Invasion

Each foreign force that invaded Britain brought a whole new way of life with them. From the Romans to the Saxons and the Vikings to the Norman conquest, these people all created a host of different influences on England, creating more of a cultural melting pot than we may realise. Here are some ways in which the ‘invaders' left their mark:

· If a place name includes the words ‘chester’ or ‘cester’, it is on the site of a Roman fort - the word ‘chester’ comes from the Latin word for fort, ‘castrum’.

· Many types of plant and animal were introduced to Britain during Roman times, including sweet chestnut trees and chickens.

· The word plumbing comes from the Latin word ‘plumbum’, meaning lead. In fact, you can see the remains of flushing lavatories used by Roman soldiers at Housesteads Fort on Hadrian's Wall.

· The collective term 'Anglo-Saxon', by which the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain over 1500 years ago are now known, was invented by the Normans, as a legal definition of the people they had conquered.

· In 1939, archaeologists found traces of an Anglo-Saxon ship and many precious objects at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. It is thought that this was the grave of King Redwald, who died around 625.

· The southern boundary of the Danelaw - the Vikings’ territory in the north of England - forms the basis of what we now call the ‘North-South divide’.

· Our days of the week come from the names of Viking gods: Tuesday is named after Tyr, god of war, Wednesday after Woden, the chief god, Thursday after Thor, god of thunder, and Friday from Woden’s wife, Frigga, the ‘mother goddess’.

· Regions where Vikings settled can often be recognised by the endings of the place name: ‘by’ denoted a village, ‘thorpe’ denoted a farm, ‘keld’ denoted a well and ‘thwaite’ denoted a meadow. Hence, we now have Grimsby and Scunthorpe.

· Many everyday words come from the Vikings, like ‘freckle’, ‘leg’, ‘elm’, ‘giant’, ‘moon’, ‘sun’, ‘wine’, ‘week’, ‘dale’, ‘land’, ‘island’, ‘sound’, ‘earl’, ‘garden’, ‘anchor’, ‘boat’, ‘steer’, ‘market’, ‘penny’, ‘shilling’, ‘skirt’, ‘bowl’, ‘hell’ and ‘law’.

· Our aristocracy is descended from the French, since when William, Duke of Normandy, became king of England, he appointed his own men as feudal lords.

· Not dissimilarly to the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Bosnian conflict, under the rule of William the Conqueror and the French, Anglo-Saxons became second-class citizens in their own country.

· Considered by most as an architectural landmark of ‘Britishness’, the Tower of London was ordered to be built by the Normans (French), so they could show the English who was in charge.