Image Gallery
King Alfred's Monument, Athelney
King Alfred’s Monument at Athelney is a short obelisk featuring busts of Alfred on its sides, surrounded by iron railings. It was built in 1801, funded by Sir John Slade, a General during the Napoleonic Wars and the owner of Athelney Farm.
The monument is in remembrance of the time Alfred spent in exile in the Somerset Marshes during the early months of 878 after he was ambushed at the town of Chippenham by the Vikings, who overran his kingdom.
Around Easter 878, he built a fortress on the island of Athelney in these marshes, which served as his base of operations for the fight back against the Vikings in Wessex.
In 888, Alfred returned to the marshes to build an abbey at Athelney, a gesture of gratitude to God for helping him defeat the Vikings. He staffed the church with foreign monks, appointing the scholar John the Old Saxon as abbot. The abbey remained until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540, when it was sold and subsequently demolished. However, the monument to Alfred was built on the site where the abbey once stood.
License & Copyright
Based on Wikipedia content that has been reviewed, edited, and republished.
Original image by Simon Burchell. Uploaded by Michael McComb, published on 26 June 2025. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon a work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
