On 'location'...

I often quote my daughter who once said, when asked what I do, that I “Stand around in fields getting emotional.”

Well, if your interest is pre-Conquest England, there’s nothing left to see of that period but empty fields, right? Wrong. Yes, it’s true, I do spend a lot of time in fields, but it is possible to visit sites connected with Anglo-Saxon England, and I thought for this post, my last of 2025, I'd take you on a whistle-stop tour of some of the places I’ve been where I’ve felt a real connection to the people whose stories I write, with some links for further reading if you'd like.

I’ll start with some buildings - yes, actual buildings. The main reason there’s so little of Saxon England left to see is that they mainly built with wood, which hasn’t survived. But religious buildings, especially in the later part of the period, were built in stone. And there are some beautiful examples still standing.

Escomb

Sitting these days rather incongruously surrounded by modern housing in a little village in County Durham is this extraordinary Church. It probably dates from the late seventh century, and it recycled some Roman stone. It has a wonderful sundial on the wall outside and, apart from the porch - a new addition - has survived intact and unmodernised, probably because the rich bishops of Durham lost interest in it and it was never extended. (See a post all about Escomb HERE)

St Oswald’s, Gloucester

Not far away from Gloucester Cathedral are the remains of St Oswald’s priory. It was originally dedicated to St Peter, but if you know your early medieval history or have read my novels Cometh the Hour and To Be A Queen, you’ll know what happened to Oswald of Northumbria and that his remains were fetched to Mercia by Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. It wasn’t the first time he’d been posthumously re-homed though, as you’ll discover in my latest novel, The Sins of the Father. Æthelflæd herself was laid to rest here, next to her husband. This isn’t a field, and there's not much left of the building, but I did get incredibly emotional standing on this site and feeling so close to the people about whom I’ve researched and written so much.

Deerhurst St Mary’s and Odda’s Chapel

Visit Deerhurst, also in Gloucestershire, and you get a real two-for-one. Parts of St Mary’s church are the original Saxon building and, again, if you’ve read To Be A Queen I can tell you that this is the chapel where Ethelred goes to pray, where he takes Æthelflæd, and where they sit together in his twilight years. When I visited, I had the place to myself and the sense of calm was overwhelming. It’s still a working church and the connection with the past is almost palpable. In the book I mentioned the carving of the Madonna above the door, and the ‘angel’ on the outside wall, and here are my photos of them.

Less than a stone’s throw from the church is Odda’s Chapel. Odda was a later earl of Mercia who, despite the assertions of some guide books and websites, was not related to Earl Ælfhere, or Alvar as I called him in my novel, Alvar the Kingmaker. He built the chapel in remembrance of his brother and the dedication stone reads: 

"Earl Odda ordered this royal hall to be built and dedicated in honour of the holy Trinity & for the soul of his brother Ælfric who died in this place. Bishop Ealdred dedicated it on 12 April. The fourteenth year of Edward, king of the English (1056)." 

The chapel would not have been discovered had a tree not fallen down in 1675 and revealed this stone embedded in its roots. Even so, the chapel was not discovered until the nineteenth century during renovations to the manor house attached to it.  

Hexham

Just a quick word about this: if you visit Hexham Abbey be sure to go down to the crypt which dates from the days of St Wilfrid (c. 633 – 709 or 710) who features in both my Tales of the Iclingas novels, Cometh the Hour and The Sins of the Father. And try, as I did, to spend a few moments alone down there. Incredible. (Read more about this and another of Wilfrid's crypts HERE)

But perhaps I should take you to some of those fields now?

Yeavering

It’s bleak. Even centuries after the settlement was built, the site sits in open countryside, surrounded by huge hills, and a fierce wind blows. Not the obvious spot for a ‘des res’ (desirable residence) but nevertheless it was here that Edwin of Northumbria decided to build (or rebuild; there’s evidence that this site had been in use during an earlier period) a great hall, and excavation has shown that there was also some kind of outdoor ‘amphitheatre’, probably where meetings were held. Bede tells us that Bishop Paulinus baptised Northumbrians in the nearby River Glen. All I can say is that they must have been freezing. Still, standing on this enormous site, hemmed in by the hills of the Cheviots, I felt a connection with the man who plays a major part in Cometh the Hour. (Read more about Yeavering HERE)

Heavenfield

Still in Northumbria, my next ‘field’ is Heavenfield. It’s where Oswald, he whose remains have travelled up and down the country, was said to have erected a wooden cross on the eve of battle. He was Edwin of Northumbria’s successor, though these men, despite being uncle and nephew, had never met. There’s a church on the site now, a site which may also have been the battlesite, for excavation has revealed fragments of human bone and weaponry. It’s an atmospheric place, but for me even more poignant was the place we managed to track down nearby, Rowley Burn, which is probably the Denisburn which Bede spoke of as the place Cadwallon of Gwynedd made his last stand. Cadwallon was a good friend and ally of Penda of Mercia and while writing Cometh the Hour I developed a deep affection for him. To be so close to the place where he fought for his very life was moving indeed. (Read more about Heavenfield HERE)

Sutton Hoo

Back down south now, and one of the most famous fields of all (aside from the one just off the A5, where the Staffordshire Hoard was discovered, the subject of my last blog post).  In 1939, when Great Britain was on the brink of war with Germany, a lady named Edith Pretty asked a local amateur archaeologist to investigate some mounds on her property which she was convinced were burial mounds. Well, I think we all know what happened next, and the unearthed ship burial with its incredible wealth of treasure is world famous. I visited this Suffolk site early one morning, just as it was opening. Coachloads of people had also just arrived, but I noted that they were all heading initially to the visitors’ centre. I made my way swiftly to the site itself, and thus was alone with the burial mounds. Never mind that one - the big one - is now a reconstruction; I stood for a moment in the early morning light on that summer’s day and felt a chill.

Yes, I seem to do a lot of ‘standing around getting emotional’ but when you’re so close to the past, it’s hard not to.

[All photos by and copyright of Annie Whitehead]

The Kingdom of the Hwicce

As you probably know, I love researching and writing about the history of Mercia. There’s so much to find when we start digging around; legacies and connections that lead to interesting stories and link to decisive moments of history. Today I want to narrow the focus to one part of what became Greater Mercia.

The early history of this midlands kingdom is complicated but it was, in essence, composed of a central core, expanding by absorbing other smaller kingdoms and tribal areas, much in the way that other ‘Anglo-Saxon’ kingdoms developed. A curious document known as the Tribal Hidage - its origins are also obscure - lists some of these tribes, with Mercia ‘proper’ at the top, then going out from the Mercian heartlands to include such names as the Wreoconsæte, the Westerna, the Pecsæte and the Hwynca, or Hwicce. (See image, left) These names are probably unfamiliar, and sound like they have been lost in time. So were the Hwicce just another lost tribe? No, they retained their status and even provided a link to one of the most widely-talked about periods of Mercian, indeed English, history…

Historians have been troubled by the kingdom of the Hwicce and whether it existed before Penda’s reign (c.628-655). It is often supposed that the kingdom was created when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Penda fought, and beat, the West Saxons at Cirencester in 628. We know where it was - much of what we now know as Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire - but can we discover who they were?

The Hwicce lived in the flat-bottomed valley between the Cotswolds and the Malvern Hills, and some suggest that their name means ark, or chest, and refers to that topographical feature. There are many other theories, but none that can be comprehensively proven. It seems the British (or Romano-British) controlled the area in the sixth century, for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that at the battle of Dyrham in 577 the Saxons fought and slew three British kings and captured the cities which they had ruled (one of them being Cirencester) but it seems like the area remained a mix of British (‘Celtic’) and Anglo-Saxon.

Cirencester had been the tribal capital of the Dobunni in the late Iron Age - perhaps a little of this tribal identity remained. The distribution of Dobunnic coinage is roughly coterminous with the land of the Hwicce, according to landscape historian Della Hooke.

It is not known what happened to the area and who was in control after Dyrham up to the formation of the bishopric of Worcester in the mid-seventh century but it’s almost universally agreed that the diocese represented the territory of the kingdom. (The bishops there described themselves as episopi Hwicciorum.) The Hwicce might, even as a subkingdom of Mercia, have ruled over smaller tribes (a charter of 849 mentions the Pencersætan - southwest of Birmingham - and the people known as the Weogoran gave their name to Worcester itself).

Whilst we might not be able to pin down their exact origins, or the derivation of their name, they are not lost to us as people, and we know of several individuals who played crucial roles. 

Bede tells us of seventh-century Queen Eafe who was baptised in her own country, the kingdom of the Hwicce, and we know that she was the daughter of King Eanfrith, who was Christian, as were their people. From her story, we can glean that the Hwicce had by her time lost their independent status, if indeed they ever had it; her marriage to Æthelwalh of the South Saxons probably led to, or was conditional upon, her husband converting to Christianity. The baptism was at the ‘suggestion and in the presence of’ Wulfhere, king of Mercia (son of Penda). The inference is that the South Saxons and, indeed, the Hwicce, were certainly subordinate to Mercia at this point. 

It has been suggested, to support the idea that Penda either liberated or created the kingdom, that he did not act alone. Using personal name evidence, one theory has it that Penda was in alliance with a branch of the Northumbrian royal house who had been temporarily exiled, that the area stayed in West Saxon hands after Dyrham and that Penda ‘liberated’ it with the help of these northerners who then ruled it for him. This is based on the number of names beginning with ‘Os’ in both areas and is not universally accepted, although it does lead us to two of those people, both interesting characters. A certain king of the Hwicce, Oshere, was killed, and whilst surviving records don’t tell us how or why, the theory linking the Hwicce to the Northumbrians provides a reason for the murder of Osthryth, the daughter of King Oswiu of Northumbria, who married another of Penda’s sons, Æthelred, and was killed by the Mercians; again, we are given no reason. Had she and Oshere been related, and were they somehow plotting to overthrow the Mercian overlordship? It’s not a theory I subscribe to, but it is tantalising! 

Another ‘Os’ character for whom we have a little more information is Osric. He attested charters in the 670s, one (for the foundation of Bath Monastery) as rex but, crucially, only with the consent of King Æthelred of Mercia. Osric was also said to have founded the original monastery where Gloucester Cathedral now stands, and in that building there is an effigy of him. 

Three brothers, Eanberht, Uhtred and Ealdred appear in charters, each of them as regulus, in charters of 757 and 759, but there is no mention of their having had any children, and by the time of a charter of King Offa in 778, Ealdred is styled subregulus and dux.

After Ealdred, there were no more kings or even subkings of the Hwicce, although an ealdorman, Æthelmund, was killed attacking the people of Wiltshire at Kempsford in 802. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that he ‘rode from the province of the Hwiccians across the border at Kempsford.’ He was met by Ealdorman Weohstan of Wiltshire and a ‘great battle’ ensued. In a charter of 796 Æthelmund was described as a faithful princeps. But I’ll come back to this ‘mere’ ealdorman in a moment…

One of my favourite Mercian characters is Cwoenthryth, daughter of King Cenwulf and abbess of Winchcombe, in the heart of Hwiccian territory. A wealthy and powerful estate manager and heiress, she was the keeper of the royal archive (her father claimed Winchcombe as family land, and it may be that his origins were indeed Hwiccian) and abbess of multiple religious houses. Her ownership of some was questioned by the Church at Canterbury and a legal dispute ensued. A later chronicler accused her of arranging the death of her infant brother and, when his body was discovered, of chanting a psalm backwards as a spell in the hope of avoiding retribution, whereupon her eyeballs fell out. The chronicler claimed to have seen blood on the psalter, but the truth is we have no evidence that this younger brother ever existed. [For more on her story, see my blog post HERE]

Nothing remains of Winchcombe Abbey bar a few stones on display at nearby Sudeley Castle, (see left) but in the Hwicce territory you can, unusually, see not one but two existing buildings from this period. Do, if you can, visit Deerhurst in Gloucestershire. It was here, at St Mary’s Church, that, according to some, Æthelmund the ealdorman was buried after his death at Kempsford. The church retains much of its original Anglo-Saxon features, including the bifora (double window) and stone-carved animal heads.

A short walk down the lane takes you to Odda’s Chapel. In 1675 a tree fell down outside a half-timbered manor house, revealing an inscription stone. In the nineteenth century the chapel itself was discovered, attached to the house. It was commissioned by Earl Odda, owner of the estate of Deerhurst in the eleventh century, in memory of his brother who had died in 1053. 

Before we leave Deerhurst, let me return to Ealdorman Æthelmund. Though, in reality, Mercia was perhaps no different in its growth from the other ‘Anglo-Saxon’ kingdoms, it tended to continue to recognise its origins, insofar as its earldormen were often leaders of erstwhile smaller kingdoms/tribes rather than being centrally appointed. This also meant that there was nearly always more than one claimant to the throne, hence its - often bloody - succession struggles. It ran out of kings, eventually, but played a massive part in the history of this period when its leaders, the Lord and Lady of the Mercians (she being Æthelflæd) allied with Wessex to push back the Viking advance. Barbara Yorke, Emeritus Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Winchester, has postulated that Æthelflæd’s husband, Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, was descended from Æthelmund. It is my view that without the support of the Mercians, Alfred the Great and then his son, Edward the Elder, would not have been able to push back the Vikings. Thus the Hwicce played a major role at a pivotal moment of history.

Æthelflæd (from The Cartulary and Customs of Abingdon Abbey, c. 1220)

[A version of this article first appeared in Historical Times Magazine 2022]

You can read more on the kingdom of the Hwicce in my book, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, available in book shops, on the Amberley Publishing Website, and on Amazon

[all photos by and copyright of the author. Tribal Hidage and depiction of Æthelflæd are Public Domain images]

Odda of Deerhurst - Omitted from the Novel?

A very short walk from Deerhurst Church, in Gloucestershire, there is another Anglo-Saxon place built for worship. It’s known as Odda’s Chapel.

In 1675 a tree fell down in the orchard outside a half-timbered manor house and revealed an inscription stone embedded in its roots. The stone recorded - in Latin - the founding of a chapel by Odda in remembrance of his brother, Ælfric, who had died in 1053. Odda died in 1056, only a few months after the consecration of the chapel. It was originally thought that the stone referred to Deerhurst Church, but in the nineteenth century renovations to the house revealed the chapel, which had been incorporated into the later building.

Even today, repairs are ongoing

The dedication stone reads: Earl Odda ordered this royal hall to be built and dedicated in honour of the holy Trinity & for the soul of his brother Ælfric who died in this place. Bishop Ealdred dedicated it on 12 April. The fourteenth year of Edward, king of the English (1056)

A replica of the dedication stone

Odda and his brother both died at Deerhurst, but were buried at Pershore.

Pershore Abbey today (public domain image)

Talbot & Whiteman's book has this to say about Pershore: that the monks were ejected shortly after King Edgar's death in 975, probably by Ælfhere of Mercia. They were reinstated when Ælfhere died. His grandson was Earl Odda, who founded the Saxon chapel at Deerhurst in memory of his brother, and who was a benefactor of Pershore.

Wait, what? A grandson of Ælfhere? But I've written a whole novel about the grandfather without once mentioning the existence of this progeny. Had I made a terrible mistake?

John Leland (the 16th century antiquarian) suggested that Odda was ‘Elfer’s (Ælfhere) son’. Son? This was even worse!

So, grandson, or son? Well, as I'd always believed, neither.

Ælfhere, who was probably around twenty in 956, died at a date which makes it unlikely that he was Odda’s father. (Odda first appears in the records in 1013) So was he his grandfather?

The two men certainly had landholdings in the same area of Mercia, and both were seemingly connected to the West Saxon royal house.

There also seems to be some shared link to Pershore. Annals recorded by Leland seem to assume that because Odda restored lands which had been allegedly seized by Ælfhere that there must have been some family connection.

But Ann Williams has suggested that Odda was more likely to have been related to Æthelweard, ealdorman of the Western shires (also known as Æthelweard the Chronicler - and in this capacity he informed us that he was descended from King Æthelred I, Alfred the Great’s brother).

The presumed connection to Ælfhere seems to stem partly from the association with a man named Godwine, who appears on a charter from 1014, along with Odda. This Godwine may well have been a nephew of Ælfhere’s.

Does this confirm the idea that Odda was related to Ælfhere? Another charter attestation shows Odda preceded on the list by a man named Ælfgar mæw, a man associated with monasteries at Tewkesbury (nearby) and Cranborne (not so near, in Dorset). The Tewkesbury chronicle recorded that he, and his father, Æthelweard, were related to the royal house of Wessex. If this is the same Æthelweard as the man who was ealdorman of the Western shires, then some conclusion may be drawn from the fact that in 1051, after the ealdordom had passed through the hands of the powerful Godwin family, it was then given to Odda, as if there were some family connection.

Pershore, too, had associations with Ealdorman Æthelweard, where Odda was remembered as a benefactor, and where he and his brother were buried. 

The precise nature of their relationship to  Æthelweard is not clear, but the suggestion of kinship seems more plausible than that Odda was a son or grandson of Ælfhere’s.

Ælfhere was succeeded as ealdorman of Mercia by a man named Ælfric cild who was probably his brother-in-law, rather than a son. 

None of this is provable beyond all doubt, but it seems that I was right, after all, not to have a character named Odda in the novel.

Still, that’s not to say that the chapel is not of interest to me. Anglo-Saxon buildings are rare enough, and this one, though only a shell, is a site worth visiting.

According to John Blair, the precinct of the minster of Deerhurst was divided, with the northern half being retained by the monastic community and the southern half becoming the earl’s residence. The chapel was built a small distance from the church and, although it is unusual in that the dedication stone exists, the building is very typical of its age, showing similarities with many parish churches of that time with what Blair calls ‘overlap’ details.

Deerhurst Church contains many fine examples of Anglo-Saxon carvings, walls and windows, and the atmosphere inside it is calm, peaceful and conducive to contemplation, for this is a building which has been used continuously for worship for more than a millennium. Odda’s chapel is equally quiet, but in an almost eerie way, for it stands empty, showing not the same signs of continuous use, but as a stark and rare reminder of how these buildings looked, and it spoke in its own way of the passing of time.  If only more of these buildings had survived.

My novel, Alvar the Kingmaker, tells the story of the life and career of Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia

Further reading:

Gloucestershire People and History - Richard Sale
The Heart of England - Rob Talbot and Robin Whiteman
Land, power and politics: the family of Odda of Deerhurst - Ann Williams
The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society - John Blair
Princeps Merciorum gentis: The Family, Career and Connections of Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, 956-83 - Ann Williams 
All photographs unless otherwise stated taken by and copyright of the author.

~~~~~~~~~~

What was I doing there? Well, I’d been up at the church, taking photos of the Anglo-Saxon architecture for my new book about the history of Mercia. Odda himself doesn’t feature in the book because, whilst he clearly had associations and lands within Mercia, his area of jurisdiction was in Wessex. And, for most of the book, Wessex is the ‘enemy’...

Available from Amazon and Amberley Publishing