Local Author and Historian Ray Fellows will be hosting a history talk to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Wodensfield/Wednesfield this weekend.

The battle which took place between the Saxons and the Vikings on 5th/6th August in 910ad will be marked with a talk from Ray Fellows and Phil Bateman at Wednesfield and Woodend Royal British Legion, Vicarage Road, Wednesfield.

The talk takes place on Saturday 6th August at  7:30pm and all are welcome. For more details call Ray Fellows on 01902 739592.

Report by: Phil Bateman

Tonight the fledgling Wednesfield Heritage Society is visiting the Mayor’s Parlour in Wolverhampton where the Mayor Councillor Bert Turner, will display the former Chairman of Wednesfield Urban District Council chains of office.

Wednesfield UDC was subsumed by Wolverhampton in 1966 when the Government of the day legislated for boundary changes.

The fiercely independent Urban Districts of Wednesfield, Tettenhall and Bilston joined Wolverhampton on that date in 1966, forming the metropolitan area of what is now Wolverhampton City Council.

They didn’t agree to the merger, they were forced into the arrangement!

The Wednesfield chains of office are kept on display in the Mayor’s Parlour. Though the current Mayor Councillor Turner is himself a Bilstonian, and he has arranged for the Bilston Civic Regalia to be repatriated to Bilston so that today’s Bilston residents can see their own history in that part of the City.

Tonight is a good time to view the civic regalia of Wednesfield as we are once again approaching the anniversary of one of the most important battles of British history. It was on August 5/6, in the year 910 when the great battle of Wednesfield took place:

Because it was here in our noble village of Wednesfield that the West Saxons and Mercian’s defeated the Northumbrians Danes.

That is why we have our uniquely named village – Wednesfield. In the Anglo Saxon world we live in today, there are many places with similar sounding names. But there is only one Wednesfield.

The battle that took place here is one of the great historic facts. I am very keen to see this famous battle recognised not only by the City but the region.

Edward the Elder in August 910 sent an army that took on the Danes in a battle at Wednesfield. The battle gave the name to Wednesfield. Woden was the God of War. Hence Wodensfield became Wednesfield in modern times.

“Reconquest of the Southern Danelaw

Nothing is reported of English / Danish hostilities between the battle of the Holme in late 902 and 906. That there were hostilities is suggested by the fact that Edward made peace with the East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes in 906; one manuscript of the Chronicle says he made peace “from necessity”, a formula which suggests he had to pay the Vikings to cease ravaging. A cryptic note from 907 that Chester was restored suggests more fighting in that year.

The first clear action of the reconquest came in 909, when Edward sent an army of West Saxons and Mercians into Northumbria, where it ravaged for five weeks. The following year the Northumbrian Danes descended on Mercia, and the army of the West Saxons and the Mercian’s overtook them at Wednesfield near Tettenhall and killed a great many of them, including two or three kings and, according to the Chronicle, “many thousands of men”.

After this defeat the Northumbrian Danes stayed north of the Humber, which allowed Edward and his Mercian allies, Æthelred and Æthelflæd, to concentrate on the Danish armies south of the Humber.”

I like to think that this hugely historic victory on the battlefields of Wednesfield, stemmed the Viking tide. If they had won that battle – perhaps today we would be shopping in a modern Wednesfield, and instead of speaking Anglo Saxon, we would be ordering our goods in Danish! Our history I believe was that important to this great Country of ours!

So tonight as we gather in the Mayors Parlour in Wolverhampton, led by Wednesfield Historian Ray Fellows, just a few months from the August 910 battle anniversary. Our little group will lead calls once again for Wolverhampton as a City to do much more than it currently has done to date, to recognise this hugely historical moment in the United Kingdom’s history.

Former Mayor of Wolverhampton Phil Bateman is leading calls for Wolverhampton City Council to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Wodensfield (Wednesfield) which took place between the Anglo Saxons and the Danes on the 4th & 5th of August 1100 years ago.

Phil said: “There is a strong local opinion that the City Council should be celebrating this most important of battles. This battle which was reported to have taken place in Wednesfield (or Wodensfield as it was called then) in the year 910 was crucial in helping to forge the unification of England as one kingdom. Indeed if the Danes had won, we all would have been likely to have been speaking Danish now!”

“Since the finding of the Staffordshire Hoard there has been huge interest in the local history of the area. The City are missing a trick if it allows another year to slip by without recognising the importance of this battle that is unique to Wednesfield and Wolverhampton.”

“The first written references to Wednesfield come in the Anglo Saxon chronicles where there is reference to a great battle at Wednesfield in which the Mercians and their allies inflicted a defeat on the Danes which lead to effective end of their power. It has always been an important part of Wednesfield’s traditional history that this great battle was fought here and a reference to it appeared on the Wednesfield Urban District Council’s coat of arms.”

Do you think we should mark the anniversary of the battle of Wodensfield/Wednesfield? Let us know in the comments!

Recently the Wednesfield Area Action Network put together a very special 2010 calendar to celebrate Wednesfield’s history.

WAAN teamed up with staff from the Wolverhampton Archives who very kindly allowed the use of 24 historic photographs that depict Wednesfield’s past. WAAN’s members have picked photos featuring local landmarks, some of which still exist today in an effort to show how Wednesfield has changed over the years.

We have been lucky enough to get our hands on 12 of these glossy A4 calendars to give away to our readers. Read on to find out how to win a calendar…

If you’d like to win one of these fantastic limited edition calendars and own a little piece of local history, all you have to do is post a comment on the WV11 website by clicking here, and tell us your favourite Wednesfield memory. Your memory doesn’t have to be as old as some of these photos, we just want to hear your stories of every day life in the area.

We will pick our 12 favourite memories/stories and notify the winners – your stories will also be featured on the website. Please make sure you add your email address on the comments form in order for us to contact you.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

Last week we came across an article about Wednesfield’s history of trap making, so we thought we’d share it on WV11.

The Wednesfield area was renowned as the British centre for trap making during the Victorian era and the traps that were made in Wednesfield were exported in huge numbers around the world.

Read the article at WolverhamptonHistory.org.uk

Photo courtesy of WolverhamptonHistory.org.uk, thanks to @linda769 for the tip!