Queen Edith Area

Jeremy Lander

This short paper on the Queen Edith area of Cambridge comes with a health warning: I am not a historian. Consequently it is bitty, anecdotal and scandalously short of references. I cannot read Anglo Saxon and in any case there is very little primary evidence from the 11th century – the principal focus of my study. My main sources have been the Domesday Book or, to be more accurate, the Victoria County History and British History Online which contain the information in more digestible form, together with various bits and pieces gleaned from books and websites on the Saxon period, of which there are many. Most of the published material on the 1066 story has, in some shape or form, been derived from either the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, a patchy series of accounts by various anonymous scribes of the time, usually with axes to grind, or the Bayeux tapestry, almost certainly a piece of Norman propaganda; neither are to be fully trusted. The full, true picture of this fascinating period of British history remains tantalisingly out of reach.

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