The image above comes courtesy of Chris McDowell. It is good to see the wyvern being flown earlier this month on Icknield Way. It serves as a nice appetiser for our annual St Ealdhelm’s Day event, which this year takes place in Lacock and Chippenham. Normally, the event takes place on the nearest Sunday, but as May 25th falls on a Saturday this year, we are holding it on the actual day.
We are fortunate to have Leo Stevens acting as our host at Lacock. Leo has lived in this preserved and special village all his life and his family roots there go back hundreds of years. We will visit the church – which hopefully will be flying the Wessex flag – and the tithe barn as well as a pub with a dog-driven spit – the origin of hot dogs (maybe not).
After lunch we will head on to Chippenham and visit King Alfred’s hunting lodge where he was attacked by those pesky Vikings at Twelfth Night in 878AD. We can also visit the local museum and talk about the “unusual” situation in that part of Wiltshire during the early years of the Saxon settlement.
To get even more back to our roots, our visit coincides with the Chippenham Folk Festival, so the town will be buzzing.
We will meet in Lacock’s car park at 11 am. That will give us about one and a half hours or so in the village; time for lunch and then head to Chippenham about 2pm for the remainder of the day.
Would everyone coming please let us know so we can try to book a table for lunch. If you have any queries, feel free to post them in the comments.
Might I suggest that the green and gold square wyvern flag be adopted as the banner, c.f., the three leopards on the banner (square flag) of England.
And that the gold cross on a red field be allowed as a more readily available (and cheaper) alternative to the red and gold wyvern (battle) flag. The gold cross flag is also the maritime signal flag for the letter R; which represents a sound which is characteristic of Wessex speech
I suggest an additional flag. That would be the ‘primrose flag’ dedicated to St Aldhelm, a scholar and a man of peace; not a warrior. (The wyvern flag is a battle flag), the design would be the Yorkshire flag with gold for the white and red for the blue. The Wessex colors are red and gold, or least that is on King Alfred’s banner.