These family settlements, revealed to us by the patronymic _ing_, are very numerous. At Ardington, in Berkshire, the Ardings, the royal race of the Vandals, settled; the Frankish Walsings at Wolsingham; the Halsings at Helsington; the Brentings at Brentingley; the Danish Scyldings at Skelding; the Thurings at Thorington; and many other examples might be quoted.
Many Saxon names of places end in _field_, which denotes a forest clearing, or _feld_, made by the axes of the settlers in the primeval woods, where the trees were _felled_. These villages were rudely fortified, or inclosed by a hedge, wall, or palisade, denoted by the suffix _ton_, derived from the Anglo-Saxon _tynan_, to hedge; and all names ending with this syllable point to the existence of a Saxon settlement hedged in and protected from all intruders. Thus we have Barton, Preston, Bolton, and many others. The terminations _yard_, _stoke_, or stockaded place, as in Basingstoke, _worth_ (Anglo-Saxon _weorthig_), as in Kenilworth, Tamworth, Walworth, have much the same meaning.
Perhaps the most common of all the terminations of names denoting the presence of Anglo-Saxon settlers is the suffix _ham_. When the _a_ is pronounced short the syllable denotes an inclosure, like _stoke_ or _ton_; but when the _a_ is long, it means home, and expresses the reverence with which the Anglo-Saxon regarded his own dwelling. England is the land of homes, and the natural affection with which we Englishmen regard our homes is to a great extent peculiar to our race. The Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Italian, do not have the same respect for home. Our Saxon forefathers were a very home-loving people, and it is from them doubtless that we inherit our love for our homes.
We find, then, the Saxon holding the lands. The clan formed settlements; sections of each clan formed branch settlements; and several members of each section cut their way through the thick forests, felled the trees, built homesteads, where they tilled the land and reared their cattle.
In early Saxon times the settlement consisted of a number of families holding a district, and the land was regularly divided into three portions. There was the village itself, in which the people lived in houses built of wood or rude stonework. Around the village were a few small inclosures, or grass yards, for rearing calves and baiting farm stock; this was the common farmstead. Around this was the arable land, where the villagers grew their corn and other vegetables; and around this lay the common meadows, or pasture land, held by the whole community, so that each family could turn their cattle into it, subject to the regulations of an officer elected by the people, whose duty it was to see that no one trespassed on the rights of his neighbour, or turned too many cattle into the common pasture.