Ryan Lavelle

However, as with so many Anglo-Saxon achievements, it is to the European continent and the Carolingian Franks that we should turn in order to see the spur behind the development of a systematic defensive arrangement similar to the Burghal Hidage. By the 860s Charles the Bald had organised western Francia, now modern-day France, to finance a system of fortified bridges across the River Seine in order to block the passage of Viking invaders. Given the penchant of King Alfred for introducing Frankish institutions into his own kingdom the West Saxon burhs are likely to have been an equivalent. Although there were certainly fortifications in Anglo-Saxon England before the reign of Charles the Bald in Francia, the systematic design and administration of the fortifications may well have been a Frankish import.