Blowing Stone Hill, where 19th-century antiquarians thought King Alfred the Great's Saxon troops had camped, and that this was how Alfred summoned them for the Battle of Ashdown against the Danes in AD 871. Thomas Hughes' novel "Tom Brown's School Days" refers to it as the "Blawing Stwun" and calls the village "Kingstone Lisle". It is also one of the "sacred stones" mentioned in William Horwood's "Duncton Wood", the first book in his fantasy fiction series about a group of moles. Blowing Stone The Blowing Stone is a perforated sarsen at in Kingston Lisle, Oxfordshire (Berkshire until 1974). The stone is in
Battle of Leeds and Sir Thomas recaptured Wakefield. This was, however, almost immediately followed by another Royalist advance into the West Riding, this time under Newcastle himself. The Battle of Adwalton Moor saw the Parliamentarians narrowly defeated by Newcastle’s forces, with Bradford falling shortly afterwards. Fairfax escaped and spent the rest of 1643 besieged in the Parliamentarian stronghold of Hull. The Royalists only withdrew to York when the Scottish Covenanter army marched south in support of Parliament. In July 1644, the Royalists were comprehensively defeated at the Battle of Marston Moor, which lost the north of England for King Charles I. Battle of