ABSTRACT

The single-sheet charter numbered 154 in Birch’s Cartularium Saxonicum and 89 in Sawyer’s Anglo-Saxon Charters is generally accepted as being an ‘original’ of about 736, the date of the grant which it records. It is a famous document and has been subjected to a great deal of scrutiny.1 There are, however, still a few suggestions which may be offered about it and, since the purpose of the grant was to provide land for a small monastic foundation, the subject is doubly suited to a Festschrift for Professor Brooks, for many of his outstanding contributions to pre-Conquest history have been in the fields of charter studies and the Anglo-Saxon church. The matters which deserve further consideration are the precise location of the land granted and the significance of the transaction for the history of settlement in the north-west part of the area which became Worcestershire.