Wessex
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50 free Wessex trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Wessex vanished from the map of England almost a thousand years ago, yet the name never went away. It began as the kingdom of the West Saxons, grew under Alfred the Great into the one English realm the Vikings could not break, and became the seed from which England itself grew. Today it has no borders and no government, but you will still find it on company signs, regimental badges and a royal title. This quiz covers both lives of Wessex. There are questions on the kings who built it, the battles and hiding places of Alfred's wars, the forts, laws and books he left behind, and the saints and legends attached to them. Others ask where Wessex is in England today: which modern counties and cities sit on the old kingdom's land, how a Victorian novelist put the name back into use, and where it turns up now in television, film, farming and aviation. It suits history fans, viewers of Viking-age dramas, readers of the Wessex novels and anyone who has driven through the region and wondered what the name on the sign means. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Legend says Alfred the Great, hiding from the Vikings in a peasant woman's hut, was scolded for burning what?
Cakes
Cakes left baking by the fire burned while the fugitive king brooded over his troubles. The woman, who had no idea who her guest was, gave him a thorough telling-off.
Q 02Which member of the British royal family was created Earl of Wessex on his wedding day in 1999?
Prince Edward
Prince Edward broke with the custom that a sovereign's sons are made royal dukes. He took instead an earldom that had lain unused since before the Norman Conquest.
Q 03The Wessex Saddleback, a black breed with a white band over its shoulders, is what kind of farm animal?
A pig
A pig from Wiltshire and the New Forest, the Wessex Saddleback has died out as a pure breed in Britain. It survives in small numbers in Australia and New Zealand.
Q 04Which novelist revived the name Wessex for the half-imagined region of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and other books?
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy first borrowed the old kingdom's name in Far from the Madding Crowd. His fictional region grew from a corner of Dorset to cover half a dozen counties.
Q 05The Westland Wessex, which hunted submarines for the Royal Navy and served with the RAF, was what type of aircraft?
A helicopter
A helicopter built under licence from the American Sikorsky S-58, the Wessex swapped the original piston engine for a gas turbine, which made it quieter and able to lift more.
Q 06Which television drama follows Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a Saxon raised by Vikings, as he fights for Alfred's Wessex?
The Last Kingdom
The Last Kingdom began on BBC Two in 2015 and later moved to Netflix. It ran for five series before a feature-length film, Seven Kings Must Die, finished the story.
Q 07Which actor played the villainous Lord Wessex, betrothed to Viola, in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love?
Colin Firth
Colin Firth played the earl as a cash-strapped aristocrat after a rich bride. The title was an invention: no Earl of Wessex had existed for more than 500 years by Shakespeare's day.
Q 08Which English cathedral city, the chief city of Alfred the Great's Wessex, has a bronze statue of him raising a sword?
Winchester
Winchester put up Hamo Thornycroft's towering bronze in 1901 to mark a thousand years since the king's death. Alfred had laid the city out on a new street grid to hold off the Vikings.
Q 09The author of the Wessex novels kept a notoriously bad-tempered pet named Wessex, which was what kind of animal?
A fox terrier
A fox terrier named Wessex shared the novelist's last years at Max Gate, his Dorset home. The dog's gravestone can still be found in the grounds.
Q 10Which heraldic beast appears in gold on the red flag that was designed for the Wessex region in the 1970s?
A wyvern
A wyvern is a winged dragon with two legs instead of four. Medieval writers tell of Wessex armies raising a golden dragon in battle, and Somerset's county council took a red one for its arms in 1911.
Q 11The heartland of Wessex lay in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and which fifth modern county?
Berkshire
Berkshire was contested between Wessex and Mercia in the Anglo-Saxon period. It was given the title Royal County in 1957, thanks to the presence of Windsor Castle.
Q 12The Bronze Age Wessex culture, known for richly furnished graves, is credited with later phases of which stone circle?
Stonehenge
Stonehenge was still being reworked when the culture's chieftains were buried nearby with gold. Archaeologist Stuart Piggott named the culture in 1938 after the old kingdom's lands.
Q 13Which island off the south coast did King Cædwalla of Wessex invade in the 680s, killing its last king?
Isle of Wight
Q 21After hiding in the Somerset marshes, Alfred the Great routed the Viking army in May 878 at which battle?
Edington
Edington, in Wiltshire, saved Wessex. The beaten army fled to its fortress, and Alfred's men besieged it for two weeks until the Vikings handed over hostages and swore to leave.
Q 22Which Viking warlord agreed to be baptised and leave Wessex after Alfred the Great defeated him in 878?
Guthrum
Guthrum was baptised three weeks after his defeat, with Alfred standing as his sponsor, and 29 of his chief men joined him at the font. He went on to rule East Anglia as a Christian king.
Q 23Driven from his hall in early 878, Alfred the Great built a fort on which marsh island in the Somerset Levels?
Athelney
Isle of Wight rulers were the last pagan kings in Anglo-Saxon England. When King Arwald fell in 686, the island became the final English territory to be converted to Christianity.
Q 14Hampshire, at the heart of old Wessex, takes its name from which south-coast port?
Southampton
Southampton was Hamtun to the Saxons, and the land around it Hamtunscir. The Domesday spelling, Hantescire, is why the county's name is still shortened to Hants.
Q 15In the Wessex novels, the fictional market town of Casterbridge stands in for which real town?
Dorchester
Dorchester, the author's home for many years, became the setting for the story of a hay-trusser who auctions off his wife while drunk and later rises to be mayor.
Q 16In the Wessex novel Jude the Obscure, the university city of Christminster is modelled on which real English city?
Oxford
Oxford marks the far north-eastern corner of the fictional Wessex. Jude, a village stonemason, moves there and studies alone in the hope of winning a place at the university.
Q 17Which public relations executive became Countess of Wessex when she married into the royal family in 1999?
Sophie Rhys-Jones
Sophie Rhys-Jones had opened her own agency three years before the wedding at Windsor Castle. She was known by the Wessex title until 2023, when the couple were given a dukedom instead.
Q 18Which bishop from 9th-century Wessex gives his name to the 15 July feast said to forecast forty days of rain?
St Swithun
St Swithun asked to be buried outdoors, where rain from the eaves could fall on his grave. His best-known miracle was mending a basket of eggs that workmen had smashed.
Q 19Which historical novelist wrote The Saxon Stories, thirteen novels about a warrior serving Alfred the Great of Wessex?
Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell, also the creator of the rifleman Richard Sharpe, believes he is descended from Uhtred the Bold, the real northern lord who lent his name to the books' hero.
Q 20Which river, with the Bristol Avon, is thought to have marked the northern boundary of Wessex by the 8th century?
The Thames
The Thames became the frontier after Mercia seized the kingdom's earliest lands on the far bank. Shut out of the north, Wessex turned its ambitions southwards instead.
Athelney is thought to mean 'isle of the prince' in Old English. It was then a low island lost in near-impassable swamp, joined to firmer ground by a single guarded causeway.
Q 24What were the fortified towns called that Alfred the Great planted across Wessex, each within a day's reach?
Burhs
Burhs gave English the word 'borough'. Alfred's network had thirty-three of them, about 19 miles apart, so that a garrison could meet an attack anywhere in the kingdom within a day.
Q 25Which record of English history was first compiled in Wessex during the reign of Alfred the Great?
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was copied and continued in monasteries around the country. One version was still being updated in 1154, long after the Norman Conquest.
Q 26The gold and crystal Alfred Jewel, a Wessex treasure dug up in Somerset, is thought to be the handle of what?
A reading pointer
A reading pointer, or aestel, helped a reader follow the words on a page. The jewel is inscribed 'Alfred ordered me made', and the king is recorded sending such pointers to his bishops.
Q 27Anglo-Saxon tradition credits Alfred the Great of Wessex with marking the hours by burning six of what each day?
Candles
Candles of equal size, each burning for four hours, measured out his day. They sat inside a lantern of wood and thin, see-through horn so that draughts could not spoil the timing.
Q 28Which city did Alfred the Great of Wessex retake from the Vikings in 886 and entrust to a Mercian ally?
London
London had been a Mercian town, so Alfred handed it to Æthelred of Mercia to govern. From that year he began styling himself King of the Anglo-Saxons.
Q 29After Alfred's wars, what name was given to the north and east of England, where Viking settlers kept their own customs?
The Danelaw
The Danelaw left its mark on the map. Place names ending in -by and -thorp across the north of England and the East Midlands come from the Old Norse its settlers spoke.
Q 30Saga legend says the Great Heathen Army that overran Wessex came to avenge which Viking thrown into a snake pit?
Ragnar Lodbrok
Ragnar Lodbrok was executed by King Ælla of Northumbria in the saga. Three of his sons, among them Ivar the Boneless, are named as leaders of the force that landed in 865.