King Alfred and the Danes on the River Lea, 895
- Michael Smith
- Sep 25
- 9 min read
Updated: Oct 8
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles tell us that in 895 a force of Danish raiders sailed up the Thames and then travelled up the Lea some 20 miles north of London. Here, King Alfred was able to block the river, forcing the Danes to march overland to Bridgenorth in Shropshire.
King Alfred and the river Lea in 895
Among the many stories associated with King Alfred, his achievement in seeing off a Danish raiding force by trapping it in the river Lea reveals he possessed a detailed understanding of how Viking raiders acted. It also shows he had a significant knowledge of local geography and a detailed grasp of how to use it to military advantage.
Viking raids were a regular feature of life in England but in the winter of 865 the nature of these raids changed.
Now, instead of quick raids in search of bullion or slaves, Vikings built semi-permanent camps, overwintering in certain areas and sometimes staying behind in the long term. Such camps include Aldwark in Yorkshire and Repton in Derbyshire.
In 895 a Danish raiding force on Mersea island, headed up the Thames and then ventured up the river Lea. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us they built a “work” or camp by the river twenty miles above the city of London.
Following an unsuccessful attack on the Danes by citizens of London, King Alfred camped outside London to stop the Danes stealing the harvest. Riding upriver, he surveyed a place where the camps could be built on either side of the river so that the river could be obstructed so the Danes could not bring out their ships [i.e. towards London].
Seeing they could not escape, the Danes left their ships behind, arranged an amnesty for their wives and travelled to Quatbridge by Severn, near Bridgenorth, where they again “wrought a work”. Some of the Danish ships left behind were re-used by Alfred and the rest were broken up.
The Chronicle also tells us this was three years after the Danes had entered England through the mouth of the Lymne (the former name, according to Eilert Ekwall, for the river Rother in Kent). This raiding force had clearly been in England a while.
Interpreting how Alfred blocked the river Lea
Alfred’s blocking of the Lea is almost the stuff of legend. As a boy I was struck by an illustration by John Kenney in the Ladybird Book of Alfred the Great, written by the late Laurence du Garde Peach.
Despite being written for children, the book immediately highlights a problem of interpreting the historical record and understanding the possibility or otherwise of Alfred’s actions.
In the book, Peach writes, “the Danes sailed on until they reached the river Lea, which joins the Thames about seven miles below London Bridge. Here they anchored their ships and built a strong fort on the riverbank. The fort was too strong for Alfred and his men to attack, so he thought of another way of defeating the Danes. With all his men he started to build a dam across the river, and one morning the Danes awoke to find their ships were high and dry.”
Peach implies that the Danes camped at Bow Creek and that a dam was built which somehow either stopped the Thames entering the Lea or the Lea entering the Thames. Both options create problems of interpretation.
In the first instance, the Lea would still be fed from its source, keeping the ships afloat on the river. In the latter case, the ships would only be “high and dry” if the ships were kept on the Thames side of the “dam” and the tide was out. Despite the mud banks of the Lea estuary at Bow, which are still evident today, any inconvenience to the Danes would still only be temporary.
Yet Peach ignores the Chronicles’ location of this camp some “twenty miles above London”. The implication of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles is that the Danes travelled upriver and set up a camp from where they conducted their raids.
We know such activities occurred at Aldwark and Repton where vessels navigated rivers well inland from the coast, at which point a camp was built to enable overwintering.
Typically, such camps would enable their ships to be drawn up onto a shallow shore and an encampment built above. At Repton, the location of the camp is still defined by the road which encircles the current church (the ancient church was also used within the fortifications).
Finds here have been impressive; below the escarpment, the Trent provided easy navigation for the Vikings.
Where was the Danish fleet trapped?
The river Lea was straightened and canalised in the 1770s. An old map of Hertfordshire from the 1760s shows that in former times it was a meandering river and in places broke into separate channels.
What seems to have happened is either that Alfred dammed a particular channel in which the Danes were camped or blocked the entire river at a strategic point. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles merely state that Alfred “observed a place where the river might be obstructed”.
Alfred’s men then “wrought two works on two sides of the river. And when they had begun the work [the blockage] and encamped before it, then [the Danes] understood that they could not bring out their ships.”
The location suggests a place in which (a) there is a Danish camp; (b) a place where the blockage could be made; and (c) two camps on either side of the river where Alfred’s men could stay, protected from attack. The place was “a work [camp] by the Lea, twenty miles above the city of London”.
As the crow flies, twenty miles north of London brings us to Ware, on the river Lea. The etymology of Ware is of interest: its monosyllabic eponym implying one significant feature, a feature of such importance that it defines the location.
As Nicholas Howe considered in Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England (p. 30), “most place-names, then as now, are not known beyond a restricted orbit, as likewise are facts about the past such as who lived in this hamlet or who built that dyke or path. [Such knowledge] has been known and shared in the community for generations without reference to a wider world or outside audience”.
Ware in Old English means either a place of agreement or treaty (wær) or a weir or dam (wer). Ware — Waras in Anglo-Saxon — was also the place at which the Roman Ermine Street crossed the Lea, a ford in the manner of that at Warrington, Cheshire, which stands at the first crossing point of the Mersey inland from the sea.
It was not only a fording point but clearly this road crossed the floodplain in the form of a raised barrier until it reached the water. It is possible that the Danes were trapped between the ford at Ware and Hertford, three miles upstream.
Here, at a dam, weir or ford, the place-name might suggest a blockage point at which an agreement was made between the Danes and Alfred, the result of which left the Danes to march away, their women be treated well and their trapped ships to be taken or broken up.
Evidence for the English and Danish camps
There is little evidence of any of the camps suggested by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and no significant archaeological evidence except for some small finds at Ware.
It is possible that the camps were temporary structures on either side of the river. A small earthwork at nearby Widbury Hill, with a strategic siting above the bend in the Lea, is inconclusive although crop marks near the site hint at a possible enclosed structure.
On the other side of the river is a possible site at Great Amwell; Edward Brayley’s volume on Hertfordshire from 1808 carries an intriguing description of it.
He writes, “on the hill above the Church, are traces of a very extensive fortification, the rampart of which is very distinguishable on the side overlooking the vale through which the river Lea flows.”
Today, above the church, there is a scarped bank between the graveyard and former vicarage which hints at a potential bank and ditch profile. However, the evidence of “extensive” works is slim; Stuart Moyes has interpreted the site, enabling us to understand what there is in more detail (see end of post for details).
Other than this, there may have been fortifications at Hertford predating the current Norman castle; a series of confusing earthworks above Wadesmill on the river Rib are probably an unfinished Norman structure.
If the two camps at Amwell and Widbury do indeed represent Alfred’s own camps (perhaps re-using existing structures to command the high ground), where was the blockade itself?
Evidence of blocking the river Lea in 895
It seems unlikely that the Lea was blocked below the ford at Ware given the width of the floodplain itself and the potential difficulties of gaining access to what would have been marshy and difficult terrain.
However, at Ware itself the original Roman crossing of the floodplain may well have presented Alfred with a firm structure from which to command both valley and river.
In crossing the floodplain, the Romans created a raised roadway, a section of which today is preserved in fossilised form by a field and hedges near the current lock at Ware.
In commanding this road and preventing access up and down the Lea by staking the riverbed or establishing some form of physical weir at the crossing, Alfred could have trapped the Danes between Ware and Hertford.
It is notable that the Chronicles state that Alfred travelled north when he surveyed the river and that the Danes then went to Bridgenorth. Both armies may well have used the Roman roads: Alfred to move quickly northwards and the Danes to move away after their agreement was made.
Even in medieval times, it is reported that the men of Ware blocked the river here to stop river traffic making its way upstream. If the Danes were hemmed in on the plain between Ware and Hertford, their riverside camp may well have been in this area.
King Alfred and the river Lea - conclusions
Despite the brevity of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, there is enough information to suggest that Alfred blocked the river Lea by means of force rather than physically engineering dams in the manner described by Peach and Kenney.
Indeed, as the current locks and weirs on the Lea suggest, the river drops by between 20 and 30 feet alone between Hertford and Stanstead Abbotts. Any damming of the Lea would have required phenomenal engineering skills to manage the huge volumes of water involved.
Furthermore, in the 10th century, there was none of the ground extraction of water so prevalent today; the valley would have been both fast flowing and, on the plain, extremely marshy.
Whether or not Alfred re-used enclosures at Widbury and Amwell, it seems that the river could only have been controlled at a point where an existing barrier crossed the river.
This suggests that the Roman crossing at Ware arises as a significant candidate for the location of Alfred’s great feat. If the name does mean both a place of agreement and a place where a weir, dam, or ford was a fundamental feature, then Ware might well be the place where Alfred blocked the Danes on the river Lea.
Film of places mentioned in this blog
Join me in a ramble down the Lea Valley in search of some of the places mentioned in this blog - you can also subscribe to the Mythical Britain You Tube channel at the same time!
About the author, Michael Smith
I am a British translator and illustrator of medieval literature. I am also an accomplished printmaker, with work in private collections worldwide.
My books, including a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Alliterative Morte Arthure, are available through all the usual outlets. My translation of The Romance of William and the Werewolf was published in 2024. All my books feature my own linocut prints as their illustrations.
To find out more about me, please click here
For more details of my books and how to purchase signed copies, click here.
More information about the locations mentioned in this blog
For the article by Stuart Moye, Earthworks at Great Amwell and Widbury Hill, please visit the Stanstead Abbotts Local History Society (SALHS) website and then search under "Media Articles" for Moye's work. SALHS website can be found here.
For an interactive map of the Dury and Andrews map of Hertfordshire from 1766, click here.
For a readable and authoritative analysis of the Viking Great Army, the reader is referred to The Viking Great Army and the Making of England by Dawn M. Hadley and Julian D. Richards (2021).
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