⚔ Battlefields of Britain

Battle of Hingston Down 838

Battle of Hingston Down: Southern British Isles 9th century
Image: Philg88; Attribution: Wikimedia Foundation (www.wikimedia.org), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Marker: recorded battle location (no official boundary).

Key facts

Date (year)838Wikidata P585 point in time
Century9th centuryderived
PeriodEarly medieval, Anglo-Saxon & Vikingderived
CountryEnglandderived

About the battle

The Battle of Hingston Down took place in 838, probably at Hingston Down in Cornwall between a combined force of Cornish and Vikings on the one side, and West Saxons led by Ecgberht, King of Wessex on the other. The result was a West Saxon victory. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which called the Cornish the West Welsh:

In this year a great naval force arrived among the West Welsh, and the latter combined with them and proceeded to fight against Ecgberht, king of the West Saxons. When he heard that, he then went hither with his army, and fought against them at Hingston Down, and put both the Welsh and the Danes to flight.

Most historians of the period identify the site of the battle as Hingston Down north-east of Callington in Cornwall, but others argue for Hingston Down near Moretonhampstead, Devon, and Hingston Hill, near to Down Tor on Dartmoor

Visiting the battlefield

Location

  • Recorded location (Wikidata; may be approximate): 50.5210, -4.2473

Battlefields are often on private farmland: please keep to public rights of way and respect landowners.

Directions (Google Maps) OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Hingston Down (revision 1370443031), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations removed. No text added.

Battle location from Wikidata (CC0).

Nearby battlefields

Browse more: battles in England · Early medieval, Anglo-Saxon & Viking · 9th century battles

Further reading