ABSTRACT
We can begin this chapter in the same way as we began Chapter 4: ‘if there was indeed a revolt in Britain in 409 then it is very likely that only a comparatively small number of people actually left’. But on the morning after the last civil servant had gone men and women still woke up to the routine of their everyday lives. Villas were only slowly abandoned and allowed to fall into decay, and there is evidence of organized municipal life in some towns, Verulamium for example, well into the second half of the fifth century. Roman Britain ended, not with a bang but with a whimper, and it took many years for the long-drawn-out disintegration of the fabric of Roman institutions to make itself felt in the landscape. The nature and extent of the consequent changes have provoked much discussion and controversy among historians and archaeologists but little agreement, save a general appreciation that the transition from Roman Britain to AngloSaxon England was a matter of continuity rather than catastrophe. This merely pushes the debate one stage back, since continuity is difficult to define and almost impossible to prove. Germanic settlers came into a landscape crowded with people, with villas and farmsteads, villages, towns, and roads, and yet, as far as we can tell at present, no villa remained in use after the first quarter of the fifth century, the public buildings in towns fell into ruins and appear to have been taken over by squatters, and hundreds of farms were abandoned. On the other hand, if any reliance at all can be placed upon the evidence brought forward in the previous chapter then some institutions, especially multiple estates, appear to have survived in a sufficiently coherent form to leave traces as late as the time of Domesday Book.
