Saxon Settlement at Fareham

700

The origins of Fareham lie in the Saxon period, when a settlement grew up at the head of a tidal creek on the northern shore of Portsmouth Harbour. The name Fareham derives from the Old English 'fearn ham', meaning a homestead among the ferns, reflecting the vegetation that would have characterised the surrounding heathland and common. The location was practical: the creek provided sheltered water access for small boats, the surrounding land offered grazing and arable farming, and the site sat on routes connecting the coastal settlements of the Solent shore to the interior of Hampshire. Archaeological evidence is limited for the earliest period, but Saxon finds in the area confirm settlement activity from at least the seventh and eighth centuries. The parish church of SS Peter and Paul, though rebuilt in later centuries, occupies a site that may well have been used for worship since the Saxon period. By the time of the Norman Conquest, Fareham was an established settlement with agricultural land, a church, and a community that would be recorded in the Domesday survey of 1086. The Saxon origins are not dramatic or well documented, but they established the basic pattern of Fareham's development: a small market settlement at the head of a navigable creek, serving the agricultural hinterland and providing a point of exchange between land and water transport.