Akeld : Early Medieval Glendale
The significance of Glendale in the early medieval period needs little emphasis. Only two miles west of Akeld, in the township of Yeavering, lies the renowned site of Ad Gefrin, the Anglian palace complex. This ‘villa regia’ figures in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History as the centre of Bishop Paulinus’ mission to the Bernician kingdom, where the saint is said to have baptized the surrounding populace in the River Glen over 36 days in AD 627 (HE II, xiv).
The site was the subject of magisterial excavation by Brian Hope-Taylor between 1952-1962 (Hope-Taylor 1977). Whilst archaeologists still debate the results of Hope-Taylor’s excavations and the conclusions he drew from them, the basic outline seems clear. The complex was a major royal centre in the Anglian kingdoms of Bernicia, and, later, Northumbria, with administrative and ceremonial functions which involved the collection the renders provided by the surrounding peasant communities and redistributing them to key royal supporters and valued warriors. The complex contained a great defended or enclosed meeting place with adjacent halls, churches and a timber-built ‘theatre’ or political arena.
Sitting right at the mouth of Glendale, Ad Gefrin was well-positioned to control population and resources over a wide area, not only Glendale itself - embracing the hills and valleys of the Cheviots to the south and west - but also a large tract of the Till flood plain to the east. The complex must have lain at the centre of a substantial royal estate embracing these areas, which O’Brien has recently labelled ‘Gefrinshire’ (O’Brien 2002).
The suggestion that this site may have originated in the 5th century and was associated with the British polities which preceded the Anglian kingdoms of Bernicia and Northumbria, is more controversial (Hope-Taylor 1977, 209; Higham 1986, 247). However, on a more basic level, it is difficult to believe that it is a mere coincidence that this major complex sits at the foot of Yeavering Bell, the site of the largest hillfort in Northumberland and where evidence for continued occupation in the Romano-British period has been identified.
In other words, some continuity of political and territorial focus seems likely in north Northumberland, from the Iron Age through the Roman period and into the early medieval era, even as the social and political structures of those territorial communities were perhaps evolving from kinship-based clans or tribes into chiefdoms and ultimately small states.
Yeavering would thus represent an inland counterpart to the coastal stronghold of Bamburgh, where occupation spanning the same period is attested. Bamburgh remained a principal political centre for kings, ealdermen and earls in Northumbria throughout the early medieval period and continued to function as a royal castle thereafter. In contrast, as Bede tells us, under King Edwin’s successors Ad Gefrin was eventually replaced by a new, more enclosed site, Maelmin, situated 4km further north beside the Till near Milfield, and the archaeological evidence suggests that by c. AD 685 Ad Gefrin was completely abandoned.
The abandonment of Ad Gefrin might be connected with the grant by King Oswine to St Cuthbert of a large tract of land beside the River Bowmont, including 12 named vills, in c. AD 651, which is recorded by the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, or ‘History of St Cuthbert’, a work probably compiled in the mid tenth century (HSC, par. 3 (Roll Series edn. i, 197); Craster 1954, 180; Barrow 1973, 32-5; Hart 1975, doc. 139; Morris 1977, 91; Higham 1986, 288-9).
Craster followed by Barrow and Morris suggested that this was one of the twelve estates which King Oswiu is said by Bede to have granted to the church in 655 (HE III, xxiv). Hart was more sceptical regarding the precise historical context, but agreed that the account was probably based on some early record of the endowment of Melrose, the daughter house of Lindisfarne.
The most readily identifiable of the 12 vills - Yetholm, Clifton, Shotton, Halterburn and Mindrum - all lie along the west flank of the Cheviots, but Barrow (1973, 34, n.133) has suggested that Colwela may represent ‘Colewell’, a lost township situated somewhere near Westnewton recorded in several documents between 1319 and c.1330 (NCH XI (1922), 152; Macdonald 1950, 112-5, nos. 12,18, 21); and that Waquirtun might be associated with ‘Wakerich’ which is encountered in 1631 in one of the Laing Charters (Laing Charters, no. 2090, 499 ) and evidently lay somewhere in Kirknewton parish. Wakeridge Cairn, which marks the boundary between Kirknewton, Yeavering and Akeld townships on the eastern slope of Newton Tors (NT 92702767), figures on maps from the 1st edition Ordnance Survey onwards.
Similarly, one could further speculate that Thornburnum might represent the area around Thornington, the hamlet on the north side of the river near Kilham. Although the very tentative nature of these identifications must be acknowledged, if correct they would extend the limits of the land grant right along the Bowmont Water to its confluence with the College Burn.
The alienation of so much adjacent territory to St Cuthbert’s monasteries, either Melrose, or perhaps the mother house, Lindisfarne, would have meant that a royal estate centre at Ad Gefrin was no longer so well-situated and may have prompted a shift further north to Maelmin, which was better placed to control the remaining royal estates in the Milfield basin and the eastern Cheviot fringe.
