page_title: Meonwara
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Meonwara / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of south east Britain c.575AD showing approximate areas of Jutish settlement according to the sources (Bede)
context_page_description: Meonwara or Meonsæte is the name of a people who controlled a territory in south-east Hampshire, focussed on the Meon valley, during the late 5th century and early 6th century. Meonwara means "People of the Meon" in Old English.
context_section_description: During the period after the Roman occupation and before the Norman conquest,  people of Germanic descent arrived in England. Bede recorded the event in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He said that:
  " Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight."
  — Bede 1910, 1.15
  It is likely that the Jutes initially inhabited  Kent (Cantaware) and from there they occupied the Isle of Wight ( Wihtwara) and also possibly the area around Hastings in East Sussex(Haestingas). They also settled in what was to become Meonware. As well as Bede's description, there is other evidence of Jutish occupation. Droxford, in the Meon valley, was the site of a large Jutish cemetery. Also one of the local manors had the medieval custom of Gavelkind similar to that in Kent. Further there is placename evidence, linking Kent and Southern Hampshire. In 686, Bede tells us, that Jutish Hampshire extended to the western edge of the New Forest, however that seems to include another Jutish people, the Ytene, and it is not certain that these two territories formed a continuous coastal block.
caption: The Anglo-Saxon settlements of south east Britain c. 572 AD
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