Towns became popular again in the seventh century
due to a number of reasons: firstly, it was very convenient to
concentrate craft production and tradesmen in one place who could
feed off one another and increase business.
Secondly, there is the social aspect in that people
do like to come to large places for entertainment. Originally the
Saxons would have lived their lives in the seclusion of their own
hamlets and farm settlements. It may be the case that, in the seventh
century, they moved on just that little bit and started to congregate
at larger functions which were held in bigger settlements.
Perhaps originally they met just for craft purposes,
but then came to realise that all other sorts of social benefits came
from that meeting.
The discovery of an early kiln at Ipswich has shown
that the town was not just an early trading port but an industrial centre,
producing England's earliest known wheel-thrown pottery, called
It was an enormous industrial base of the time,
stretching for about one hundred metres along the south side of Carr
Street, which supplied the whole of the East Anglian kingdom, and
exported to most of the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, reaching as far as
Bristol and York.
By the seventh century, what is now thought of as
England had been established. Most of the country's present villages
go back to that time and the first and earliest of the towns, such as
Ipswich, had been established.
A map of Anglo-Saxon England in AD 625, showing the main
trading ports for the kingdoms of the south and east,
some of which are mentioned above