the history of Leyton and Leytonstone
from . dot to … dots – with plenty of spaces
1 Domesday Quest by Michael Wood
The Anglo-Saxons are a mystery. They have provided England with most of its place-names
and most of the common words in the English language, but there has been only limited
survival from the earlier Anglo-Saxon period of buildings, landscape features, objects
and written records. In some places medieval settlement has been found to overlie
Anglo-Saxon settlement which was over Roman settlement 1 , but a good many Saxon
settlements were on different sites from the Romano-British, and many known Roman
villas were not the location of later manor houses.
After the Roman period land in England was divided into estates on a new pattern,
from which the medieval manors developed, though this may perhaps have been to some
extent a reversion to pre-Roman landholdings.
England is thought to have been covered with a network of minster churches before
it was divided into parishes within bishoprics. Leyton came to be within the administrative
‘hundred’ of Becontree centred on Barking. It is likely that the Christian centre
for Leyton was Barking. >>
The photo on this page is of a carved stone in the church of St Dunstan, Stepney.
The English countryside seems to have taken form under the Anglo-Saxons. Communities
were formed from people living in groups (hamlets, villages and towns), from landholdings
that became manors, and for Christian religious observance in parishes that supported
a priest. The boundaries of these different kinds of communities had only an approximate
relationship with each other.
