Alfred the Great
King Alfred the Great, the first King of the Anglo Saxons ruled from 871 to 899 and was the only
English monarch to be given the nickname 'The Great'.
He was the most famous of the Saxon monarchs of Wessex and is considered
to be the force behind the formation of the modern city. Hampshire is steeped
in this great King's history.
Before Alfred, his elder brothers Ęthelbald, Ethelbert and Ethelred all reigned as King.
In 871 Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex and the Danes were battling although there was
a respite for 5 years when peace was made and the Danes occupied other
parts of England.
In 876, with a new leader, Guthrum, the Danes attacked Wareham in Dorset.
They moved westwards and took Exeter in Devon where Alfred defeated them.
The Danes withdrew to Mercia but, in January 878, made
a sudden attack on Chippenham, a royal stronghold in which Alfred had been staying over
Christmas, "and most of the people they reduced, except the King Alfred, and he
with a little band made his way by wood and swamp, and after Easter he made a fort at
Athelney, and from that fort kept fighting against the foe"
The Cakes
A popular legend originating from early twelfth century chronicles,
tells how Alfred was given shelter by a peasant woman who, unaware of his identity, left
him to watch some cakes she had
left cooking on the fire. Preoccupied with the problems of his kingdom, Alfred
accidentally let the cakes burn and was taken to task by the woman upon her return.
When she realised the king's identity, the woman apologised but Alfred insisted
that he was the one who needed to apologise. From his fort at Athelney
Alfred was able to mount an effective resistance movement while rallying the
local militia from Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.
Disguised As A Minstrel
The Vikings threatened to overrun the whole of England, and the King of Mercia fled
overseas, as did many West Saxons.
On the verge of total disaster, in early 878 AD, Alfred the Great was surrounded in the marshes of
Athelney in Somerset, almost finished but he re-formed his army and defeated the Vikings later
that year at Edington in Wiltshire.
Another story relates how Alfred disguised himself as a minstrel in order to gain entry to Guthrum's
camp and discover his plans. This supposedly led to the Battle of Edington in Wiltshire.
The result was a decisive victory for Alfred. The Danes submitted and, according to Asser, Guthrum
and 29 of his chief men received baptism when they signed the Treaty of Wedmore. As a result,
England became split in two: the southwestern half was kept by the Saxons, and the northeastern
half including London, thence known as the Danelaw, was kept by the Vikings. By the following year
(879), both Wessex and Mercia, west of Watling Street, were cleared of the invaders.
The Burhs
Due to the Danish threat during Alfred's reign he
fortified Winchester by planning a layout surrounded by a city wall.
The Old East Gate may still be seen today, just beside Alfred's statue.
Winchester was Alfred's capital of
England.
After the peace that Alfred forced on the Vikings, the Viking army seems to have moved across
the Channel which gave the king time to organise for war.
The Danes had been staying in England between raids and moving around attacking
and retreating to their established strongholds or taking over new bases.
Alfred established of a system of fortified centres (burhs) with warriors to defend them, covering
the whole of Wessex.
No part of Wessex was to be more than 20 miles from a burh, and many had huge garrisons.
These fortified centres were the most significant legacy of Alfred to his kingdom.
He built fortresses, established a defence strategy, and built up a navy. The
Vikings returned in the 890s and the West Saxons fought back.
The Viking invasions had destroyed several of the ancient English kingdoms,
the Northumbrians and the East Angles and when Alfred died in 899 AD he
was king of the only remaining independent English kingdom.
The Wessex Dynasty
Alfred ordered the compilation of the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle',
a major source of information and it was also in King Arthur's time that the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle was published, the first English newspaper which reported all his victories.
Despite Winchester's association with King Alfred, no one has ever found his remains. Thanks to
excavations at the end of the 1990s, the location of a medieval abbey church was identified at
Hyde and this was recognised as the last known
resting place of Alfred the Great. Kim Wilkie, one of the foremost landscape architects in
the UK, has designed a contemporary garden to mark the site. Sadly, the bodies of Alfred,
his Queen and his son which were buried here have still not been found.
King Alfred was succeeded by his son Edward the Elder. By the 910s Edward was
strong enough to embark on the military conquest of the Midlands and East Anglia,
enforcing southern English rule over the lands up to the Humber.
The Wessex dynasty emerged as the winner - the people of Wessex had defeated the
Vikings and eventually, during the
tenth century, incorporated all areas into a kingdom of England under a king of all
the English.
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