Hereward the Wake the folk hero of the Fens will be opening the Hereward Wargames Show in Peterborough UK at 10am on Sunday 7th September.
Tickets £3 & details at hereward-wargames.co.uk

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@wakehereward
Hereward the Wake the folk hero of the Fens will be opening the Hereward Wargames Show in Peterborough UK at 10am on Sunday 7th September.
Tickets £3 & details at hereward-wargames.co.uk
Hereward Rising! 955 years 2nd June 1070-2025
herewardthewake.com
#HerewardCountry #PeterboroughCathedral #Fenlands #HerewardTheWake
#History #Heritage #Folklore #CulturalHeritage
Charles Kingsley's 'Hereward the Wake' (1866) transformed a medieval footnote into a Victorian icon. His historical novel not only catapulted Hereward to fame but set the standard for how his legend would be remembered. #HerewardTheWake #VictorianLiterature #CharlesKingsley
The Hereward Relay & Ultra 40 mile cross-country race along the Hereward Way is this Sunday 26th January 2025. Rory G will be appearing as Hereward the Wake. The event marks the importance of Hereward as a cultural heritage icon of the Fens.
#WakeHereward
A near contemporary source for Hereward is Domesday Book (1086) where the entries for a Hereward in South Lincolnshire in 1066 are universally accepted as being the same Hereward cited in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1071. Curiously though, Hereward is not named as the holder of a manor at Bourne (Linc's) where the Gesta Herwardi states he was lord.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings a series of rebellions broke out across a defeated and demoralised Anglo Saxon state that lay prostrate under the oppressive grip of William 'the Conqueror' and his barbaric Norman knights.
Uprisings in Kent, Chester, Durham and York, led by various disaffected English nobles, were savagely and mercilessly beaten down and quashed, with thousands upon thousands slaughtered or left to perish in the devastation and ethnic cleansing that came to be known as the 'Harrying of the North'.
In the Fenlands to the east one of history's mysterious shadowy-figures by name of Hereward 'the Outlaw' rose to the fore and, armed with a multitude of dissidents, peasants and refugees, stopped the most formidable fighting force of the time dead in its tracks, inflicting humiliating damage to their number.
After a resistance of what appears to have been at least eighteen months, the fortified monastery on the Isle of Ely in the southern Fenlands eventually capitulated, through treachery, and Hereward is reported to have fled, disappearing into the mists of the wild fen and on into legend..
Legend says he's still out there, watching, waiting, ready to rise up and defend his folk in their hour of need. Seen in Ely at the weekend Hereward the Wake was being filmed for a forthcoming historical documentary before disappearing back into the wild fens...
Happy New Year!
Merry Hereward Christmas!
Early 1950's comic book cover by Thriller comics depicts Hereward in the post-war nuclear age. Here Hereward emerges as a superhero figure influenced by the plethora of comic books and new heroes being imported and flooding the British market from the USA. It was argued by conservative opponents to the Americanisation of British culture that such literature and images were poisoning the minds of British children, although by the early 1960's new British comics such as The Valiant and The Victor were following much the same format as their American progenitors.In this image the by now archaic figure of Kingsley's original Victorian novel has had a modern makeover and a Viking horned helmet is replaced with wings, giving Hereward a Captain America superhero styled appearance all ready for war in the nuclear age. When it came to the Cold War fight between Karl Marx Communism v Cocal Cola Capitalism here it shows the origins of the English are in league with their American counterparts. It's the impact of American culture on Hereward, portraying Hereward's cultural impact on British children.Join our mailing list and receive the Hereward Country newsletter published soon. Subscribe at: herewardthewake.co.uk #WakeHereward
Follow in the footsteps of Hereward and visit Bourne Woods. Bourne Woods is the northern part of the ancient tract of forest known as the Brunneswald. ‘Brunne’ meaning Bourne in Old English. It his herein where Hereward and his Band of Men hid from the Normans, using it as a base to launch attacks on Norman camps and as a gathering point for his rebellion across the Fens and East Midlands. With a spacious car park it is an ideal location for picnics, with wildlife trails, walking paths and cycle routes, as well as for dog walkers. Situated on the A151 on West Road, a mile or so north west of Bourne town Centre it forms part of the forest of Kesteven and is owned by the Forestry Commission. Of course, there is no mention of Hereward on the site, but we are working on it. Postcode PE10 0LG National Grid Reference TF0821 Visit Hereward Country at Herewardcountry.co.uk https://www.instagram.com/p/ClXISyEIRwoD0Nds4PRwF554Tm-chm-EIJNnIs0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Hereward - ‘England’s first identifiable defender of civil rights’
Hereward - 950 years later...
The many guises of folklore legend Hereward the Wake have blurred the fact that he is a historical figure – even the appellation ‘the Wake’ (the alert/ the ever watchful over his folk) is said to be a much later invention – yet we can identify his existence from entries in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle and Domesday Book, the two most reliable sources of the age.
Hereward’s claim to fame came as a rebel leader when, armed with a multitude of dissidents, peasants and refugees, he made his stand at Ely against the might of William the Conqueror. The English Crown may have fallen at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 but five years later the impenetrable Isle of Ely in the East Anglian Fenlands was refusing to yield to the ‘Norman Yoke’.
Before the drainage of the Fens began in the 17th Century Ely was an island and the surrounding fenland gave it a natural defensive network of flowing rivers, great mere’s, swamp and bogs and vast swathes of reed beds. Not the kind of terrain that armour-clad warriors on horses could comfortably traverse.
The Gesta Herwardi, written in the early 12th Century, describes Hereward as a handsome, muscular yet troublesome youth who was exiled from England at the age of 18 and was from that time on known as ‘The Outlaw’.
Recent studies have shed light on his career as a mercenary soldier in Flanders from where it is said he returned around the late summer of 1067 to claim his inheritance after learning of his father’s death.
Over the ensuing three years insurrection broke out across the country. Uprisings in Dover, Exeter, Hereford, Warwick, Durham, York, and Chester were, for the most part, savagely and mercilessly beaten-down and quashed - with thousands upon thousands slaughtered or left to perish in the devastation and ethnic-cleansing that came to be known as the ‘Harrying of the North’.
In 1070 the prelate Lanfranc of Bec came to England and William appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury. Lanfranc immediately set about revamping the English Church. Many Monasteries and Abbey’s experienced English clergy being replaced by French. William had imposed a new governing elite with new laws, a new language and a new Church. Very few English retained their title and land, most were in servitude.
Hereward, it appears, took exception to this. He was one of many dispossessed landholders and had close ties with Crowland and Peterborough Abbeys.
‘And all the folk of the Fenlands came to them thinking they would win all the land’. (Anglo Saxon Chronicle).
On June 2nd 1070, in response to the news that a Norman Abbot named Turold was about to take over, Hereward ‘and his band’ ransacked Peterborough with a Danish ‘Viking’ host led by Earl Osborne and Bishop Christian of Aarhus. They stole Gold and Silver of great value from a monastery known as the ‘Golden borough’ because it rivalled Glastonbury and Ely in wealth. They then made their way to the Isle of Ely apparently on the invitation of Abbot Thurstan who feared the same fate for Ely.
‘they did all manner of evil things’ (The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus).
All the participating rebels were subsequently excommunicated by the Church. To the fanatically pious English Churchmen of the time – where everything that happened, happened by God’s will – Hereward’s raid on Peterborough Abbey would be viewed as the work of the devil-incarnate.
The Danes however soon left with much of the loot, some say bought off by William. Hereward was then joined by a number of prominent English nobles. The Earls of the great northern provinces of Mercia and Northumberland, Edwin and Morcar - who had escaped house arrest under William and ‘fled through woods and fields’- reinforced by the northern land magnate Siward Barn, with the powerful Bishop Athelwine of Durham and ‘many hundreds of men with them’ who fared into Ely by ship.
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A protracted guerrilla war was fought lasting about a year or so. Hereward is reported to have disguised himself as a fisherman and as a potter in order to spy on William and his army and led countless assaults and forays into the Norman camps that surrounded the Isle. William even employed the services of a witch to cast a spell upon the defendants of Ely, but Hereward and his men burned down the raised platform she stood upon and she fell and broke her neck. William then built a long causeway to try and gain access to the Isle but Hereward and his men fired the combustible peat fen destroying the wooden causeway and routing the heavily armoured Norman knights. Reports of Norman skeletons in their chain-mail being dug out of the surrounding fen were recorded over a hundred years later.
‘he bravely led them out’ (Anglo Saxon Chronicle).
Ely eventually capitulated sometime in the summer of 1071. The Gesta Herwardi states that Abbot Thurstan, who had lost much of Ely’s land to William as punishment, sought to come to terms. William’s army were led through a secret pathway by some monks and the game was up. Hereward and many of his followers are reported to have fled - and it is at this point that history becomes blurred and legend comes into focus.
‘Last of the English!’
800 years after the Battle of Hastings in 1866 the novelist Charles Kingsley published the romantic epic, ‘Hereward the Wake’ – subtitled ‘Last of the English!’ The book about a patriotic hero was unleashed on a Victorian public weaned on the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott and it immediately became staple diet for children of all ages. The popularity of this book, which has never been out of print, is the major reason why we remember Hereward today.
The Victorians, ever proud of their heritage and looking for their ‘island story’ held Hereward up as a prototype Englishman full of all those contemporary British virtues of patriotism, gallantry, selflessness and bravery - while the spirit of his famous last stand at Ely was seemingly mirrored in feats of Empire in such far-away places as Rorke’s Drift and Mafeking.
Arguments ensue about Hereward’s parentage, descent and his social standing. He has been represented as a champion and a patriot and in children’s books has even met the likes of Dr Who and Catweazle! Recent years have seen a ‘new wave’ of Herewardista’s rise up in the literary world. The works of Paul Kingsnorth, James Wilde, Stewart Binns, James Aitcheson and others has rekindled an interest in Hereward just as it began to fade from the lore of the local folk across the Fenlands - whilst historical research from Professor Elizabeth van Houts from Cambridge University and others has uncovered much evidence to substantiate the writings of 12th Century monks, which was once considered unreliable.
David AC Maile. Twitter @WakeHereward