File:The counties of England, their story and antiquities (1912) (14784739293).jpg

Identifier: countiesofenglan01ditc (find matches)
Title: The counties of England, their story and antiquities
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Ditchfield, P. H. (Peter Hampson), 1854-1930
Subjects: Great Britain -- History England -- Antiquities
Publisher: London : G. Allen
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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shire nothing is known; but that Ethelfleda followedher fathers example and divided Mercia into shires, ashe had done Wessex, there scarcely seems a doubt. The division of the county into five hundreds tellsvery much the same tale. The hundreds are Pirehill,Totmanslow, Cuddleston, Seisdon, and Offlow. Each ofthem had about a hundred inhabitants in Saxon times.But how strongly the names speak of a still remoterpast! Accepting Mr. Duignans guidance, we may saythat Seisdon— Saxons Hill—carries one back to theearly struggles between Saxon and Britons and the fightnear Wednesbury, in 592, when the Britons were drivenout. Totmanslow speaks of the days when all the Leekand Cheadle districts were one great forest. It is theburial low of Tatmann, the bright and happy fellow.Pirehill, near Stoke, may be simply the hill of the peartree, and reminds one of the Derbyshire district of PearTree. Offlow is a low or burial mound in the middle ofa field two miles south of Lichfield, and now almost
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Staffordshire 217 ploughed away, where rest the bones and the memory ofsome noted Saxon. And Cuttlestone, near Penkridge,preserves perhaps the memory of an old Roman Bridgespanning the Penk. A bridge was then a wonder. Thenames carry us back to the time when the first rushesof Saxons almost obliterated the old Romano-Britishtowns, and when as yet no new towns had sprung intoexistence: the period of Ethelfledas earliest days.When the county comes into view, Stafford has beenbuilt and gives it its name. The Norman conquest had a terrible meaning forthis district. Harold, as son of Earl Godwin, was aStaffordshire landlord; and not only had his tenantssuffered in the war, but the restless and perhaps invinciblespirit of the Danish population by the great rivers broughtdown the heavy hand of the Conqueror on this district.In crushing the rebellion, he is said to have destroyedhis own newly rebuilt castle at Stafford. No detailsare given, but it looks as if the great rally had been atStaffo

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