Sign, Athelstan Road, Exeter

Image: © Stephen Richards Taken: 19 Jun 2014

A dull subject, not an adjective which applies to the man it commemorates. Ask the first ten people you meet to name the first king of Britain and it is highly unlikely that any of them would name Athelstan (?894-939). These days, he is a relatively little-known figure in British history. In the middle ages he was very famous, a powerful and influential figure known, and almost revered, throughout Europe. He was intelligent, a fearsome war leader, and a man who instigated domestic reform of law and order, coinage and local government. His reputation survived the Norman Conquest, he was the subject of a fourteenth-century play, and was featured on Shakespeare's stage in 1599. Athelstan was a grandson of Alfred the Great and came to the English throne in 924, ruling until his death in 939. He built on Alfred's achievements and pushed forward the frontier of English rule, overcoming the Vikings, Scots and Welsh, until he was effectively ruler of all Britain, the most powerful man to rule there since the Romans. The Exeter connection seems to be that Athelstan used the city as his base while expelling the Cornish from the city and driving them back to Cornwall.

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