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 the Sarno (1460) Battle of the Sarno (1460) The Battle of the Sarno (7 July 1460), also known as the Battle of Nola, was a decisive defeat of the forces of Ferdinand, king of Naples, by his dissatisfied barons supporting the claim of John of Anjou, duke of Lorraine. It was fought in the plain at the mouth of the Sarno River in Campania, south of Mount Vesuvius. John's forces were strengthened by reinforcements from Niccolo Piccinino, who on the 27th defeated papal and Milanese forces under Alessandro Sforzo and Federigo of Urbino near San Fabiano. Ferdinand escaped with only twenty men but,