English Chess Forum

well John Philpott likes the Hammers to (must be an ECA thing), and already uploaded via Carl Hibbard. So you can go to the profile settings and select it under the avatar. Another bit about Middlesex is that they are the only county team to lose to Bangladesh this season at cricket, Surrey drew and Sussex and Essex beat them.

28th sounds good! Not sure about myself which maybe half the problem as it is dangerously close to the dropzone.

The Middlesex shield has the Seaxe ('Middel - seaxe') on it - the blade with a notch in it.

I partly remember an old cricket anecdote, I'm not sure if Essex or Middlesex was involved, or who the umpire was.

Umpire to Bowler at the end of a fruitful over for the batsman:-
Would you like your jumper, sir?
Bowler : No, and you know what you can do with it.
Umpire: what, sir? Swords and all?

I always thought it stood for Saxon which potentially means stone knife. So Middle Saxon land, Essex - East Saxon, Sussex - South Saxon, Wessex was the largest of the Saxon Kingdoms which is now split into lots of counties.

Gavin Strachan wrote:So Middle Saxon land, Essex - East Saxon, Sussex - South Saxon, Wessex was the largest of the Saxon Kingdoms which is now split into lots of counties.

Wessex subsumed or conquered the four Kingdoms of Sussex, Kent and Essex and Dumnonia during the 9th century, which had existed since the 5th century. Middlesex as an entity was never one of those Kingdoms; it may have just been a colloquialism that crept in. Middlesex seemingly became a county just by dividing up bits of what was Sussex, Kent and Essex, as Wessex saw fit. This is different from the other counties that sprang up; they were mostly areas where tribes of people were based, and done to divide up its land into smaller chunks. When Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia were unified as England in 927, they probably just kept the counties as had been established.

Gavin Strachan wrote:Which of the following SCCU counties is the odd one out?
Herts
Essex
Kent
Middlesex
Sussex
Surrey
?

Middlesex. All the other's played in the 2009/10 SCCU U14/U140 tournament (http://www.sccu.ndo.co.uk/jun.htm)

Berkshire, incidentally, doesn't border Greater London. If you look closely at the area where all four counties are close to meeting, you'll see it's a Buckinghamshire-Surrey border rather than a Berkshire-Greater London border.

Actually it does. There is a small border (roughly junctions 14-15 of the M25) between the unitary authority of Slough and the London Borough of Hillingdon. This just stops Surrey and Buckinghamshire from meeting. This has been the case since 1995 when The Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Surrey (County Boundaries) Order 1994 was enacted.

I don't think Wessex went into Essex. Potentially Kent and Sussex in the 9th century were as the Vikings took most of the north:

I like that map, Gavin
It gives Northumberland the importance it deserves!

I'm not a big fan of that map. Mercia and Northumbria (not Northumberland!) were Kingdoms, not Duchys!

The Kingdom of Essex was definitely taken by the Kingdom of Wessex at some point in the 9th century; it perhaps changed allegiance from either Mercia or East Anglia. Eventually, Northumbria had what is written there plus the Kingdom of York in it. It also ceded much of its northern territory for the Kingdom of Scotland. Hence in 2010, Berwick-upon-Tweed is in England (it changed countries a lot), and Berwickshire is in Scotland.

It would be interesting to see a date for this map.

Alex,
I think you need to look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_ ... nd_Guthrum

It carves up Bedfordshire and Middlesex I think rather than giving much of Essex to the Saxons.

This page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Essex

It says: The Mercians continued to control parts of Essex and may have supported a pretender to the Essex throne since a Sigeric rex Orientalem Saxonum witnessed a Mercian charter after AD 825. During the ninth century, Essex was part of a sub-kingdom that included Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Sometime between 878 and 886, the territory was formally ceded by Wessex to the Danelaw kingdom of East Anglia, under the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum. After the reconquest by Edward the Elder. the king's representative in Essex was styled an ealdorman and Essex came to be regarded as a shire.

I.e. Essex was in Wessex before being ceded to East Anglia. Essex became the equivalent of the shires that had been created in Wessex; effectively its Kindgom had gone.

So Middlesex must have been part of the three Kingdoms of Essex, Sussex and Kent. How it came to be, I do not know.

Let's say things were pretty fluid during the ninth century. My point was that I think the map is based on the treaty.

Brian Valentine wrote:Let's say things were pretty fluid during the ninth century. My point was that I think the map is based on the treaty.

Finally!

A dispute older than Gtr Man / Lancs

Brian Valentine wrote:Let's say things were pretty fluid during the ninth century. My point was that I think the map is based on the treaty.

Oh, I see. It looks like it probably is.