This post is adapted from my book, King Alfred: A Man on the Move, available from Amazon. It would be great if you could support this project by purchasing a copy.
Many of you will be aware of Basingstoke in Hampshire, but perhaps unaware of nearby Old Basing. In Saxon times Old Basing would have been Basing and Basingstoke would have been just an outpost of Old Basing. The Old English of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles tells us that the battle took place æt Basengum. The -um ending suggests dative plural so perhaps it translates as “at the Basings”. Alfred fought here with his elder brother King Æthelred against the Vikings. The Vikings won. This was one of a series of battles in 871 and took place between the Battle of Ashdown and the battle at Meretun.
So, now we know where Basing was, where did the battle take place. There is not a great deal written on this, but there are perhaps three main contenders.
Firstly, the north-east corner of Hackwood Park. This is south of the M3 as it passes Basingstoke. An important negative point is that it is not at Old Basing, although it is close. A plus for this location is that it is argued (and it seems to be correct) that a stretch of an ancient trackway called the Hard Way (sometimes called the Harrow Way) runs immediately to the north of this site. This is now a road called Dickens Lane. You can drive down here, perhaps to the evocatively named Polecat Corner, imagining that you are on one of Britain’s oldest roads! The argument goes that the Vikings were actually on their way to Winchester and they were travelling on this track in order to connect them with the Roman road that would take them to Winchester. However, this is all just speculation.
There are public footpaths that run through Hackwood Park, and you can work your way round towards the north-east. It is a lovely walk that I am sure you would enjoy irrespective of whether a battle site lies at the end of it!
Another possibility is that the Battle of Basing took place in Old Basing itself. It is tempting to think this because the location in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is Basing, and Old Basing was Basing. The archaeological evidence suggests that there could have been something here worth raiding, and I have even seen a report go so far as to say that it could have been a royal site.
Finally we come to Lychpit. This is now the residential area to the north-east of Basingstoke, separated from Old Basing by the River Loddon. If you are looking at an Ordnance Survey map, then Little Basing provides a better location. Before the houses were built there was a Lickpit Farm. In Old English lic means corpse and it appears that a legend has developed that the corpses from the Battle of Basing were buried here, and therefore that the battle must have been nearby. However, I have also seen it suggested that bodies from the Civil War were buried here. It is easy to initially view the legend as the product of fertile imaginations. However, digging deeper I found out more.
We can discount the origin of the name being from the Civil War as there is a charter dating to 945AD in which King Edmund grants to a certain Æthelnoth a monastery at Basing and land at Lickpit (named Licepyt in the Latin of the document). Clearly, King Edmund had this to give away, which is also perhaps relevant. It seems that Æthelnoth then granted what King Edmund had given him (including Lickpit) to Hyde Abbey, and it remained in their possession until the dissolution of the monasteries. Hyde Abbey was at Winchester, so it was not far from Basing, but perhaps relevant is that it was were King Alfred was then interred.
With no overwhelming evidence for any site, Lychpit for me seems to have the edge.
It is also interesting to note that the name Basing derives from the Basingas, an Anglo-Saxon tribe.
There is much more about the travels of King Alfred in my book, including maps and references. Click or tap on the image below to learn more about the book.