What Nights Were Like in Britain's Dark Ages | History for Sleep

A magistrate sits alone in a timber-and-plaster hall in Londinium, late in the year 410. The fire in front of him is the only light left in the room. In his hand is a letter from Rome: Britain must now defend itself. This is the whole story: in 410, a Londinium magistrate reads the Rescript of Honorius telling Britain to defend itself, in a city that had held between forty-five thousand and sixty thousand people within a province of roughly three and a half million; the monk Gildas later writes De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle places Hengist and Horsa's landing at Ebbsfleet in 449 and Horsa's death at Aylesford at four fifty-five; at West Stow, archaeologists found sixty-nine sunken buildings and seven halls; at Mucking, Margaret Jones excavated more than two hundred sunken huts; one of thirteen known bed burials lies at Trumpington; Patrick, captured around 415 at age sixteen, spent six years herding in Ireland before writing the Confessio around 450 AD; Columba landed on Iona on the twelfth of May, 563 AD; genetic testing at Edix Hill near Barrington found Yersinia pestis in four of twenty-two sampled people, evidence of plague reaching Britain around 544 and 545 AD; at the Battle of Deorham in 577, Ceawlin and Cuthwine killed three British kings, Conmail, Condidan, and Farinmail, taking Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath; and around 625 AD a ship burial most connect to Rædwald was raised at Sutton Hoo. Over three hours of quiet narration to fall asleep to. No jump scares, no sudden music, no loud cuts. Turn the light off and let it run. Sleep well. 00:00 A City Goes Dark 05:44 The Province That Forgot How to Write 10:50 Gildas and the Generation Who Wrote It Down Late 17:26 A Letter Sent Into Silence 23:10 The Night Two Brothers Landed 29:49 A Death at Aylesford, and a Record Going Thin 36:23 What 'Dark' Actually Meant 42:12 The Hearth at the Center of the House 48:37 A Night at West Stow 55:39 Mucking, Where Two Hundred Fires Once Burned 1:02:04 What There Was to Sleep On 1:07:21 The Rare Luxury of a Bed 1:13:00 Supper Before the Door Was Shut 1:18:22 The Animals Shut In for the Night 1:24:39 The Light People Could Afford 1:31:11 What Waited Past the Firelight 1:37:05 A Battle Nobody Can Quite Date 1:43:10 The People Who Did Not Sleep 1:48:55 A Captive's Account of the Dark 1:55:14 A Small Light at Whithorn 2:01:37 The Monastery That Kept Its Own Hours 2:08:06 Firelight in a Chieftain's Hall 2:14:36 A Hall Rebuilt on an Old Hillfort 2:21:12 A Dispute About a Dying Town 2:27:35 Ships That Came After Dark 2:34:09 The Year the Sky Would Not Clear 2:41:13 A Sickness Arrives With the Ships 2:46:57 A Grave That Proves the Plague Was Real 2:53:13 Three Cities, Taken in a Single Fight 2:58:49 One Grave That Outshines a Century of Villages 3:05:33 The Night That Is Still Out There