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Waterborne transport around the sixth century For its size Rutland has far more rivers than might be expected. This article gives the details. Rutland's watercourses, narrow and shallow as most of them were and still are, are still useful for moving produce and people by simple punts or a few logs tied together. They would have carried between half and one tonne of cargo – so very much like the ubiquitous pick up trucks on modern roads. The early Anglo-Saxons took full advantage of Rutland's waterways to quite quickly settle in almost all the parts which weren't too marshy. Since eighteenth century turnpike trusts people in Britain have increasingly relied on roads. But that was far from the case in the fifth and sixth centuries. Roman roads seem to have gone out of use in the fifth century. In a sixth century cemetery near Willoughby on the Wolds (on the Leicestershire:Nottinghamshire border) some of the burials are on top of the cobbled surface of the Roman Fosse Way (now the A46). A century or two later, when the Fosse Way came back into use, a shallow-S-shaped bypass was created around the cemetery. This has to be one of the oldest bypasses in Britain! Looking north along the S-shaped bypass. The Anglo-Saxon cemetery was under the left-hand bridge abutment. In the field on the left was the Roman small town known as Vernemetum. Immediately to the right of the A46 was an early church, perhaps a sixth century baptistry. Anglo-Saxons came to Britain by boat. For generations they continued to travel back and forth over the North Sea. Their vessels were small enough to come up larger rivers, such as the Trent and the Welland (perhaps as far as Stamford). Stamford was indeed the limit of navigation for the Welland after 1670 when artificial cuts and ten locks were constructed to form the Stamford Canal. This enabled quite large vessels to access the town. But in Anglo-Saxon times vessels were much smaller and would not have needed such sophisticated improvements to the watercourse. The Stamford Canal closed in 1863 after the railway network had replaced most waterborne trade. Back then the water table was higher than now and rivers had not been narrowed down into faster-flowing channels – that mostly happened in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Place-names such as Eaton (the settlement by the water) suggest that at least some watercourse management – such as cutting back reed beds – was the responsibility of specific settlements. Several springs near Eaton, in the south of the Vale of Belvoir, flow into each other and form the headwaters of the River Devon. When roads came back into use the residents of Strettons, the settlement on the straet, looked after former Roman roads and their users. At the time straet referred specifically to former Roman roads. There is a Stretton on Ermine Street (now the A1) on the eastern border of Rutland. Bosham, Sussex. Earliest churches in landlocked counties (such as Luffenham in Rutland) are almost always located on rivers at the probable limits of navigation for small craft or, in the case of the River Thames, at confluences with tributaries. In coastal counties the earliest churches are mostly found where coastal craft can be 'beached' – such as Bosham in Sussex. I have written in detail about this association of early churches and waterbourne transport here. Crossing the River Chater using the pedestrian bridge between South Luffenham and North Luffenham. Luffenham is a good example of an early church at a place where the river was navigable to small craft and could be forded (though there is now a bridge over the Chater). If you think this is a little unlikely then a modern canoeist and YouTuber who uses the nom de guerre of 'The Patterdale Paddler' launched his canoe at Luffenham – where there was once an early church – and proceeded downstream towards the confluence with the Welland. According to oral history collected in 1973 and published in 1975: The is a tradition in [South Luffenham] that sea-going boats came up the Foss to a quay by the village pond, and were unloaded by monks from a monastery below the church. The stream was thought to be a canal, when the sea came up to Uffington, and was quite deep until the water was backed up and silted in the race to provide power at the watermill; the Chater was six feet deep at the Wash Dyke. 'The Patterdale Paddler' navigating the Chater. By the eighth century churches are being built at fords where prehistoric trackways cross the upper reaches of a watercourse. Melton Mowbray is a good example, although the ford has long-since been replaced by a bridge. However the contours of the riverbed reveal it would have been ideal for a ford. We can reasonably conclude that, at the time, this was close to the limit of navigation for small cargo-carrying vessels which had brought goods along the Wreake from places on the River Soar (such as Barrow on Soar) where bigger vessels crossing the North Sea could trans-ship their wares to and from smaller craft. Back to top of this page     Back to home page   This website does not gather or store any visitor information. Copyright Bob Trubshaw 2026 No unauthorised copying or reproduction except if all following conditions apply: a: Copy is complete (including this copyright statement). b: No changes are made. c: No charge is made. www.hoap.co.uk/rutland

Rutland's history home page what's new? glossary bibliography Rutland's geology Rutland's boundaries Rutland's rivers long, long ago prehistoric Rutland Roman Rutland long ago Anglo-Saxon Rutland Rutland's place-names waterborne transport around the sixth century Rutland's early churches Anglo-Saxon sculpture in Rutland The Matter of Rutland what the Normans did for Rutland Romanesque sculpture in Rutland Rutland's royal forests Rutland in medieval times Rutland's scratch dials Rutland's medieval carvings Rutland's sepulchral effigies Rutland's saltways Rutland in Tudor times Dissolution in Rutland not that long ago Rutland in the 17th century pinfolds and pounds in Rutland dovecotes in Rutland Rutland in the 18th century turnpiking Rutland Rutland's springs and wells changes in Rutland's agriculture since 1800 seems like yesterday Rutland's dialect Rutland's folk customs travellers in Rutland watermills and windmills in Rutland breweries in Rutland gasworks in Rutland ironstone quarrying in Rutland Zeppelins over Rutland redundant telephone exchanges in Rutland Second World War in Rutland WWII airfields and pillboxes in Rutland the making of Rutland Water Rutland Weekend Television free online history resources Victoria County History: Rutland volume one Victoria County History: Rutland volume two free PDFs of Rutland Record issues 1 to 50 old OS maps Historic England Listed buildings database Sepulchral Effigies of Leicestershire and Rutland Open Domesday English Place-Name Society database Wikipedia list of places in Rutland (with links to village entries) Wikipedia list of people from Rutland researching and writing local history getting started free advice from 2005 asking curious questions (YouTube video) local history groups in and around Rutland Belton-in-Rutland History Society Cottesmore History and Archaeology Group Langham Village History Group Lyddington Manor History Society Rutland Local History and Record Society with free PDFs of over forty issues of the Rutland Record Uppingham Local History Study Group you may also be interested in free PDFs written by Bob Trubshaw Earliest Churches in Nottinghamshire How Anglo-Saxons Found Their Way Anglo-Saxon Leicestershire Conversations in Churchyards Little-known Leicestershire and Rutland Bob Trubshaw's YouTube channel Introduction to medieval carvings Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque carvings How Anglo-Saxons found their way Anglo-Saxon shrines at fords Meetings at triangles Rota's Land and Franni's Land Reading Romanesque fonts Church and manor The significances of square headdresses Early churches and waterborne trade Charnwood slate gravestones and C18th trade routes Ironstone quarries of Leicestershire Roman roads in north-east Leicestershire Salt ways in Leicestershire Why Melton Mowbray needed to called 'middle town' Evolving Anglo-Saxon agriculture Nottinghamshire's earliest churches Ploughs not piety? Economic regeneration in the C7th Were Anglo-Saxon weaving huts women-only places? Vale of Belvoir Chronicle Barrowby Until Now website