Selwood Forest

The ancient Selwood Forest ran approximately between Gillingham in Dorset and Chippenham in Wiltshire. It is described by the historian Barbara Yorke as a "formidable natural obstacle" in the Anglo-Saxon period, which was a significant boundary between east and west Wessex. It may earlier have been a negotiated frontier between Wessex and the British kingdom of Dumnonia which was important in the later development of the West Saxon shires, and later boundaries between Wiltshire and Somerset and north Dorset run through the forest. The boundaries through the forest and Bokerley Dyke which separated Somerset and Dorset from eastern counties may date to the fifth or sixth centuries. Selwood's importance as a boundary was also recognised in 705 when the bishopric of Sherborne was established for those "west of Selwood". In 855 King Æthelwulf appointed his son Æthelbald to act as king while he went on pilgrimage to Rome, and when he returned the next year Æthelbald refused to give up the throne. Asser, who strongly disapproved of Æthelbald's conduct, stated that the plot was hatched by Æthelbald and his co-conspirators, the bishop of Sherborne and the ealdorman of Somerset, "in the western part of Selwood". Their motives are not known, but one factor may have been resentment of western nobles at the favour Æthelwulf had shown to Winchester and its bishop in eastern Wessex. Alfred th

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