Explore the towns of England

• Oxfordshire overview
• Wessex county information
• Oxford town
• Other important towns

Wessex county information Wessex was one of the seven major fictionalised south-west as a setting Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (the Heptarchy) for many of his novels, reviving the that preceded the Kingdom of England. It term Wessex for southwest England. His was named after the West Saxons and was Wessex included all the counties situated in the south and southwest of mentioned in the previous paragraph England. It existed as a kingdom from apart from Gloucestershire and the 6th century until the emergence of Oxfordshire, along with Devon. He gave the English state in the 9th century, the counties the following fictionalised and as an earldom between 1016 and 1066. names: Berkshire = North Wessex; Devon = The earldom was recently revived for His Lower Wessex; Dorset = South Wessex; Royal Highness The Prince Edward. Hampshire = Upper Wessex; Somerset = "Wessex" has never had any official Outer Wessex; Wiltshire = Mid-Wessex. existence since that time, but it has Neighbouring Cornwall was described as remained a familiar term since Thomas Off-Wessex or Lyonesse. See Thomas Hardy revived it for his West Country Hardy's Wessex. novels and poetry. Today some wish to There is a movement in modern day see it restored as a region of England. south-central England to create a History regional cultural and political identity According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Wessex. This consists of three (ASC), Wessex was founded by Cerdic and distinct but interlinked organisations. Cynric, chieftains of a clan known as The Wessex Regionalist Party is a "Gewisse", although the specific events registered political party which given by the ASC are considered to be contests elections. The Wessex suspect. Archaological evidence points Constitutional Convention is an to an origin in the upper Thames and all-party pressure group in which those Cotswolds area, and the ASC origin myth sympathetic to Wessex devolution who are may have been political propaganda not members of the Wessex Regionalist designed to justify a later invasion of Party can also be represented. The the Jutish province in southern Wessex Society is a cultural society Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The which promotes a cultural identity for first certain event in Wessex is the Wessex while remaining neutral on baptism of Cynegils around the year 640. questions of political devolution. Wessex expanded its boundaries and The boundaries of Wessex were unclear clashed with its neighbours, notably and subject to dispute. The Wessex British Dumnonia (essentially modern day Constitutional Convention and Wessex Devon and Cornwall), which it eventually Society add Gloucestershire and came to dominate, and with Mercia. After Oxfordshire to Hardy's list; and the Egbert defeated Mercia in 825 and the Wessex Regionalists, who currently use Northumbrians accepted his overlordship Hardy's definition of Wessex, are likely in 829, Egbert became the first King of to follow suit in the near future. England. This definition of Wessex has been The integrated system of fortified towns criticised from a number of quarters. A (the "burhs") established under Alfred number of people within Devon, southern the Great, described in both Asser and Somerset and parts of Dorset see those the ASC, and documented in a unique areas as sharing a Dumnonian Celtic hidage,[1] helped to prevent the identity with Cornwall, whereas some conquest of southern England by the regard Hardy's definition as correct on Danish invaders in the 870s. The hidage the grounds that the counties north of identifies thirty-three forts, which the Thames, along with Berkshire and ensured that no one in Wessex was more north-east Somerset, were part of Mercia than a long day's ride from a place of for most of the Anglo-Saxon period. safety. There are also a few in Hampshire who Important West Saxon settlements argue that southern Hampshire and the included old Roman settlements such as Isle of Wight were once a Jutish Dorchester and Winchester, which Alfred province in their own right and deserve made the capital in 871, and to be treated differently to the rest of newly-founded burhs such as Wallingford. Wessex. There is some evidence that kingship in The Wessex regionalist movements justify Wessex was not rigidly hereditary. The their eight-shire definition of Wessex strongest candidate from the pool of the in terms both of history and of modern senior families was elected or forced regional geography and point to the his control on the lesser kings. The impossibility of pleasing everyone as an internal feuding produced by this may argument against change at the present have delayed the rise of Wessex as a time, though they do not rule out the full kingdom, but this is conjecture. possibility of change in the future if After the Mercian conquest of its the popular will demands it. original territories in Gloucestershire The present South West England region and Oxfordshire, the northern boundary The government office region of South of Wessex was probably the River Thames; West England covers a different area, Southwark, facing London from the south consisting of Hardy's Wessex, less bank of the Thames, was included among Berkshire, Hampshire and the Isle of the burhs, but London fell beyond West Wight, but including Cornwall and Saxon territory. Its heartland was the Gloucestershire. Wessex groups are present-day counties of Hampshire, currently campaigning for boundary Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, and revisions to the regions in order to Berkshire. more closely match their definitions of Revival Wessex. The English author Thomas Hardy used a 1 A B C D 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105