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
Pete Ashdown Pete Ashdown Peter Lynn "Pete" Ashdown (born January 11, 1967) is the founder and CEO of Utah's first independent and oldest Internet service provider, XMission. Ashdown was the Democratic nominee in 2006, he lost to incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch. Ashdown ran again in 2012 for the U.S. Senate, but was defeated in his pursuit of the Democratic nomination at the state convention by Scott Howell. Ashdown was born in Salt Lake City to Robert and Greta Ashdown, and grew up in Bountiful, Utah. His father worked as a machinist, an elementary school teacher, and a professor of manufacturing