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A Potted History of Sawtry 2

Information in this section is used by permission and is taken from "A Glimpse Into Sawtry's Past", by H. Milford, published by CARESCO, 1998

In 870 the dreaded Vikings (Danes and other Scandinavian races) invaded throughout East Anglia. The Danes were an independent race and, being good organisers, made laws and settled well in East Anglia. Thus the Saxons came under the Dane Law and, until their adoption of Christianity in the late 10th and early 11th Centuries, the Scandinavian peoples practised their traditional religion. The Dane Law is the name given to the areas under Danish Viking occupation in 878AD - much of Eastern and Northern England (including Sawtry) and the districts of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, and Stamford. 

In the mid-900's King Edgar and Saint Dunstan introduced and implemented a national programme of religious reform, and during 975, King Edgar sent Monks to two of the old Monasteries at Peterborough and Gt Paxton from where missionary monks went out to convert the local people back to Christianity.

A census of the English Kingdom commissioned by William I in 1085, the Domesday Book, was completed in 1086. It is without equal as a public record in mediaeval Europe and is a fairly complete record of conditions among the ruling class in late Anglo-Saxon and Early Norman times.

In the Domesday Book, Sawtry had three Churches, All Saints, St Andrews and St Mary's. In the 11th Century Sawtry was named "Saltrede", meaning Salt, referring to the salt marshes in the Fens.

Judith, niece to William the Conqueror, was married in France, to the Saxon Earl Waltheof of Huntingdon and Northampton. Waltheof had previously fought against William, but had been pardoned. During her life in Sawtry, Countess Judith was popular and loved by the local people because she cared for the sick and poor, some even called her 'Saint Judith', which is how the names of St Judith's Lane and St Judith's Field originated, and although she owned land throughout the country, she chose to live in Sawtry.

In 1147 Simon de Senlis founded the Cistercian Sawtry Abbey. It took 98 years to complete and was always very poor. William of Sawtry was a rogue monk who began preaching his own religion. So displeased were the elders that he was put to death in London in 1359! By 1540, in the Reformation, the Monastery had been destroyed. In 1850 a farmer employed some out of work Irish navvies to dig up old abbey stones. It is commonly believed that they were used to build the present Greystones public house on the Green! Others can be seen inside and outside All Saints Church.