The pattern of Old Englishburhin early Lindsey

Abstract

In Lincolnshire as a whole, place-names which have Old English burh ‘a fortified place’ as their generics fall into two distinct geographical groups (fig. 1). In the northern half of the county, the locations of these names suggest that a comprehensive system of defence was eventually created for the territory of the Lindisfaran. In the far south, the two isolated instances of burh may signal original strongholds of Middle Angles styled in The Tribal Hidage the Bilmigas (but who on place-name evidence are more correctly to be called the Billingas) and the Gyrwe. It is, however, the burh names in that region defined as Lindsey in The Lindsey Survey of the reign of Henry I (1100–35) which are the focus of this paper.