He was one of the students of Brookfield who were guarding the railway line.
Cricklade is a small Cotswold town and civil parish on the River Thames in north Wiltshire, England, midway between Swindon and Cirencester. It is the first town on the Thames as it flows towards London.[2] The parish population at the 2011 census was 4,227
Cricklade's Latin motto In Loco Delicioso means "in a pleasant place".[3] In 2008 the town was awarded Best Small Town in UK in the Royal Horticultural Society's Britain in Bloom Finals and in 2011 the Champion of Champions award in the Britain in Bloom competition.[4] It hosts several sporting events and the annual Cricklade Show. The large Jubilee Clock was erected in 1898 in honour of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in the preceding year. It stands outside the Vale Hotel in High Street, where the Town Cross once stood. There are two sculptures of the Holy Cross in Cricklade, one in the churchyard of St Sampson's, the other at St Mary's. There is local rivalry about which is believed to be older.
History
Cricklade was founded in the 9th century by the Anglo-Saxons, at the point where the Roman road Ermin Way crossed the River Thames. It was the home of a royal mint from 979 to 1100; there are some Cricklade coins in the town museum.[5][6] The Domesday Book records Cricklade as the meeting place of Cricklade Hundred in 1086.
It is one of thirty burhs (fortresses or fortified towns) recorded in the Burghal Hidage document, which describes a system of fortresses and fortified towns built around Wessex by King Alfred. Recent research has suggested that these burhs were built in the short period 878–79, to defend Wessex against the Vikings under Guthrum, and to act as an offensive to the Viking presence in Mercia. It is argued that the completion of this system – of which Cricklade was a key military element, being a short distance down Ermin Street from Cirencester, the Viking base for a year – precipitated the retreat of the Vikings from Mercia and London to East Anglia, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in late 879.[5]
The square defences of the fortification were laid out on a regular module. They have been excavated in several places on all four of its sides since the 1940s, making this is possibly the most extensively sampled fortification of the period. In the initial phase, a walkway of laid stones marked the rear of a bank of stacked turfs and clay, which had been derived from the three external ditches.[6] In the second phase, the front of the bank, which after probably only a short period of time had become somewhat degraded, was replaced by a stone wall. This encircled the defences on all four of its sides. The manpower needed to build this was probably similar to what was needed to build the original turf and clay defences. It would have considerably strengthened the defensive capabilities of the burh. It has recently been suggested that it was inserted in the 890s. That other burhs of the Burghal Hidage were also strengthened with stone walls, which suggests this was part of a systematic upgrade of the defensive provisions for Wessex, ordered at the time by the king