📍Winchester, Hampshire, UK
871 – 899“I was born at Wantage, the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, and no one expected me to be king. As a child I was taken twice to Rome, and I fell in love with books before I could read them; my mother promised a book of English poems to whichever of her sons could learn it first, and I won it. In 871, after my brothers had all reigned and died in quick succession, I became king at a time when Viking armies had overrun much of England. Winchester, the old Roman town in the Itchen valley, became the heart of my kingdom. The early years were desperate. In 878 the Danes surprised me and I fled into the marshes of Somerset, but within months I rallied the men of Wessex and defeated them at Edington. Afterwards I rebuilt Winchester as a fortified town, or burh, with its Roman walls repaired and its streets laid out in a grid that can still be traced today. It became one of a network of burhs across Wessex, each within a day's march of the next, so that no part of the kingdom need be left undefended. In Winchester I also tried to rebuild learning. I gathered scholars from Mercia, Wales and the Continent, among them the Welsh monk Asser, who wrote my life, and together we translated into English the books I thought most necessary for all men to know. I set down laws, and planned a new church beside the Old Minster. My wife Ealhswith founded a nunnery in the town. Today my bronze statue, raised in 1901 for the thousandth anniversary of my reign's end, stands at the foot of Winchester's High Street, sword held aloft like a cross.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today