Hereford 914 AD

Alfred the Great's daughter, Aethelflaed, the 'Lady of the Mercians' has fortified the towns of Mercia, including Hereford, in response to the threat from the Danes who occupy most of England and are marauding in Wales.
For two hundred years, a wooden cathedral has stood near the central crossroads. At the bottom right, an equally old, or even older, monastery lies outside the defences. The latter's cemetery is the burial ground for the whole town.

Burgred 0f Mercia

When Offa died in 796 Mercia's security must have seemed fairly assured. Mercia's defeat by the West Saxons under Egbert at Ellendun in 825 led to a brief period in 829 when it was subjugated. King Wiglaf seems to have regained independence for Mercia in 830 and returned it to more or less its former territories. Wiglaf was succeeded by Beorhtwulf.

In the mid 9th century Mercian expansion south of Hereford led to the annexing of northern Ergyng. Writing in the 12th century the author of the 'Life' of St Oudoceus (Euddogwy) says that at this time the area was lost to the English 'from Moccas to the Dore to the Worm to the Tarader'. This may have been as a result of a campaign by King Burgred of Mercia and his father-in-law, King Aethelwulf of Wessex.

The confrontation between the various English and Welsh kingdoms was soon to be complicated by another threat. The first Danish raiders had reached Sheppey in 835. By 873 the Danes appointed a Mercian thegn, Ceolwulf, as puppet king, and Mercia was partitioned. Hereford was in the rump of Mercia not under direct Danish rule.

Ceolwulf is last mentioned in 877 and we know nothing of the government of Mercia from that date to 883, when the Mercian leader was Aethelred. He is styled 'ealderman' of the Mercians rather than king and seems to have operated under the suzerainty of the King of Wessex, Alfred the Great. In 886 or 887 Aethelred married Alfred's daughter Aethelflaed.

The Worm Brook - For generations this small stream was the border between the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and British kingdom of Glywyssing

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The Danes

In 893 Aethelred called out his thegns from burhs (fortresses) including Hereford, together with Welsh allies, to march against the Danes and defeated them at Buttington in modern-day Montgomeryshire. The Danes responded by ravaging the length of Wales in 894 and 895.

Aethelflaed

Aethelred suffered from severe ill-health from around 900, and the effective rule of Mercia passed to Aethelflaed, the 'Lady of the Mercians'. A formidable woman, she appears to have commanded her troops in person and undertaken the fortification of the Mercian burhs between 910 and 916. Hereford was one of these burhs, and in 914 the men of Hereford and Gloucester defeated a great host of Danes in Archenfield (the old Ergyng).

Aethelflaed not only fought the Danes but was also active on the Welsh frontier, on one occasion sending a force beyond the Black Mountains to capture the Queen of Brycheiniog, at Llangorse.

The Western walls of the City of Hereford. The stone walls date from the mid 13th century. Several phases of earth and timber defences preceded these and the first gravel bank may date from the middle of the 9th century. The foundations of earlier houses were buried beneath the first defences.

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