Coventry's origins

When I first started researching Coventry I bought the cheapest books I could find, that were neither the oldest nor the newest. Those books often repeated long held mistakes about the past. Modern research and particularly dating and location techniques have revolutionised what we know about objects and our ancestors. The Sutton Hoo burial looks a lot like Viking ones and the artefacts are very similar too but the experts currently believe it's not Viking. That doesn't mean that it can't have been influenced by the Vikings or that none of the items might have been made up of traded components or even full pieces. Advances are being made so fast that what you know today might be wrong tomorrow.

So somewhere along the line 'arden' is a wooded place. Sutton Hoo was 7th century, a royal cemetery, the helmet was of a king, there was a clasp and an eagle from a shield. It was from a sunken boat, it is from a heritage book, maybe they found out more.

Leofric was better known than Godiva until the myth of her ride came out. He was Duke of Mercia, which was the biggest but not the most prestigious Dukedom. The following is a rough idea of his remit although it did change in size and shape over time and I've not seen a map of his era. It's suggested that a large slice of the lands belonged to Leofric's brother but Cnut had him killed and handed the titles to Leofric. You can see why Leofric was connected to Chester. Is it me or does the central location of Coventry hint at a reason why the couple were so fond of it?

Good points Helen. Historical facts are always being reinterpreted, and archaeology is always coming up with new materials. And you're correct, so many myths and half-truths are regurgitated as facts. The Viking ship burial sites so far discovered in present-day Denmark and Norway date from at least 100 years after Sutton Hoo. So who influenced whom?

A later map - I don't know if areas like the Five Boroughs were given by Cnut to Leofric. The main theory is that Godiva came from this area and she retained some estates from this area after Leofric died. Those lands included Coleshill to the north of Coventry and bits and pieces almost all the way to Lincoln where her brother was supposedly Sheriff of Lincoln. Leofric's father came from the Hwicce which was the Gloucestershire, Worcestershire areas with bits of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire.

In the forest laws of King Canute we find the first officers appointed by the Crown, for the proper preservation of these forest districts. They had over them a verderer, or chief woodsman (thane), who had the power to act as a judge and whose duties consisted of seeing no encroachments were made, or royal forest destroyed, to seize robbers frequenting the woods, the destruction of wild beasts and the stalling of beasts of vernery, and to prevent the straying of cattle. He had the power to hold his own courts in the districts, to punish offenders, collect fines, and was entrusted to collecting the king's fees. A swineherd appointed to rearing of pigs, in this unclosed forest and cleared land, he was paid. The value of the forest was made according to the amount of pigs that could be reared and kept by the trees, and this led in time to the freemen of Coventry.

Nobody's mentioned Cofa and his tree yet

The Anglo-Saxon people of the 7th century in East Anglia established a royal cemetery. Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, they lowered a large ship into the sandy soil above the Deben estuary. No corpse was found in the ship, but the tomb is supposed to have been that of a king. Among the treasures found in this royal burial ground was the helmet of bronze and iron of Viking origin. The details of St Cuthbert's coffin, now in Durham Cathedral, was made in the year 698. St Cuthbert was Bishop of Lindisfarne, superbly illustrated Lindisfarne Gospels written around the year 700. The conversion of Southern English came, however, from Rome with Augustine in 597. He changed the Anglo-Saxon churches, visits to Rome of early king's payments of grateful tributes, Peter's Pence (the word penny came down from those early times). Mercia, most notable under King Offa, we remember him for Offa's Dyke, but more notable for his fine coins. Coinage goes back to him, the Irish called there coinage oiffing after him. But Mercia had several rulers, Offa, Swein, Godwin and many more. One only lasted five days, its boundary changing, its size changing constantly.

Or that Roman water Goddess Coventina? I feel that Coundon and the River Cune might be connected to Coventre (as it is often written in early references), especially as Roman u was a v.

Hi Helen - I'd never heard of the River Cune until I Googled it - seems that the only reference is your post #126 on the River Sherbourne thread. Looking at the map you've used I'm trying to locate the course of the river on a current OS Map. The only watercourse I can see that could possibly be the Cune is Finham Brook. Since this flows nowhere near the original site of Coventry I can't see how this could influence the naming of our city.

I know what you mean belushi but the guy with the silly hat is supposed to be Coventry and the label is below him. The items could have been moved round on the map but it suggests that the Cune might be the modern Sherbourne from the west of the city.

So Helen, if the Cune is the Sherbourne, what is the Sherborn on the map? The only stream entering the right bank of the Sowe before its confluence with the (real) Sherbourne is a small stream north of Stoke Aldermoor, a couple of miles southeast of Coventry's original site. Perhaps the Hole Map on which you base your evidence is, like many maps of its time, riddled with mistakes and inaccuracies.

It's highly probable that the map is wrong but the water courses to the north of the city have been thoroughly modified due to drainage and the construction of the canal. I'm fairly sure that something approached the city from the north, along which the canal sometimes follows. It would go someway to explain how the city could have been much more boggy than it is now... although it's pretty boggy anyway.

Watercourses in Coventry have been altered it is true, by culverting or minor straightening - they cannot vanish. The Coventry Canal within the city boundary is a contour canal, so could not have have taken over the course of a river. The rivers in north Coventry generally flow in a clockwise direction around the eastern side of the city - the Sowe and its tributaries - they don't flow anywhere the original site of Coventry. The Radford Brook and the Swanswell Brook do flow from the north, but they are but tiny, short streams.

Even the Sherbourne is a stream for much of its path before it reaches the city and it's not a big river even then. I'm not suggesting that the canal was a river but that streams crossed it and some times followed the same line for short stretches. Many man made structures redefined how the water and the landscape related. The field system changed stream courses and at others the streams acted as the field boundary. Swanswell was partly fed by the Springfield Brook that starts some distance out of the old town. Springfield Brook On the same map there is a disused, windmill powered water tower just near the C&W hospital, It had an feature like a road running north of it, disused even by 1850. There was a stream running along it but both vanish at Bishopgate Green where it reaches the canal and an odd fan shape emerges perhaps suggesting two streams merging? It's more obvious on an older map. The water tower supplied drinking water and was installed by a guy called King I think.