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Chapter One
The coming of the Vikings
In 787 three Danish ships landed at Dorset. A royal official went to meet them, assuming the strangers had come to trade. Instead they killed him and sailed away. We now know this was the prelude to a series of Viking attacks that were to plague England for several centuries.
In case anyone should consider that there was a peaceful period at Dunster Castle and surrounding area before the Norman Conquest, we have to travel only a very short distance to the east or west coastlines to find all the horrors of pillage, burning and slaying by the Danish sea pirates. Porlock, Carhampton and Watchet were the Anglo Saxon towns in Somerset that bore the brunt of the Viking raids. Somerset stood firmly behind the Kings of Wessex, who spent many years fending off these ferocious invaders. In AD 878, when Alfred the Great was king and in desperate straits following the latest Viking incursion, which was made in daunting strength, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded:
‘At Easter, King Alfred, with a little company, built a fort at Athelney, and from the fort kept fighting the force, with the help of those of Somerset who were nearest. In the seventh week after Easter, he rose to Ecgybryht’s Stone, east of Selwood. All those of Somerset came to meet him...’
During this time of guerrilla warfare, undertaken from the Somerset Levels, Alfred is said to have ‘burnt the cakes’ of a local peasant woman while contemplating his future fate. He got a hiding for his trouble from the unsuspecting housewife
Viking raids were usually against coastal villages as they very rarely marched inland. By attacking the coast, they could pillage and take the spoils of war with them to their ships for the long sail back home. Their small, fast ships removed the possibility of the defenders chasing them. Porlock is first recorded as ‘Portloca’ (enclosure by the harbour or locked port), when, in the 9th century the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle records two attacks on the town: in the entry for 918 by the Vikings, and in 1052, when Harold and his brother landed from Ireland with nine ships, then sacked and set fire to the town, carrying off all that they could. Many people were slain, as well as thirty Saxon thegns.
During the Anglo-Saxon era Watchet became important enough to have its own mint. As the Vikings forced inroads into Wessex, many towns provided greater security by constructing fortifications known as burghs under the rules of Alfred and his sons.
Watchet became one of the ten important burghs of Wessex, as it is listed in the Burghal Hideage, a document dated c. AD 919: ‘...and to Watchet belong 5 hundred hides and 13 hides. For the maintenance and defence an acre’s breadth of 16 hides are required. If every hide is represented by 1 man, then every pole of wall can be manned by 4 men...’
Even before the Danes turned their attention to Watchet, we have statements from the Anglo Saxon Chronicles (Winchester Manuscript) telling of a particularly fierce attack on the small hamlet of Carhampton, well within walking distance of Dunster village. Carhampton may have been the centre for a Saxon royal estate used for visits, with a royal court being held to collect local estate taxes. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles refer to a bloody battle at Carhampton involving Danes with crews from 35 ships:
AD 836 Here King Egbert fought against 35 ship-loads at Carhampton; and great slaughter was made there, and the Danish had possession of the place of slaughter. And Hereferth and Wigthegn, two bishops, passed away; and Dudda and Osmod, two ealdormen, passed away.
