Medeshamstede () was the name of Peterborough in the Anglo-Saxon period.Emphasis on the syllable "ham" presumably follows the common interpretation of the name. If it is believed to mean "homestead belonging to Mede", then it would better be pronounced . It was the site of a monastery founded around the middle of the 7th century, which was an important feature in the kingdom of Mercia from the outset. Little is known of its founder and first abbot, Sexwulf, though he was himself an important figure, and later became bishop of Mercia. Medeshamstede soon acquired a string of daughter churches, and was a centre for an Anglo-Saxon sculptural style.
Nothing is known of Medeshamstede's history from the later 9th century, when it is reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 864 to have been destroyed by Vikings and the Abbot and Monks murdered by them, until the later 10th century, when it was restored as a Benedictine abbey by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, during a period of monastic reform. Through aspects of this restoration, Medeshamstede soon came to be known as "Peterborough Abbey".The most recent survey of the Anglo-Saxon history of Peterborough Abbey is in Kelly, S.E. (ed.), Charters of Peterborough Abbey, Anglo-Saxon Charters 14, OUP, 2009.
The name "Medeshamstede"
The name has been interpreted by a place-name authority as "homestead belonging to Mede".Ekwall, Eilert, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (4th edition), 1960, p. 364.
An alternative description is 'Medu' meaning Mead then 'Hamme' a village on a river and 'Steð'(the ð is pronounced th) meaning a bank or sea shore(the sea was about 4.5 metres higher in early saxon times), so the 'Mead village in the valley with a landing stage' Saxonhistory.co.uk - Saxon Place names and their logical explanation
According to the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in the 12th century, this name was given at the time of the foundation of a monastery there in the 7th century, owing to the presence of a spring called "Medeswæl", meaning "Medes-well". However the name is commonly held to mean "homestead in the meadows", or similar, on an assumption that "Medes-" means "meadows".A History of the County of Northampton: Volume 2, Serjeantson, R.M. & Adkins, W.R.D. (eds.), 1906. British History Online. Retrieved on 9 May 2008. A typically anachronistic account.Cf. Ekwall, Eilert, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (4th edition), 1960, p. 320 ("Medstead").
The earliest reliable occurrence of the name is in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, where it is mentioned in the genitive Latinised form "Medeshamstedi", in a context dateable prior to the mid-670s.Bede, Ecclesiastical History, iv, 6. However the area had long been inhabited, for example at Flag Fen, a Bronze Age settlement a little to the east, and at the Roman town of Durobrivae, on the other side of the River Nene, and some five miles to the west. It is possible that "Medeshamstede" began as the name of an unrecorded, pre-existing Anglian settlement, at or near the site.
Another early form of this name is "Medyhæmstede", in an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon royal charter preserved at Rochester Cathedral.Anglo-Saxon Charter S 34 Archive Rochester British Academy ASChart project. Retrieved on 11 May 2008. Anglo-Saxon charter references beginning with 'S', e.g. 'S 34', are to Sawyer, P., Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society, 1968: see eSawyer. Also found is "Medelhamstede", in the late 10th century Ælfric of Eynsham’s account of the life of St Æthelwold of Winchester, and on a contemporary coin of King Æthelred II, where it is abbreviated to "MEĐEL" .Ælfric, 'Vita Æthelwoldi', in Three Lives of English Saints, Winterbottom, M. (ed.), Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1972, c.17. Dolley, R.H.M., 'A New Anglo-Saxon Mint – Medeshamstede', in British Numismatic Journal xxvii (3rd series, vii), 1955. These occurrences are probably related, and may represent an early corruption, which did not survive. A much later development is the form "Medeshampstede", and similar variants, which presumably arose alongside similar changes, e.g. from Old English "[North] Hamtun" to the modern "Northampton". Despite the fact that they are therefore strictly unhistorical, forms such as "Medeshampstede" are found in later, historical writings.A Topographical Dictionary of England, Lewis, Samuel (ed.), 1848. British History Online. Retrieved on 9 May 2008 (“Northamptonshire": uses the form "Medeshampstead").
Locally, Anglo-Saxon records use "Medeshamstede" up to about the reign of King Æthelred II, but modern historians generally use it only to the reign of his father King Edgar, and use "Peterborough Abbey" for the monastery thereafter, until it changes to "Peterborough Cathedral" in the reign of King Henry VIII.
An important Mercian monastery
Royal foundation
Located in Mercia, near the border with East Anglia, Medeshamstede was described by Sir Frank Stenton as "one of the greatest monasteries of the Mercian kingdom".Stenton, F.M., 'Medeshamstede and its Colonies', in Stenton, D.M. (ed.), Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England Being the Collected Papers of Frank Merry Stenton, Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 191. Hugh Candidus, a 12th-century monk of Peterborough who wrote a history of the abbey, described its location as:
Hugh Candidus also reports that Medeshamstede was founded in the territory of the "Gyrwas", a people listed in the Tribal Hidage, which was in existence by the mid-9th century. There, the Gyrwas are divided into the North Gyrwas and the South Gyrwas: Medeshamstede was clearly founded in the territory of the North Gyrwas.Potts, W.T.W., 'The Pre-Danish Estate of Peterborough Abbey', in Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 65, 1974: this paper contains some substantive errors, but is of interest. Cf. Hart., C., The Danelaw, Hambledon, 1992, pp. 142–3, for a similar comment regarding Medeshamstede, and Wilfrid's church at Oundle. Hugh Candidus explains "Gyrwas", which he describes in the present tense, as meaning people "who dwell in the fen, or hard by the fen, since a deep bog is called in the Saxon tongue Gyr": use of the present tense indicates that inhabitants of the area were still known as "Gyrwas" in Hugh Candidus' own time.Roffe, D., 'On Middan Gyrwan Fenne: Intercommoning around the Island of Crowland', in Fenland Research 8, 1993, p. 83.
According to Bede, Medeshamstede was founded by a man named Seaxwulf, who was also its first abbot. While it is possible that Seaxwulf was a local prince, Hugh Candidus described him as a "man of great power", and a man "zealous and [religious], and well skilled in the things of this world, and also in the affairs of the [Church]."Mellows, 1941, pp. 3–4; Mellows, 1949, 8–9. Historian, Dorothy Whitelock, believed that Seaxwulf had probably been educated in East Anglia, given the heathen state of Mercia prior to the mid-7th century.Whitelock, D., 'The pre-Viking age church in East Anglia', in Anglo-Saxon England 1, 1972, pp. 38–41. He was later appointed Bishop of Mercia, and his near contemporary Eddius Stephanus mentions, in his Life of St Wilfrid, "the profound respect of the bishopric which the most reverend Bishop Seaxwulf had formerly ruled".Colgrave, B. (ed. & trans.), The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, Cambridge University Press, 1927 (reprinted 1985), c.xlv.
A charter, dated 664 AD, records the gift by King Wulfhere of Mercia of "some additions" to the endowment for the monastery of Medeshamstede, already begun by his deceased brother King Peada of the Middle Angles, and by King Oswiu of Northumbria. This reference is to a later, grossly expanded version of the charter. A copy of what is no doubt the original version, modest by comparison, is printed as Birch, W. de Gray, Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols., London, 1885–93, no.22a. This charter is a forgery, produced for Peterborough Abbey either in the late 11th century, or in the early 12th; but, like Hugh Candidus, clearly it reflects Peterborough tradition, and it is both accurate and historically interesting in a number of ways, including in the chronology of kings.See Levison, W., England and the Continent in the Eighth Century The Ford Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford in the Hilary Term 1943, Oxford University Press, 1946, pp. 217–9. Also Potts, W.T.W., 'The Pre-Danish Estate of Peterborough Abbey', in Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 65, 1974. Rather than Medeshamstede's 'pre-Danish estate', the materials discussed by Potts probably identify a 7th-century tribal territory, which would be a unique survival: cf. Higham, N., 'The Historical Context of the Tribal Hidage', in Hill, D. and Rumble, A. R. (eds.), The Defence of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications, Manchester University Press, 1996. The connection with Peada places Medeshamstede's foundation between about 653 and 656 AD.. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
Numerous local saints are connected to varying degrees with Medeshamstede, and many of them are Mercian royal in nature. These include: Guthlac, a former monk of Repton, in Derbyshire. Repton had until recently been the Mercian episcopal see, and was most likely a colony of Medeshamstede. Guthlac is a titular saint of Crowland Abbey, about seven miles north of Medeshamstede, and is generally regarded as its founder. Pega, whose name survives in "Peakirk", meaning "church of Pega", about five miles north of Medeshamstede. She was a sister of Guthlac.Colgrave, B., The Life of St Guthlac by Felix, Cambridge University Press, 1956. Cyneburh and Cyneswith, sisters of King Peada. Cyneburh founded a nunnery at Castor, four miles west of Medeshamstede, and Cyneswith succeeded her as abbess there.'The Life of St Kyneburgha From Northumbrian Queen to Mercian Saint', Morris, Avril M. (undated). Castor Church. Retrieved on 12 May 2008. It seems that both sisters had been married into foreign Anglo-Saxon royalty, in Northumbria and East Anglia, and perhaps Medeshamstede and Castor then formed a double monastery for men and women, a feature of contemporary monasticism. Cyneburh is the titular saint of the parish church of Castor, as "St Kyneburgha". Tibba, who is believed to have been a recluse at Ryhall, about twelve miles north west of Medeshamstede, as well as another relative of King Peada.Rollason, D.W., The Mildrith Legend A Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England, Leicester University Press, 1982 (e.g. p. 115, in Medieval Latin). Tancred, Torhtred, and Tova: these are believed to have lived at Thorney, about five miles north east of Medeshamstede. It seems that Thorney was formerly known as Ancarig, a name which was preserved only at Peterborough, and itself suggests the presence there of anchorites.Mellows, 1941, p. 22; Mellows, 1949, pp. 42–3. Of these three saints, the first two were male, and the last is described as a female virgin; they are said to have been siblings, martyred during the late-9th-century Viking invasions.Rollason, D.W., 'Lists of Saints' resting-places in Anglo-Saxon England', in Anglo-Saxon England 7, 1978, especially p. 91. Tondberht, "prince of the Gyrwas", and husband of St Æthelthryth of Ely. He is named as an English martyr in an early source, and, though nothing further is known of him, his name alliterates suggestively with those of Tancred, Torhtred and Tova, who thus may also have been drawn from local, petty royalty.Herzfeld, George, An Old English Martyrology: Re-edited from Manuscripts in the Libraries of the British Museum and of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Early English Text Society, 1900. For "prince of the Gyrwas", see Bede, Ecclesiastical History, iv, 19. For alliterative Old English personal names, see also Gelling, M., Signposts to the Past (2nd edition), Phillimore, 1988, pp. 163–4.