Before 1066: invasion, settlement and what stayed
History · Key Stage 3 · The School
A thousand years in order
The Romans invaded in AD 43. They ruled most of Britain until about 410, when the legions left. Anglo-Saxon groups came next, from what is now Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. They arrived across the 400s and 500s. By 700 their kingdoms covered most of England: Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex and others. Viking raids began in 793 at Lindisfarne. Within a lifetime the raiding had turned into settling, and a large area came under Norse law. It was called the Danelaw. In 1066 a Norman duke won at Hastings. That is about a thousand years and four arrivals. No two of them worked the same way.
Invasion, migration or takeover?
The word you choose makes a claim about how people came. The Roman conquest was an invasion by a state, with an army and a plan. The Anglo-Saxon arrival looks more like MIGRATION. It happened over many lifetimes, through settling, marrying and slow changes of power, not one big battle. The Vikings did both. They raided first, then settled as farmers and traders. The Norman Conquest was an invasion that swapped one ruling class for another, while most people stayed where they were. One word for all four would hide the differences that matter most.
What survived each change
Things that stay the same make no headlines, so they are easy to miss. Roman roads outlasted Roman rule by a thousand years, and some are still main routes today. Field edges, parish shapes and hill forts lasted through every change of ruler. Christianity came in under the Romans, faded, and came back with missionaries from Ireland and Rome in the 500s and 600s. It carried on through the Viking settlement. Most people farmed the same land in the same way, whoever collected the tax.
Take a map of eastern England and read the word endings. Chester, Doncaster and Lancaster come from the Latin castrum, a fort. Birmingham and Nottingham come from the Anglo-Saxon ham, a home or village. Grimsby, Whitby and Scunthorpe come from the Norse by and thorpe. These names sit within a few miles of each other. That is the point. They are not four separate Britains in a row. They are one landscape with four layers of naming. Historians use where these names cluster to work out where Norse settlers were many and where they were few. No written record tells us that directly.