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and as such was applied to the area of land in Brentford that lay at the
side of the River Brent shortly before it flowed into the Thames.
However, the rather similar Anglo-Saxon word 'ham' means the homestead
or township of a chieftain and has led historians to believe that the
area around the river in Brentford was the meeting place of rival Saxon
Kings. At this time, around the 8th Century, England was split into several
kingdoms, with Brentford lying on the border of the kingdoms of the West
Saxons and the East Saxons.
The Ham would have offered rulers a suitable piece of no-man's land in which
to resolve conflict. Documents from around 705 AD indicate that Brentford, or
Breguntford as it is referred to, was chosen as the place to settle a dispute
over exiles, whereby the West Saxon King Ine, agreed to abide by the decision
of the bishops of both kingdoms.
Several other documents show Brentford to be a meeting place where problems
between the kingdoms were debated and resolved during 780 and 781 AD, when
Offa, King of Mercia, held a gathering, followed by a further meeting to
settle disputes between Offa and the Bishop of Worcester.
While the name of the Ham would perhaps imply that these influential figures
met here, excavations of the site in 1966 were unable to locate any artefacts
to support this theory. The earliest items that were found dated back to 1800.
As Brentford began to develop the High Street began to take shape across the
Ham, which started to become broken off into developments.
Part of the Ham north of the high street was required by Henry Vlll as butts,
space for archery practise and later became The Butts.
Houses had been continually encroaching on to the Ham and by 1777 they lined
the whole approach road to the bridge. Consequently the area gave its name to
an official road, The Ham Cottages on the Ham regularly flooded during spring
tides as Brentford is low lying. Before these old homes were pulled down
residents had to constantly board up they doors and put furniture on crates
borrowed from near by pubs to limit the damage.
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