A king born in Wantage
Almost everything we know about Alfred’s birth comes from one source. In 893 the Welsh monk Asser, who served at Alfred’s court, wrote a life of the king. Its opening lines say that Alfred was born in 849 at the royal estate called Wantage, in the district of Berkshire. Some modern historians think the true year may be a little earlier, around 847 or 848, but Wantage’s claim to be his birthplace rests on a writer who knew him personally, which is more than most early kings can say.
The Victoria County History suggests that Wantage was probably a royal residence at the time, and Alfred kept the estate: in his will he left Wantage to his wife, Ealhswith. It later returned to the Crown and appears as a royal manor in the Domesday survey of 1086.
Youngest of five brothers
Alfred was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex and his first wife, Osburh. With four older brothers he was not expected to become king. As a small boy he was taken to Rome, in 853 and again in 855, the second time with his father. His brothers Æthelbald, Æthelberht and Æthelred reigned in turn, and Alfred fought beside Æthelred against the Danish ‘great army’ that arrived in 865. When Æthelred died in April 871, Alfred, then in his early twenties, became king of Wessex in the middle of a war.
War, burhs and books
Alfred’s reign nearly ended in 878, when a surprise Danish attack drove him into the Somerset marshes at Athelney. He regrouped, won the battle of Edington and made peace with the Danish leader Guthrum, who was baptised. Afterwards Alfred built a network of fortified towns, or burhs, reorganised his army so that part of it was always in the field, and built ships. From the mid-880s he was styled king of the Anglo-Saxons.
He issued a law code, and in his later years he promoted learning in English. Scholars at his court translated Latin works such as Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy; Alfred himself is credited with some of these translations and wrote the preface to Pastoral Care. These are translations, not original works. Alfred died on 26 October 899 and was buried at Winchester.
What to see locally
- King Alfred’s statue, Market Place. The marble statue by Count Gleichen, a relative of Queen Victoria, was given to the town by Colonel Robert Loyd-Lindsay (later Lord Wantage) and unveiled by the Prince and Princess of Wales on 14 July 1877. It replaced a town hall that stood in the middle of the square. It is Grade II listed. It was damaged on New Year’s Eve 2007, when part of the right arm and axe were broken off, and has since been repaired.
- King Alfred’s Academy takes its name from him: the old grammar school was renamed for the thousandth anniversary of his birth in 1849.
- Vale and Downland Museum, Church Street, covers Saxon Wantage in its galleries.
Nothing survives above ground of the Saxon royal estate, and its exact site is not known.