As England prepares to meet Norway in the 2026 World Cup quarter-final, the Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great, made the news. Alfred the Great is often credited with preventing a complete Viking conquest of England in the ninth century, so it is apt that his alleged bones should be discovered to remain hidden in a car park as England prepares to meet a Scandinavian team on the pitch. As one headline this week read: Move over Richard III, there is a new king in the car park!
Who was King Alfred the Great?
Alfred the Great is perhaps the most famous Anglo-Saxon king of all. Born around 847, Alfred was the youngest son of Aethwulf, King of the West Saxons, or Wessex. Alfred’s four older brothers would rule Wessex before the throne finally passed to Alfred in 871, when he was approximately 23 years of age.
Alfred ruled at a time of increasing Viking incursions. England had not yet been formed and instead was comprised of a fragmented group of kingdoms ruled by regional rulers. The invaders had conquered the majority of lands in neighbouring kingdoms; only Wessex remained. Alfred almost presided over the total capitulation of what we now refer to in England. In 878, the Vikings launched a surprise attack on Alfred at Chippenham. Alfred was forced to retreat to the marshes of Athelney (Somerset), the scene of some of the legendary stories about him, including the well-known burning of the cakes. The story goes that Alfred, in disguise, was offered shelter by a peasant woman. Unaware of the Anglo-Saxon king’s true identity, she asked him to watch some wheaten cakes she had left baking near the fire. Alfred, occupied by thoughts of the Viking invasion, paid little heed to his surroundings and consequently was chided by the peasant woman when the cakes burnt.
Alfred and the Vikings
Alfred came back to win a decisive victory in the same year over his Viking opponent, Guthrum, at Edington (Wiltshire). The victorious Alfred made terms with Guthrum; part of the agreement was that the Viking commander convert to Christianity. The country was then geographically split – to the east of the line that ran the breadth of the country was known as Danelaw and controlled by the Vikings. All lands to the west were Anglo-Saxon.
Having survived by the skin of his teeth all-out Viking attacks in the 870s, when the other provinces fell, Alfred then enacted a series of military reforms to make Wessex less vulnerable in the future. Burhs were created. These were a network of fortified and garrisoned sites that created ‘fortress Wessex’, which the Vikings were unable to penetrate to any great extent in the 890s.
Well educated and personally pious, Alfred recognised that religion and the English language could be used to unite the fragmented Anglo-Saxon kingdoms against one common enemy – the Vikings. Alfred launched a series of educational reforms and had books translated from Latin into English, making them more widely accessible. One of the works Alfred personally translated was Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
Dying in 899, following a long illness, possibly Crohn’s disease, Alfred did not achieve the unification of England. This accolade belonged to his grandson, Aethelstan.
Alfred’s Resting Place
Alfred was buried in the Old Minster, Winchester, the Anglo-Saxon cathedral built in the 7th century. Alfred’s remains were then transferred to the New Minster, on which work began during Alfred’s lifetime, once construction was completed in 901. Alfred was joined by his wife, Ealhswith, after she died in 902 and his son, Edward the Elder, in 924.
When a new Norman cathedral (pictured above) was constructed, close to the site in the late eleventh century, the remains of the royal family were transferred to the newly consecrated building. When the monks of the cathedral moved to Hyde Abbey, a Benedictine monastery outside the walls of Winchester, in 1110, the bodies of Alfred, Ealhswith and Edward went with them and were placed before the high altar. The cathedral was dissolved in 1538 during the Reformation, and the building was vandalised. The land became farmland, and Alfred’s grave remained hidden until construction work on a jail began in 1788. Convicts, put to work preparing the foundation of the building, stumbled upon Alfred’s grave. One contemporary priest recalled the horrific scene:
‘In digging for the foundation of that mournful edifice, at almost every stroke of the mattock or spade, some ancient sepulchre was violated, the venerable contents of which were treated with marked indignity. On this occasion a great number of stone coffins were dug up, with a variety of other curious articles, such as chalices, patens, rings, buckles, the leather of shoes and boots, velvet and gold lace belonging to chasubles and other vestments; as also the crook, rims, and joints of a beautiful crosier double gilt.’
Wall, J.C., Alfred the Great: His Abbeys of Hyde, Athelney and Shaftesbury. United (1900), p. 78.
The fine trimmings on the coffin were robbed, and the bones scattered across the earth.
Move Over Richard III
Bones recovered from the site following the closure of the prison in the mid-nineteenth century were reburied in the nearby St Bartholemew’s church. Recent DNA analysis on these remains revealed they belonged to an individual who lived two centuries after Alfred.
Author Graham Philips has discussed a journal article published in Archaeologia in 1800, written by Henry Howard. Reading the article myself, Mr Howard suggests that although some bones were scattered, as contemporary accounts indicate, two other coffins were reburied in a nearby location. He ponders: ‘May not this have been part of the high altar or of the tomb of Alfred near it? Possibly the two other coffins contained the remains of Edward and Ealhswith.’
The article also includes a map of the new burial site.
The location is now underneath a car park. Reminiscent of the archaeological discovery of the bones of Richard III buried below a car park in the lost Greyfriars friary in Leicester, there may now be a new king in the car park waiting to be exhumed!
This is certainly a story I’ll be keeping a close eye on. I, for one, hope excavations can shed more light on this story, and, if these bones do in fact belong to Alfred, or indeed Ealhswith or Edward the Elder, it will no doubt be a greater archaeological discovery than the remains of Richard in 2012 and give us a more tangible link to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors who halted the Vikings.
Sources:
Enquiries concerning the Tomb of King Alfred, at Hyde Abbey, near Winchester.” Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity, 1770-1992, vol. 13, 1800, pp. 309-312.
Wall, J.C., Alfred the Great: His Abbeys of Hyde, Athelney and Shaftesbury. United (1900).
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