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:
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.