Matthew has published on place-names (W(e)alh tÅ«n balancing the possibilities) and the 10th century burhs of Æthelflaed (‘For the protection of all the people’: Æthelflæd and her burhs in Northwest Mercia with Dr. Andrew Sargent), as well as an edition of the Memoranda Book of Thomas Worswick (d.1623) and Two sets of mid-Tudor churchwardens’ accounts: Yoxall and Lichfield St Michael (forthcoming with Dr. Ian Atherton). He is Honorary Secretary for the Staffordshire Record Society. His current research interests are tenth century Mercia and ‘wild’ animals and how they fit into the wider landscape.
This paper proposes that there is a tendency for the area that became ‘Staffordshire’, an important constituent part Mercia, to be reduced to what is seen as its most important early medieval centres, namely Tamworth (especially for the earliest period), Lichfield (the ecclesiastical centre), and Stafford (as a royal burh and later shire town): these are certainly the places that have attracted the interest of archaeologists and historians. Beyond the urban centres gravel extraction along the Trent Valley and the subsequent finds such as those at Catholme have further emphasised an eastern bias in discussions about the county as does the survival on early medieval stone sculpture to the north and east. How then do we find ways to discuss the rest of the county which formed part of the Mercian heartland and which remains absent from so many of the discussions concerning the early medieval period? Discussion follows.....
