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Updated: July 6, 2025
To the north-west rises Mount Harry, and to the right of this stretches the wide expanse of the Weald bounded by the sombre ridges of Ashdown Forest, dominated by Crowborough Beacon slightly east of due north. The quarries and combe of Cliffe Hill stand up with fine effect immediately east of the town, which sinks from where we stand to the Ouse at the bottom of the valley.
It is three miles from the White Horse too far for the slain of Ashdown to be buried there. Who shall say what heroes are waiting there? But we must get down into the Vale again, and so away by the Great Western Railway to town, for time and the printer's devil press, and it is a terrible long and slippery descent, and a shocking bad road.
A desperate attack drove the northmen from Ashdown on the heights that overlook the Vale of White Horse, but their camp in the tongue of land between the Kennet and Thames proved impregnable. Æthelred died in the midst of the struggle, and his brother Ælfred, who now became king, bought the withdrawal of the pirates and a few years' breathing-space for his realm.
Nine great battles, besides smaller skirmishes, were fought this year, in some of which the English won and in others the Danes. One famous battle was at Ashdown, in Berkshire. We are told that the heathen men were in two divisions; one was commanded by their two Kings Bagsecg and Halfdene, and the other by five Earls, Sidroc the Old, Sidroc the Young, Osbeorn, Fraena, and Harold.
Along some of our hillsides are curious turf-cut monuments, which always attract our gaze and make us wonder who first cut out these figures on the face of the chalk hill. There is the great White Horse on the Berkshire Downs above Uffington, which we like to think was cut out by Alfred's men after his victory over the Danes on the Ashdown Hills.
And he could not, neither shall you, for they are a people of the Lord who abide there. And now we leave the camp, and descend towards the west, and are on the Ashdown. We are treading on heroes. It is sacred ground for Englishmen more sacred than all but one or two fields where their bones lie whitening.
xii End of the Campaign of 1006. The following extract from the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" gives the further history of the campaign very concisely: "Then went the Danes to Wallingford, and that all burned, and were then one day in Cholsey: and they went then along Ashdown to Cuckamsley hill, and there abode, as a daring boast; for it had been often said, if they should reach Cuckamsley hill, that they would never again get to the sea: then they went homewards another way.
The farmer intended to perform a charitable act, and charity is said to cover a multitude of sins; but his action was disastrous to antiquaries and has almost destroyed a valuable prehistoric monument. There is a noted camp at Ashbury, erroneously called "Alfred's Castle," on an elevated part of Swinley Down, in Berkshire, not far from Ashdown Park, the seat of the Earl of Craven.
His sudden assault was as successful as that at Ashdown, and it was followed by a siege which was successful in a different and very definite sense. Guthrum, the conqueror of England, and all his important supports, were here penned behind their palisades, and when at last they surrendered the Danish conquest had come to an end.
Dent's charge, and, with the present minister's approval, still visited the sick one or two days a week at least. Then towards sunset she came homewards over some high ground on the outskirts of Ashdown Forest.
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