OUR March meeting started with silence for the British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since February.

The two main military history anniversaries on our meeting date were from 1774, when Britain closed Boston Harbour and took another step into pushing the colonial Americans towards rebellion and 1936, when Adolf Hitler took his gamble to remilitarise the Rhineland.

The presentation was delivered by member Chris Harris and was about the rise of the Saxon kingdom of Mercia and was entitled ‘Penda – King of Mercia’.

Chris started by describing the state of chaos left by the Roman withdrawal in AD 410.

He then explained how the Picts, Scots, Irish, Angles, Saxons and Jutes raided, burned and slaughtered for the next century until finally in AD 577 the final major battle took place which drove the Romano-British into Wales; the Saxons left victorious and the Roman province of Britannia wiped from history.

By AD 600, the Saxons ruled lowland Britain and we in Worcestershire were part of the Hwicci.

By AD 630, we were under the rule of Penda, King of Mercia.

Penda came to the throne in AD 626 and after 30 years of wheeling, dealing, treachery and dynastic in-fighting the Mercian frontiers stretched from just south of York, westwards to Chester, down to Bristol, eastwards to London and north to The Wash.

It was the most powerful of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at that time.

His adversary throughout this time had been Northumbria and in his final battle with his ‘old enemy’ he was killed, his body mutilated and Mercia conquered for a few years but it rose again to become even bigger and stronger.

One of Penda’s successors was Offa, who constructed the famous dyke.

Although a pagan King, his death is commemorated by a stained glass window in Worcester Cathedral.

As a Saxon he would have known Worcester as Wigaerne, or Warrior’s Lodge, which later became Weogornaceaster and later still corrupted into Worcester.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday, April 4, and is an open discussion on the reasons for and the execution of the 1982 Falklands War.

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start. The normal £3 door charge will apply.
RON GALLIVAN