November 10, 2025

Alfred the Great Slept Here (as a baby)

Modern Medieval

by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele

A few weeks ago, we (Matt and David!) traveled to Wantage, a small but thriving town not far Oxford, to take part in their annual literary festival. We’ve done lots of events and talks (we’ve got a Chicago event coming soon! More on that to come shortly), but we’ve bever been invited to a “literary festival” and were delighted to go.

The short version is that it went great, we had a full lively room, people find medieval history really interesting, and Oathbreakers is both connected to things people know (The Franks, Charlemagne) and new (the grandkids trash the empire). It was an honor to be part of it!

Historically speaking, Wantage is best known as the likely birthplace of King Alfred of Wessex. And the best part of the day was when two local historians, James Mitchell and Mike White, took us on a walking tour through the town, ostensibly to show us the various sites where the royal palace might have been in the late 9th century. Both are lifelong residents of the area and true experts in local history - by which we mean not just the history of their locality, but how to communicate to interested outsiders in ways that work. Mike writes books about outlaws and ghosts. Jim puts on “Saxon” garb and leads tours, tours that take you right through one of the lovely grocery stores in town. The tour is framed around early medieval history, but of course history of place doesn’t have an end date, so it stretches into now, with nice long stops by the foundations of the medieval church, the mill that made “Wessex flour,” and the 19th century nobleman who had his face put on the statue of Alfred he paid for.

One of our goals with this newsletter is to keep thinking and writing about all the ways that people engage the past and the ways that academic historians can build partnerships and recognize the strengths that other genres and presentations bring. We’ve often talked about games, books, movies, tv, exhibits in museums, and especially public classes, etc. Let’s also recognize the local scholar, someone who can walk you through town, point at the supermarket parking lot and talk about how it might have looked 1200 years ago, then lead you to the old vicarage and into the back garden - his back garden, as it happened.

There, he said, with access to water, proximity to the church, high ground for defense, King Alfred might have been born right there!

But he said it with a twinkle in his eye.

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