Battle of Aclea

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The Battle of Aclea occurred in 851 between the

Little is known about the battle and the most important source of information comes from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which recorded that:

three and a half hundred ships came into the mouth of the

Æthelbald with the West Saxon army fought against them at Aclea, and there made the greatest slaughter of a heathen raiding-army that we have heard tell of up to the present day, and there took the victory."^[1]

Aclea means Oak Field, as Asser explained. This could survive as Oakley or Ockley. Ockley is a village in Surrey that could potentially be a location for the battle, though the area known as Surrey has changed considerably in size and shape over the centuries. If the Vikings followed Stane Street (Chichester) south from London Bridge, the only crossing over the Thames into the area covered by modern-day Surrey during the early Medieval period, they would have come to the gap in the North Downs and passed through in the direct of Dorking. If the West Saxons were coming north along Stane Street then they could have met at Ockley.^{[original research?]}

2. Blunt, C.E and R.H.M. Dolley (1958). The Hoard Evidence for the Coins of Alfred. British Numismatic Journal, 1958.

3. Bidder, H.F. and J. Morris (1959). The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Mitcham. Mitcham Surrey Archaelogical Collections, volume 56, p. 51-131.

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