To help visualise these possible pasts, Steve has put together these graphic design artworks which use Runes, Ogham, Old English and Old Norse as well as ancient imageries of knotwork, dragons and longboats. They are postcards for the past, adverts for dreamlike landscapes untouched by modernity. 

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The first image here - an Ogham stone inspired by those found in Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall - says "Welcome to Southend" along it's edge. This is a nod to our pre-Saxon past, a heritage that can still be found in our genes and our landscapes - including at Danish Camp, Shoeburyness, and the Iron Age hut reconstruction at Hadleigh. 

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Below are landscape artworks, showing some of the areas of Southend and it's surrounding boroughs (in order from left to right): Benfleet (Beam Fleot - meaning Wooded/Tree-trunk Creek), Thundersley (Thunors Leah - meaning Thor's Clearning/Meadow), Canvey and Canewdon (Cana Ingas Eg, and Cana Ingas Dun respectively - the "island" and the "hill" of the people of Cana), Thorpe Bay (Thorp - meaning satellite settlement of farmstead), Ashingdon (Assandun - meaning the hill of Assa, or Ash tree hill, or possibly donkey's hill), and Prittlewell (Pritol Uela - meaning Babbling Brook/Stream).

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The names are written either in the Anglo-Saxon Runic Alphabet (Futhorc) or the Viking Alphabet (Younger Futhark) based on the appropriateness of each case. These alphabets were first created by Germanic people in the first or second century AD (the Elder Futhark), and are themselves based on Roman Latin scripts. They were brought to England in the 5th and 9th centuries respectively, and found their own lives, purposes and linguistic adaptations here. They represent precursors to our modern English script; an import from the continent that adapted and helped shape our nationhood. ​

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The locations and place names were chosen as case studies for the stories that they tell about the past:

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Benfleet - once a wooded creek, now cleared of all woodlands - was the site of an important skirmish between Alfred the Great and Haesta, a renowned Viking. The area's name is of interest to us because it tells a significant story about what life was like before: to a sea-fairing peoples, the locations of creeks was important; doubly so, if this was "wooded" - if there was tree cover. This could be useful for making surprise raids and attacks, and also for the types of plant life that grew there and would have provided sustenance and medicines.

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Thundersley - this one is amazing to us because of it's casual reference to the Germanic God Thunor - or, known better by his other name, Thor. The God of Thunder with his hammer, Mjolnir, was clearly revered here by the Pagan Anglo-Saxon settlers, suggesting that this area was settled early. It may also suggest that this area had significance prior to the Anglo-Saxon migration, as like settlers before them, they tended to reuse and repurpose spiritual sites of their predecessors. The word "Ley/Leah/Leh" appears many times in Southend - Leigh-on-Sea, Hadleigh, Hockley - and means "Clearing" or "Meadow", suggesting a much denser woodland, punctuated by these clearings, both natural and manmade. 

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Canvey and Canewdon - These names excited us because there is a potential link that has not been explored. The Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names says that both refer to a man named "Cana" in their earliest renderings. But this does not account for a possible Celtic word known to the Romans, also "Cana", which meant "Reeds". There are scarce mentions in Early Medieval Literature of "Cana" as a personal name, but both of these areas are situated on the edge of rivers, and Canewdon has a large pond where reeds grow plentifully. Could our current understanding of these place names be a mistake? We know for certain that Canvey was inhabited by Celts and used as an industrial site by the Romans, so this theory does not feel farfetched to us.

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Thorpe Bay - The word "Thorp" is Old Norse. "Bay" was added by the Victorians about 1000 years later. Perhaps this Viking settlement, which shares a name with many settlements across the East of England, was what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was referring to when it said that "Haesta went to the camp at Shoebury". We have included it here for it's intrigue regarding the living situation of the Vikings in England. In the late 800s, they were granted huge swathes of the East of England as the "Danelaw", separated from the administration of Wessex. this area included South Essex, until the dissolution of the Danelaw. It is possible, given Southend's fairly flat toponomy, that these Vikings would have been able to see the major settlement of Prittlewell from Thorp. 

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Ashingdon - another important battle site, in 1013 King Cnut defeated Edmund Ironside here, securing the kingdom of England into his expansive North Sea Empire. A church was built here in commemoration of this battle, and it still stands today. The first priest of this Church was Stigand, who went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and 50 years later was present at the coronation of William the Conqueror (despite being excommunicated from the Church at this point). Ashingdon's name has several possible meanings - "the hill of the people of Assa", "Ash tree hill" or even the Celtic "Assin" meaning "Donkey". There's also the point that "Don" - Anglo-Saxon for "hill" - has more than a similarity to the Celtic "Dun" - meaning "fort".

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Prittlewell - this name is of extreme significance to Southend, as it is the reason Southend could exist. Pritol Uela - the Babbling Brook - runs through what is now Priory Park, adjacent to the burial site of an extremely important Saxon Prince. Historians believe Prittlewell Priory sits on land that had been an important sacred site for centuries prior to the Saxons and Normans building here. We have included the Ogham script for the Anglo-Saxon name here, too, to further make that historical connection to the ancestors.

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If you click each image below, you will se Jeremy Scott's creative writing on each chosen place. These texts draw on research into local folk stories, modern geographies, personal reflections, and migration histories. Each one is designed to give the reader a sense of the changes that have happened in each place due to the historical waves of migration that have affected the area over 3000 years.