A Provisional Starting Point
We first encountered Folkham at a round table research seminar, although the actual table is more of an oval shape, but let us not be drawn into questions of shape and geometry so soon. We were met to discuss various concerns when one of the more senior members of the group described a manuscript source that mentioned a lost settllement somewhere east of Offa's Dyke and north of the Thames. Given the relative lack of specificity about the location there was a suprisingly lively controversy about which of the seven Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms had been home to the settlement. The source described Folkham-on-the-Gytte as part of the patrimony of an Anglo-Saxon king who had faced incursions by Damnonian and Goddoddinian war bands but was also supported by alies in Meonmara. This suggested that Falkham-on-the-Gytte might lie in any of the kingdoms from Bernicia and Deira in the north to Mercia and Lindsey and the Anglian kingdoms in the midlands and east of England and even potentially eithe...