Gone Medieval - 878 AD: A Key Anglo-Saxon Year

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

878 AD witnessed a pivotal moment in the history of England as an emerging, unified nation, with the defeat of the Vikings by Alfred the Great at the Battle of Edington. Now, a new immersive history experience is opening in Winchester, titled 878 AD.Winchester featured heavily in the world of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and the experience draws heavily on imagery and assets from the game to create an engaging representation of the city at the time.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman is joined by Professor Ryan Lavelle, who acted as a historical consultant to the project, to find out more about the events and protagonists of 878 AD, and how they have been brought back to life in Winchester.This episode was edited by Thomas Ntinas and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit. To download, go to Android or Apple storeIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit.To download, go to Android or Apple store Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. And welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. This autumn, a new immersive history experience is opening in Winchester, entitled 878 AD. It aims to recreate a key moment in Winchester's history, one that involves a battle, the Vikings, and Winchester's pride in joy, Alfred the Great. It's a moment or rather a year

that's often seen as the point that determine the future or what would soon become England in the face of its Viking invaders. The experience, which I'm really looking forward to trying out myself, is a collaboration between Hampshire Cultural Trust and Ubisoft, creator of the Assassin's Creed Valhalla, using visuals that were created for the game

in an interactive and immersive way to tell stories not just about that battle, but also the context of the people and people places around it, especially Winchester and the Kingdom of Wessex. Now, in today's episode, we're going to be talking about this, and we're going to be teasing apart what we know about the historical background and what a project like that can do to help us communicate history. So to do that, I'm delighted to welcome today's guest. I've got Professor Ryan Lovell with me, who is Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Winchester. Now, his specialisms

include Anglo-Saxon Winchester and King Alfred, and he's a very much. And he's a veryllev, and he's also been heavily involved in this project as a historical consultant. So Ryan, thank you so much and welcome to Gone Medieval. Thank you very much, Kat. It's a pleasure to be here. So I can't wait to hear more about this project. And can you just start off by explaining what exactly was your involvement in it? So I'd been involved with the Assassin's Creed Valhalla computer game and also with the Viking Age Discovery Tour for Ubisoft. And around the same time, I'd also been in communication with Hampshire Cultural Trust about various aspects of the early medieval past for Winchester

and trying to represent that more. And there was a point a few years ago when I realised actually I could help bring these two interests together because I knew that Ubisoft were looking at representing Anglo-Saxon and Winchester in the game and had some remarkable graphics for this kind of evocation of the early medieval past for the city. And there was a point when I said,

Having to have these conversations because of course working with the company like Ubisoft, there is an aspect of secrecy about the project. And I had to sort of say, I'm involved with Hampshire Cultural Trust. Can we see if we can get you together with them? And both parties were really interested. And then things went quiet for a while. And then Hampshire Cultural Trust, at a point during the height of lockdown, they were seeing the possibilities here. They were thinking about the possibilities of what they could do for this. they got back in touch with me and said, we're really interested in developing this experience.

Would you like to be involved? And of course, I was absolutely delighted to be asked. And so this kind of idea of bringing in the computer graphics, but actually in a kind of physical environment, was a really exciting possibility, along with the aspects of a traditional museum as well, in terms of the display of some of the artefacts that Hampshire Cultural Trust have in their stores from the various excavations and city, and of course there are some quite spectacular,

or there is one particular spectacular artifact. And as I'm saying this, I'm not quite sure how much I'm able to say about that particular artifact. But basically this whole sort of thing of the museum, the computer game, the idea of live action experience as well, all coming together in this one space, along with the possibility of using some of the graphics from the Asaphaticians, from the Assassin's Creed Valhalla program and then importing that into the visitors' own experience

using a phone as well, using an augmented reality app. And that's kind of exciting because actually what it then does is it allows the visitors to then step out into the streets of Winchester and follow a 9th century journey around the streets and use the phone to get these graphics, these images of the early medieval past into the view. of the modern city streets and I've played with the beta versions of this and it's kind of cool actually seems like great fun yeah it sounds like an amazing and such brilliant use of technology so I'm going

a bit later on get back to some of the challenges involved in being in between as an academic and working with these comes I want to get back to that a bit later on and also a bit more detail about you know what people can experience but I wonder if we just should go into the background a little bit more, so into the historical background. So this is very much your sort of specialised area really. And this particular year, so they've named the whole experience 878. Now, some of our listeners, especially those who are keen on the Vikings, will be very familiar with what happens, but but not all, I don't think. So I wonder, could you take us back to 878? Why that year, what happened and why was it so important? Yes, yeah, 878. It's a pivotal year in the history of

Wessex and the history of England and potentially also the history of Western and Northern Europe more broadly as well, in that it's a point when this great Viking army, as it's referred to in contemporary source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has been rather successful around the different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. So this is at a point when there isn't a kind of unity of the different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in early medieval England that there were four separate kingdoms in what we now call England and the Northumbrian kingdom and the East Anglian kingdom and part of the Mercyan kingdom in the Midlands had all been taken over by Vikings in some way either through agreements made by the local ruling dynasties or members of the local

dynasty or just the abject takeover has happened in the case of East Anglia. So the West Saxon Kingdom was essentially standing as the remaining kingdom with its own ruling dynasty. Part of the Mercyan Kingdom was semi-independence and there are debates about the independence of part of the Mercy and Kingdom, but essentially Alfred in the West Saxon Kingdom was essentially retaining some degree of independence and had been over the course of the previous decade, had been involved in various military campaigns against the Vikings and sometimes buying them off, sometimes defeating them militarily and essentially holding them off. And I think at a point in the winter of 877 to 878, the group of Vikings who were in Western

Mercia at that point seemed to have realised that they could catch the West Saxon's napping and basically took over the West Saxon kingdom by, or took over a big chunk of the West Saxon kingdom, probably not all of it, by seizing a royalville, a royal estate at Chippenham in Wiltshire. And quite possibly they've been attempting to catch the king himself because it was royal villas were places where the rulers sort of travelled around from place to place. They didn't spend all their time in one place because the court was simply probably too big to be able to be supported by one place for a long place. length of time and so the Vikings by seizing Chippenum essentially controlled a big chunk of the

West Saxon Kingdom and Alfred goes into hiding essentially in the marshes of Somerset and the Somerset levels he eventually establishes a base at a very small place now in Somerset called Athelney which was it was actually an Iron Age hill fort but a hill fort in terms of the Somerset levels is not much taller not much higher than the kind of grander but essentially establishes himself at this place, this royal estate in Somerset, and tries to gather followers to that place and tries to send out word to those who will remain loyal to him. And what seems to have been going on in Wessex is that because Alfred was one of the royal sons of the West Saxon dynasty, there were also other members of the royal family and what

seems to be possible. What seems likely is that other people within Wessex may have been looking to follow one of the sons of Alfred's brother, Alfred's dead brother, and potentially there was a possibility of establishing a puppet king by the Vikings that the Vikings might have been able to establish a puppet king. But luckily from Alfred's perspective, there's just about enough support within the West Saxon kingdom for him, a number of the aldermen, the regional governors of the West Saxon Kingdom evidently supporting him. And essentially he's able, just after Easter, or a few weeks after Easter in 878, after these months in the Somerset levels, kind of fighting this guerrilla campaign against the Vikings in the area, he's able to bring people together to a place

called Edgebut Stone, somewhere around the borders between Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset, and essentially called together those who would be loyal to him. And this result, in a battle at a place near to that site at Eddington in Wiltshire. And this battle seems to have been decisive because the Vikings were then besieged at a fortress. That fortress could well have been Chipponham. The Vikings may well have gone back to Chippenham. They're besieged to such a length of time

that the Vikings go on to have to eat their horses, which is seen as a terrible thing in the eyes of contemporary Christians. So this battle at Eddington seems to be a decisive moment in the history of the West Saxon Kingdom because it's ultimately a decisive victory for Alfred. He doesn't kill his Viking enemy. The Viking leader is known as Guthrum and he was the leader of that part of the great Viking army. But he manages to defeat him and manages to force him to surrender. and the decisiveness of this battle is a result of the Vikings retreating to their fortress,

which could well have been Chippenham, the place that they had originally seized. And they're besieged for, I think it's two weeks, and West Saxons are seizing the horses of the Vikings from outside the fortress. I don't know why the Vikings aren't bringing the horses inside the fortress, but that's a detail in one of the contemporary sources, and sort of driven to Starvation. essentially are driven to surrender to Alfred. And that surrender then leads to the baptism of Guthrum

and essentially the carving out of territory between Alfred and his best, well, adversary, Guthrum, who's now known by the baptismal name of Athelstan. And that kind of indicates that Guthrum is seen as part of the West Saxon royal family. Alfred stands as his godfather. in this baptismal ceremony and there's a kind of grandeur to the baptismal ceremony. In fact, it involves a period of time, the giving of gifts and no doubt hunting as well,

which is setting up this idea of peace between Alfred and his now godson in the aftermath of this saddle. And this peace agreement results in territory being granted over to Guthrum and the peace agreement is something which results in the establishment of a line of demarcation of territory between those who are part of Guthrum's army and those who see themselves as adhering to Alfred's side, essentially. And it also allows Alfred to seize a little bit of Mercyon territory, essentially. So the area which hadn't been taken over by Vikings from, Mercia. Alfred, in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of the remaining Mercyon King, who has the name Chelwulf. In fact, he's known by some wonderful coins, more of which have

been discovered in recent years, depicting Alfred and Chelwolf together. So Chalwulf had previously been his ally. Around about 879, so we're talking about a year after 878, Chalwulf disappears off the scene, and Alfred is able to agree to this demarcation of territorial interest, spheres of interest in southern and eastern England. And essentially by allowing Guthrums to become a territorial king in England, this then allows Alfred to consolidate his hold on the West Saxon kingdom and slightly beyond it, establishing what is known as the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, which was a kingdom which continued until the early years of the 10th century under that title before it becomes a king.

Kingdom of the English. And that I think he's a little bit sneaky by Alfred in some ways because essentially he's making a bit of a deal with somebody who had essentially been a raider and a pillager across parts of Wessex, parts of Mercia, parts of Indeed East Anglia, and essentially legitimising his hold of that territory. And the baptism ceremony, it's obviously something which allows that to be done legitimately as far as Alfred's concerned and as far as we know which Guthrum remains a good ally for Alfred. Keep your enemies close, rather. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's it entirely, yes.

I mean, he's not able to kill Guthrum and maybe he never wanted to. Maybe that opportunity to divide territory allows Alfred that opportunity to push further in terms of his kingship. It allows the West Saxon Kingdom that breathing space as well to consolidate its defences. So I think we see evidence of the book

system of systems of fortresses around the West Saxon Kingdom. There's some debate as to precisely when particular boroughs were established around Wessex, but I think by and large we can say there is some direct connection between organizing defences around the West Saxon Kingdom and that moment of victory in the year 878. And it's in the wake of the year 878 that allows Alfred to bring scholars to the West Saxon court as well and sort of devised new forms of kingship, really. In the model of the Carolingians, I think this is a really interesting thing, that Alfred appears very much as a contemporary European king

in terms of the sense of royal majesty. It's very much in the Carolingian Frankish mould sort of following in the footsteps of Charlemagne. How much of a tyrant really was Julius Caesar? And it's very interesting to think about why it's Caesar in particular when there have been many political assassinations, in the past millennia, why Caesars has been the one that is brought up again and again. Would we have ever stood a chance against the first dinosaurs?

In the Jurassic, you see dinosaurs get bigger, and you see meat-eating dinosaurs grow into things like the size of buses. And did Helen of Troy really have the power to launch a thousand ships? She is always derided as this sort of terrible adulterish, but at least as old as Homer, at least the 8th century BC, is a car. counter tradition in which Helen doesn't go to Troy. She's never Helen of Troy. She's Helen of Egypt. Well, you can expect all of this and more from the ancients on history hit. Join us twice a week, every week, as we explore some of the greatest moments of our ancient past.

Subscribe to the ancients wherever you get your podcasts. I really see, I think, how that was a very strategic, it was a very politically shrewd move, I think, to do this if you can't beat them, you might as well just to come out of a place. And so what we see, of course, afterwards is, as you precisely have mentioned just now, this impact that this had all the things that Alfred was able to do. So I wanted to sort of use that as a bit of a lead in to Winchester and talk a little bit about that because Winchester, of course, was very much Alfred's big city, wasn't it? Can you tell us a little bit about the background to Winchester?

And what did Alfred do for Winchester? For Winchester, there's a kind of ninth century phase, a late ninth century phase, to Winchester and I think we could justifiably say that Winchester is Alfred's city in many ways in terms of the way in which the layout of the city in the 9th century fits the chronology of Alfred's reign. So Winchester was a Roman town essentially that becomes a walled city in the Roman period so the walls around the city are Roman and like many towns and cities across Britain when the Roman power essentially dissolves in the 5th century. Around about the 5th century, there's some sort of,

there are various debates about that, but let's say Roman imperial power dissolves. And towns and cities become abandoned by and large across the former Roman province of Britain. But with the advent of Christianity, for the Anglo-Saxons, Roman places become more meaningful. And Winchester became an important place for the West Saxon, royal,

and episcopal power. And so Winchester, particularly for the bishops of Wessex, the bishops of what become the bishops of Winchester, Winchester has this importance. But it wasn't really a city as such. It was a kind of collection of ecclesiastical buildings in a former Roman city. It wasn't sort of reoccupied as a city when the West Saxon bishops start to reoccupy it in the 7th century. And it's not until the 9th century that we see its occupation as a city, bringing people into the city to lead the lives of craft and industry and sales and trade and markets. And this, I think, is a little bit of centralized planning that's going on, maybe even a little bit of opportunism, thinking, well, the Vikings represent this threat

to the peace and stability of the kingdoms. So people need to be able to trade and do their craft activities in places of safety. and so let's bring the people within the safety of city walls. And I think that's something which is argued for Anglo-Saxon Winchester that essentially you've got the link between the size of the city walls. Sorry, this gets a little bit complicated actually. They get the link between the size of the city walls, the length of the city walls,

and the way in which Winchester is administered in terms of the number of hides of land, to hide is a kind of assessment of land. And there's a very close relationship between that size of the administrative area associated with Winchester and the lengths of the city walls. And that essentially it's thought, and I'm not the sort of main person to say this, there's scholars like Martin Biddle who's done a tremendous amount of work for Winchester who have suggested this and discussed this. It's thought that Winchester may have been a kind of blueprint city for other towns, other fortified towns, boroughs around the West Saxon kingdom,

because that closeness of the administrative area and the length of the walls, there's a kind of ratio between the length of the walls and the formula, which is used for thinking about the resources associated with it. So without going into all the maths of measurements of yards and poles of wall, A pole being about 5.5 yards, I think, in terms of measurements. I often try to convert it to metric in order to make more sense. Probably get in a bit of trouble for metricising some of these measurements. But essentially, there is this sense of measurements of the size of the city.

And I think one of the fascinating things about Alfred is this idea of the obsession with weights and measurements. I think it's one of the sort of abiding things that comes out of our reading of Alfred. And sometimes I wonder about that idea of the Alfredian minds, looking at this city with the link between him and his bishops and thinking, well, how could a city be modelled for other cities around Wessex? How do we divide the resources that we've got in order to ensure that every pole of wall is defended by a certain number of people who do the work on the wall and maintain the wall and defend the wall when necessary? What are the measurements for that? let's look at where it works successfully. And okay, I'm slightly biased in being in Winchester and thinking about this. But let's think about where this works successfully

and then apply it to other places around the West Saxon Kingdom. And it's really interesting to think that Winchester may have been this kind of blueprint town that were the layout of the streets according to this very regular grid pattern is something which is 9th century. It may date from slightly before Alfred's reign, so maybe Alfred is looking at this and thinking, how can this be applied across the kingdom? But the jury, I think, is still out on that question.

And because so much goes on in Alfred's reign, I think, you know, potentially we can ascribe it to Alfred's reign. But the layout of the city, this sort of regular patterns of the streets and the back streets and the high street known as chap strats, the trading streets in the late 9th century, this layout kind of looked to people for many, many years. It looked Roman to people until Martin Biddle started doing his wonderful excavations of the city

and looking at the layers of stratigraphy for the roads. And then there was this realisation as part of that project in the 1960s and the 70s. There was this realisation that actually this Roman-looking street pattern was, in fact, an Anglo-Saxon street pattern. and that idea of the Romaness of the city of Winchester, this kind of neo-Romaness, if you like, this new Romaness of the city, I think played in really well into the Alfredian ways of recalibrating the West Saxon kingdom

in the wake of the year 878. So the city is essentially thriving as a result of the piece that has been agreed between Alfred and Guthrum and other towns and cities around Wessex. There's some 30 towns and cities around Wessex which are kind of planned towns essentially in Alfred's reign.

And then that goes on to become the foundation, if you like, for other towns in England, in the Midlands, when Alfred's daughter, Athelfeld, sort of picks up this set of ideas and she does her own thing with them. Edward Alfred Cern is also trying to do some things as well, and this is essentially the basis for what's sometimes known as the reconquest of the Dane Law. I tend to think of it as a conquest of the Dane Law, because the West Saxons had never really ruled those areas anyway.

But this essentially gives the rise for the West Saxon dynasty to be able to assert themselves over these other territories in Mercier and indeed beyond. So this point in time, it's not actually an exaggeration, is it? I mean, it does have such a significant impact, not just on relationship with the Vikings, but also urban development, not just in Wessex, but further beyond as well. So, yeah, I can completely see why this was chosen. But one thing that occurred to me when you were talking as well, and actually to lead us into this whole experience now and what people can experience with the 878 AD project, I love Winchester as well, and I've been there a few times recently,

and you do walk down the streets in the centre, and you are actually walking through that system, that grid system, the high street, you're walking pretty much where Alfred did. And you're seeing these things that he did. You've got the gates to the city still, some of those remain. And there's a big physical presence there. So this obviously will be what this project is working on. So can you explain a little bit?

How exactly, because there's so much good archaeology there in the city, how then is this new experience helping people understand what they're looking at? Yeah, I think this is a thing for us who understand something of the layout of the city and some of the documents associated with it, some of the archaeology associated with it, you're kind of walking around these places and go, oh, there's some really interesting excavations took place there 20 years ago or whatever. But people who aren't spending their evenings reading about this sort of thing aren't necessarily aware of this. And you can sort of walk around Winchester. It's a, you know, it's a lovely city to visit. but there aren't any grand standing buildings from the 9th and 10th centuries that leap out at you as Anglo-Saxon buildings and the cathedral's a wonderful building but it is after the Norman conquest.

And so the imprint of the pre-conquest past isn't that obvious for it. And the 870 AD experience is an attempt to try to evoke some of that past, to get a sense that there were buildings there, there were people who were there over 1,000 years ago, 11 hundred years ago. I mean, it's that sort of sense of the city has been an occupied, thriving, bustling place for 11 centuries and trying to kind of get across the way in which that physical past

was actually there. The ghosts of these people were there and bringing those ghosts to the streets via digital means, I think is quite a fascinating thing. And it's a really exciting project. It's a really imaginative project to do that. So there are various sort of discussions about the Assassins Creed Valhalla and the Viking Age Discovery Tour in terms of the ways in which the kind of storytelling has to,

certain decisions have to be made about where the storytelling and the gameplay have to kind of take precedence over the exactness of the archaeology. But actually what this is doing for this is evoking a story, this is evoking a sense of possibility and awaking the imagination for visitors, which is quite an exciting thing to be doing and to be attempting and going, well, these assets from Assassin's Creed Valhalla, as they're known as assets in the trade, the digital assets, are there. And let's just try to go, well, here, these are possibilities of the evocations

of the past, which are allowing us to get them across to visitors. Well, in a very engaging way, but in an immediate way, there's an immediacy to it without necessarily trying to sort of delve through the different layers of stratigraphy and archaeological reports and so on. Yes. Now, and I think there's something about that visual aspect, isn't there? Because it is really difficult, especially the Viking 8th, 9th century and things of pre-conquest. I get questions all the time.

You know, we want to go and see the Viking England and the Viking, this, that, other. And there's so little to actually show people the same for the form of Anglo-Saxon. Obviously, we've got certain churches, we've got some buildings that have got, remain to date back to this period, but really it isn't there. And having that visual aspect is very, very powerful for people, I think. So that's, again, what games like the Suss and the Queen games do is actually give you that sort of visual aspect. But I do need to ask you, and I've done the same sort of work myself, so I'm also familiar with it. But in terms of... being an academic and being an academic historian, you've already talked a little bit about

certain decisions having to be made. A lot of the time, we don't know things for certain. We don't know exactly what things look like. And obviously, they need to create a complete building or create a complete wall or whatever. I mean, how do you find that from an academic perspective? Do you find it challenging? Do you worry that if they don't get it right, maybe they shouldn't do at all? Do you worry about that accuracy? How do you find that from a sort of personal and professional perspective? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I worry about it, of course, as I'm sure you have done in your experience for it. But I think at the end of the day, it's important to get these things across. It's important to convey meaning from these representations and this kind of sense of making

these decisions. I think I accept that the people who are developing games or developing TV programs have to make certain artistic decisions for what would they be called ludic decisions in the case of the gameplay. They have to make certain decisions that kind of cut across the heavy weight aspects of the history. So thinking about Assassin's Creed Valhalla, there's a kind of issue of scale, making buildings higher than they necessarily were in the past, or making the sort of scale of a city smaller, making the scale of the landscape smaller so that it can be played. I've spent hours playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla during lockdown, I've spent hours playing it, and they've completed a very small portion of the game,

a disappointingly small portion of the gaming. But, you know, if the scale of, well, early medieval Wessex, to take an example, if the sort of scale, the ground scale were compared to reality, nobody would ever complete the game. So these sorts of things have to be kind of changed slightly. And I think the other thing is that these are things which are bringing people to the historical past in a way that hasn't been possible before, actually. It's wonderful to see how many of my students are playing these games and coming to the Middle Ages with a sense of the past. And they're aware that it's, you know, it's not 100% accurate reconstruction of every

aspect of the 9th century. They're aware that there's elements of storytelling. But that storytelling then gives us an opportunity to think about the real history, to think about the real archaeology that goes into these and to be able to show examples of the Winchester reliquary and the discovery tour or the construction of a sail which, you know, thinking about the Norwegian part at the Viking Age Discovery Tour,

which I know you were involved with, Kat, that sort of aspect of the amazing sort of quality of a sail. I think it sort of conveys that, which is part of the Viking Age ship technology that often we forget about, but it kind of gets that across. Like a sail has to be a really prestigious and really high-quality thing for many of these vessels. So those sorts of aspects allow an exploration, an imaginative exploration,

in a way that isn't necessarily possible with the textbook and reading through the sources. So these little decisions are kind of things that have to be made, but I think there's enough of us who are grown up enough about it to be able to step back and say, oh yeah, this isn't quite right. These are decisions that have had to be made. But look, this is allowing us to think about it in a way that then allows us to re-engage with some of these issues. Absolutely. And I think it is such a great way in. And new generations, new people, and it does work. It does bring people to museums. It brings people to buy books and to go on to study things at university. So I think I completely agree that it's absolutely worth it.

And hopefully for people who are interested in the Assassin's Creed, the many fans of the Assassin's Creed series, will be drawn to the 878 AD experience to see about its visualization in a three-dimensional world, in a real IRL in real life. And also, hopefully, people who are aware of it, but don't necessarily spend hours and hours playing computer games, will also be able to engage,

with what has been produced. And I think it's great that the stuff that's been produced for Assassins Creed Valhalla can come to a wider audience of people who aren't necessarily spending loads of time playing computer games. Yeah, absolutely. And then we as academics, as museum professionals, all get the benefit from it as well. So I think this is a great example of how that works.

And then contextualise the history and what that means and what that means for not just the south-west of England, but actually the whole country's history, as opposed, in a bigger picture, which is fantastic. Indeed, yes. Well, Ryan, that's been absolutely brilliant. Thank you. And I personally can't wait to go back to Winchester and try this out. Yep.

So when it's open, people can go. But if they go onto the website, which I believe is 878AD.com. UK, they can find out more. Is that right? Absolutely, yes. So you book the tickets and bring a mobile device in order to do the augmented reality stuff as well and sort of extend the experience around the streets of Winchester. I'm looking forward to seeing people wandering around the city

looking at buildings in a completely different way through their mobile phones. Yes. Precisely, is transporting themselves back to 8-7-8 AD. Wonderful. Ryan, thank you so much. It's been absolutely brilliant talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing all this with you.

Okay, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit, where I was joined by Professor Ryan LaValle. So do check out this. experience and make the journey to Winchester if you can. If you enjoy these episodes and would like

to help other people find them, please do follow and leave us a review and share with all your friends and family and meets an awful lot to us. And don't forget, you can also subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter. Just look in the episode notes for how to do that. Thank you again. My name is Dr. Kat Jarman. My co-host, Matt Lewis, will be back on Saturday and I will be back again next Tuesday. Have a great week. You know,