Learnings: Dividing the Land

The town of Lincoln and its surroundings, a sketch by Jean-Claude Golvin / Contemporary

The losers of the changes in land ownership were mostly secular and religious aristocrats, whose great estates were torn up and redistributed. The pieces went to the Vikings, whose invasion sped up the fracturing of the territory, but also to less wealthy Anglo-Saxon families whose new lands meant a rise in social status. This drawing of Lincoln and its surroundings sheds light on how land was distributed at the time.