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 Marton Battle of Marton The Battle of Marton or Meretum took place on approximately 22 March 871 at a place recorded as Marton, perhaps in Wiltshire or Dorset. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the battle took place "about two months" after a prior loss to the Danes at the Battle of Basing, in which both sides suffered heavy losses. King Æthelred of Wessex and Prince Alfred fought against the Danes, who were possibly under the leadership of King Halfdan Ragnarsson, who had commanded many of the earlier battles that year. The Chronicle tells us that the forces were split in two