After the Roman legions departed at the beginning of the fifth century until about 900 AD, Colchester’s history is a bit of an enigma. The world shifted – the Germanic Angles, Saxons and Jutes who arrived on England’s shores in successive waves were both pagan and illiterate.

In 527 the East Saxons established the kingdom of Essex. They did not, as a general rule, live in towns or cities. However the East Saxons – from whom the name Essex derives- provided the town with the name Colchester, which appears to have meant colonia camp, suggesting that someone in the know explained to the new comers the town’s Roman origins.

The Saxons buried their dead on the edge of established cemeteries and a market developed but when they built in stone it was with Roman bricks, tiles and dressed stone. In general, there is a lack of archeological evidence because they didn’t build with materials that endured over hundreds of years. And besides which, other locations, including Ipswich, became more important than Colchester at that time. However, there was some habitation within the ruins of the Roman town and the remains of the Temple of Claudius are likely to have been a tempting dwelling given its size and defensibility.

And then the Vikings landed – suddenly those Roman walls must have looked very appealing indeed. The Great Danish Army arrived in 865 and ultimately the Danes took control of Colchester. In 917, Edward the Elder arrived with his army of West Saxons and sent the Scandinavians packing. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle wrote about the death of the Vikings who were all killed apart from the ones who got over the wall before they were slaughtered. It was the first written mention of Colchester since Roman times.

Edward mended the walls, realigned the street plan and restored the borough. In 926, King Athelstan held a witan, or council meeting, there as did King Edmund in 940. It’s possible that they met at the Temple of Claudius or perhaps in an earlier version of the moot hall. Soon coins were being minted in the town and in 991 the area provided men for Brithnoth, Earl of Essex (who owned lands near Colchester) who fought the Battle of Maldon – lost it and was killed in the process. The poem about the event is pretty impressive.

What Colchester does have that speaks of its Anglo-Saxon heritage is several churches that were founded in Saxon times. Holy Trinity Church on Trinity Street has a tower that’s datable to 1000. Other evidence largely takes the form of pot shards, grave goods, and the remnants of two huts at Lion Walk built in the ruins of Roman houses. In 1916, two seaxes were found in the River Colne during dredging. These are the single edged swords are typically germanic in origin and seem a good place to end this post since there are three seaxes on Essex’s coat of arms as shown at the start of this post.

Next post – the Normans get in on the act.

A P Baggs, Beryl Board, Philip Crummy, Claude Dove, Shirley Durgan, N R Goose, R B Pugh, Pamela Studd, C C Thornton, ‘Medieval Colchester: Introduction’, in A History of the County of Essex: Volume 9, the Borough of Colchester, ed. Janet Cooper, C R Elrington( London, 1994), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol9/pp19-26 [accessed 8 July 2024].