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First Saxon festival in more than 20 years to be staged as Wareham celebrates its historic past

Tales from the Hart featuring fire breathing story tellers will be taking part in the Wareham Saxon Festival.

By Staff Reporter [email protected]

Published: August 11, 2022 | Updated: 12th August 2022

“Possibly no town in England has been besieged so often and so readily, or has been so many times burnt and reduced to ruins.”

So said Frederick Treves in his 1906 book ‘Highways and byways in Dorset’.

The Dorset town in question is…Wareham.

And this Sunday one of the most dramatic periods in its long and fascinating history will be marked with the staging of the Wareham Saxon Festival.

For the first time in more than 20 years Visit Wareham, the town’s official tourism website, is putting on the event at the Swanage and Wareham RFC ground in Bestwall Road.

It is in support of the Friends of MS Purbeck charity.

Billed as a celebration of Wareham as a Saxon town, the festival includes:

  • Viking and Saxon re-enactment groups
  • ‘Living history’ demonstrations
  • Food and drink stalls
  • Locally produced arts and crafts
  • Local music groups performing in the evening.

The line-up includes Hrafnslith (Saxon skills, costumes, pastimes and weaponry), Saexia  (period enactments including archery and axe throwing), Saxon Forager (food preparation and cooking), Tales from the Hart (storytellers including fire breathing) and Ancient Wessex Network (crafts, artists, archaeology).

Music will be provided by the Wareham Town Band, the Bovington Military Wives Choir and the Wareham Whalers.

The festival also features talks and speeches by historian Ben Buxton; Wareham Mayor Cllr Malcolm Russell, and Team Rector, Canon Simon Everett.

The food includes spit roast hog, Italian-made pizzas and pasties, duck and chicken wraps, BBQ food and burgers while the bar will be open all day in the club house.

Tickets cost from £2.50 with the festival open from 11am to 9.30pm.

Back to Saxon times and following the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, Germanic tribes started to invade and eventually settle in England.

Two of these, the Angles and the Saxons, settled into four kingdoms – East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, and, in the case of Wareham, Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons.

One of the most important and best known Anglo Saxon Kings – Alfred the Great – had a major impact on Wareham.

Anglo Saxon England suffered under constant threat of invasion from northern European Viking Norsemen.

By the 9th century the kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria had fallen and Wessex was the lone surviving Anglo Saxon stronghold against the Vikings.

Fortunately, Alfred became King of Wessex in 871 AD.

Four years later, in 875 AD, a Viking army of around 2,000 men marched from East Anglia to plunder Wareham.

To add to the threat a large Viking army of 120 ships had sailed into Poole bay, only a short trip up the Frome river to Wareham.

The town was then occupied for many months until King Alfred managed to muster enough forces to outnumber the Viking army and offered their leader, Prince Guthrum, a deal.

The Vikings had to swear an oath to leave Wessex, agreeing to an exchange of hostages to seal the deal.

However the treaty was soon broken and the hostages killed.

The Vikings managed to escape, under the cover of darkness, making for Exeter.

Luckily for Alfred many of the ships at Poole were wrecked in a major storm along the Dorset coast.

  • Read more about Wareham’s fascinating links with the Saxons – and other periods in the town’s history – on the Visit Wareham website here.

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