Anglo saxon/danish history of nottingham

 Greetings to my fellow history nuts and war gamer fanatics and hey to the normal folks.

So today I've thought I would talk about Nottingham in the Anglo-Saxon period. The town was founded around the turn of the 6th to 7th century, whether this was an actual new settlement started or just a land grab of an existing settlement that was already here since the Romans I could not say. However what we do know is that the leading noble who started/grabbed this place is called Snot and that Snotingaham would last as a name until at least the end of the 11th century.  This first settlement of Nottingham is today what is referred to as the lace market and its church St. Mary's is still there. 

The town would change little until 868 when the great heathen army rocked up and captured the place. 20 years later it would be signed over as one of the five boroughs that would go to make up the area referred to as the Danelaw and this Danelaw region would be enshrined in English laws up until the Norman conquests. 

The town during this viking settlement period would expand further north but the walls of the original burgh would not be expanded to encompass it. I personally believe that this that the outer expansion from the original site was of small farmsteads that then fled to the fortifications of the original town in times of trouble. 

The defences of the town where of considerable strength according to Norman chroniclers consisting of a very deep ditch and well built wooden palisades built on a high earthen rampart. This of course disappears in 1068 when the first of Nottingham castle is built on a neighbouring rocky outcrop that also overlooked the lean and was even higher than the original town.

The Shield wall of the Danelaw Reenactment group  with other viking Society members at Whitby Abbey representing part of the great Heathen Army