Quentovic

Quentovic was a Frankish emporium in the Early Middle Ages that was located on the European continent close to the English Channel.

The town no longer exists, but it was thought to have been situated near the mouth of the Canche River in what is today the French commune of Étaples.

Archaeological discoveries led by David Hill in the 1980s found that the actual location of Quentovic was east of Étaples, in what is now the commune of La Calotterie.

[1] It was an important trading place for the Franks and its port linked the continent to England, specifically to the southeastern county of Kent.

In its early years, Quentovic was probably just a simple fairground where trading occurred, as well as a place where merchants went to and from Kent in Anglo-Saxon England.

In a trading centre like this, they would have set up permanent shelters and also would have built warehouses to store their goods during the winter months.

[10] In Kent, pottery bottles, glasses, textiles, and gold coins from the early 8th have been discovered, all produced by the Franks.

[11] The earliest mention of Quentovic in literary text was originally believed to have been written in a charter by Dagobert I.

During the Merovingian period (and the Carolingian), Quentovic was the primary landing spot for Anglo-Saxon monks on pilgrimages to Rome.

English missionaries also set out from Quentovic in the late seventh and early eighth century to journey east of the Rhine River.

[13] Prior to Frankish records, the Anglo-Saxon Bede is one of the first to mention Quentovic in text, in his Ecclesiastical History.

Bede states that Egbert, king of Kent, sent Raedfrid to travel with Archbishop Theodore to Francia in 668.

The only places that the Frankish kings forced them to pay was in the alpine passes and the two ports of Dorestad and Quentovic.

[19] Quentovic was also the port from where Frankish ambassadors left to conduct diplomacy with King Offa of Mercia.

[21] He would have been in charge of controlling foreign trade and monitoring customs across a large area that included Quentovic.

This, and the fact that no written text from this time mentions Quentovic, lead historians to support that the port town was in decline again.

[28] Subsequent raids would follow, but still the emporium seems to have recovered later in the century despite a possible decline in Carolingian authority during this time.

The continued raiding must have hurt Quentovic's economy, and slowly merchants left to seek places with better protection.

[31] Quentovic's fall remains a mystery, although it is widely believed that it was a gradual abandonment, which finally concluded in the early 11th century.