27. Is this the road for Tarenteford ?

Key words and concepts : Darentford, Doomsday Book, Evidence of Anglo-Saxon presence, History (Early English), Old English + early language influences, Tarenteford.

Post:

If someone had stopped you during the Anglo-Saxon era and asked you for directions to “Darentford” they would actually have being asking for your help to get to Dartford.

I appreciate that this will sound rather strange but this was the name that the town had then. However, according to the Domesday Book (of 1086), Dartford had an even stranger - earlier -name: “Tarenteford”. So where did the word Tarenteford come from ?

Well … to get a clearer understanding of this term we need first to review part of our very early history.

You’ll perhaps remember that the Romans occupied England between 55 B.C. - 410 A.D. Then, when the Visigoths continued attacking Rome, the Romans began to send some of their legions home to Italy.

Following years of occupation the native inhabitants of England (the Brythons, otherwise known as Britons and also the Celts) had lost their ability to defend themselves against the maurading tribes of the north i.e. the Picts and Scots. Thus once these early “Brits” started feeling vulnerable they began looking elsewhere for help in defending themselves.

In 449 A.D. Vortigern (the king of the early “Brits” or Celts) asked the Angles from across the North Sea, led by Hengest and Horsa, to help them to defend what would later become called "England" against the wild Picts.

In return for their military assistance the Angles it seems were granted lands in the southeast part of England. Further help was also sought from across the North Sea, and in response “came men of the three peoples of Germanie” (the Saxons, Angles and Jutes).

Eventually though other Germanic tribes began breaking through England’s poorly defended frontiers and to over-run the remaining Roman armies, who were eventually expelled.

The take-over of Kent by the Saxons began in the first half of the 5th century A.D. and it seems that one of their earliest settlements in the area was probably at Darenth, with the settlers coming primarily from Jutland in Denmark.

The Jutes settled mainly in East Kent along with tribes from Frisia whereas West Kent was gradually taken over by Saxon tribes and Frankish people.

The River Medway acted as a dividing line between the Jutish Kingdom of East Kent and the Saxon Kingdom of West Kent but by the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. these tribal divisions had almost disappeared as the result of trading relationships and tribal inter-marriages … thus the population became known collectively as 'Anglo-Saxons'.

The language that these tribespeople brought with them was of Germanic origin but consisting of lots of different dialects and so after years of our embryonic language having been exposed to Latin - because of the Roman culture - “Old English” began to be re-fashioned by it’s exposure to a strong Germanic influence.

Tarenteford it seems - which later became Darentford and then, finally, Dartford - is thought by some scholars to be derived from the German word (or more precisely the Bavarian word) ‘Teren’, a verb meaning: to tear apart/to destroy/to consume as with rage.

So perhaps Tarenteford (Dartford) was the name given to this area where skirmishes took place in which local people tried to defend their homes and agricultural land from the Germanic speaking Jutes ?

Although it had been agreed that the Jutes in East Kent and the Saxons in West Kent should receive certain gifts of land in return for the support against the Picts, it is still easy to image that the locals might still nonetheless have fiercely resisted the taking away of their land(s).

There is certainly irrefutible evidence of an Anglo-Saxon burial site in the Littlebrook/Temple Hill areas due to the discovery of 7th century pottery in this area and pottery dating from this same century was also retrieved from another Anglo-Saxon site during some excavations at the Welcome Chemical Works in 1955.

So … which is the route to Tarenteford ? Well fine sir, your best bet is to make for Tarenteford Heath and then turn left !