of Beowulf.” (p 68)
• “The second of the great archbishops of Canterbury was Dunstan. He had been the Saxon abbot of the extremely wealthy abbey of Glastonbury in Wessex. ... Dunstan was the patron saint of goldsmiths. ... He retired as Archbishop in AD 978 but remained in Canterbury as a teacher until his death ten years later.” (p 80)
• In late Saxon age “streets such as a new High Street from the St George's Gate to the old West Gate were established. Inside the flint walls land which had once been farmland now acquired a grid of Saxon lanes fronted by workshops and boutiques.” (p 85) This really explains the modern layout of the northern part of the city.
• “The church had rapidly bounced back to life after the dark hiccup of Alphege's death and Christ Church became a particularly successful centre of devotion and learning, even eclipsing St Augustine's. The city rose like a phoenix and new churches were built at St Mildred’s, St Dunstan's and St Paul's.” (p 92) 

Informative and entertaining. November 2020; 94 pages