Chichester, Stoughton, Kingley Vale, Bosham – and the Vikings. How do they all connect? At first glance it’s just fragments, like squares of coloured stones. Like those the Vikings used to find when they went into old Roman villas and looked at the floors. But put them together and you get a surprise picture, a mosaic.
We know that the Vikings never conquered Chichester. The Norsemen preferred speed, surprise and focused violence in their attacks. Sieges were never something they were good at. Chichester’s vast Roman walls, fortified further by King Alfred into a ‘burgh’, were far too formidable an obstacle for the Vikings to get through.
Yet the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle definitely states that Vikings raided here at the end of the 9th Century (894 or 894AD). Furthermore, it states that the Chichester defenders came out of the city and attacked, driving away the Vikings, even burning some of their boats. The event even gets its own entry on the wall timeline in the Novium museum in Chichester.
So what happened?
We only have a few pieces of coloured stone but we can piece together what the mosaic may have looked like. And, ironically, it began with the Vikings trying and failing to besiege a city. Only in this case it was Exeter, in Devon. The siege was part of a strategic plan but the siege itself failed. And the Viking army sailed back along the South Coast, heading towards its safe encampment in East Anglia. Short of food, short of success and plunder. Whoever commanded these ships needed something to hearten his men, to keep them literally onboard.
And so they stopped near Chichester. We don’t know exactly where, but my guess is Bosham. Dell Quay is too near Chichester to leave the ships and some crew in any safety. And the Vikings knew Bosham – indeed, a Viking king’s daughter is buried in the church there with her own engraved slab.
But they’d have been spotted, and bells would have rung and everyone would have fled with their belongings behind the solid walls of Chichester? Well, just a few miles north, the South Downs make a barrier. Would anyone the other side have heard? We know that Stoughton was a village then (it features in the Domesday Book), and there, they’d probably have been oblivious to any commotion.
I think the Vikings hit there, almost directly North of Bosham. Hard and fast. Look at the wall tapestries in the church there and see the story.
Then they’d have had to labour back up the steep hill to the top of Kingley Vale, laden with any iron, silver and slaves that they could have grabbed. There’s a local legend that the Vikings were at Kingley Vale, and the legend goes that the yew trees were planted to mark the warriors who fell there.
Because at some point the men of Chichester left the safety of their walls – something they seldom did – and attacked the Vikings. This would have been the fyrd, the local levy, mainly farmers and peasants armed with farm weapons, but they’d have been supported by some regular soldiers.
My guess is that they wouldn’t have faced the Vikings in an open battle. But if they were up the top of Kingley Vale as the Viking slogged back up, then they’d have surprise and height on their side.
It sounds like it was a running battle from then on, all the way back to the ships. That takes them through what is now one of the oldest yew forests in Europe, where the most ancient yews are called The Ancient Watchers. How creepy is that? Some could be 1000 years old – they’re hard to age. You can see why it’s got a reputation as one of the most haunted places in England.
It must have been a desperate, hideous affair, a running melee of temporary shield walls, charges, retreats and bodies falling. When threatened, the Vikings always wanted to get back to their longships, to the water. But the Chronicle says even some of their ships were burned, so this was a notable defeat. Only some of that fleet could have escaped down the twisting channel to the sea.
Once again, Chichester stood undefeated.
Graham Scott’s latest Young Adult novel, Leaving Valhalla, is based on these true events, seen through the eyes of a young Viking shield-maiden, sent back from Valhalla to this Middle Earth, by her dread lord Odin. The book is available through Amazon, or One Tree Books (Petersfield) and Heygates Books (Bognor Regis): https://amzn.to/4cdonm7
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