The precise location of Aethelwulf's great victory at Acleah (851) is disputed between Oakley in Hampshire and Ockley in Surrey. Ockley, on the Roman Stane Street south of Dorking, commands a strategic route used by armies moving between the coast and London. Whichever site is correct, this battle — the "greatest slaughter of a heathen host" — was the most decisive English military success of the early Viking period.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
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