At 12.17 p.m. on 20th September 1901, the guns of the Royal Field Artillery fired, cathedral and church bells pealed, and applause erupted from thousands of spectators who were densely crowded in the streets, crammed onto roof-tops and balconies, and hanging out of windows. Later that afternoon, acrobatic clowns, performing dogs and “Old English sports” entertained the masses, a whole ox was roasted and distributed to the poor, and 2,000 schoolchildren were treated to a moralistic lecture and cakes. At 4.00 p.m., a commemorative service was held in the Cathedral, which proved to be so popular that hundreds of people were left standing outside. The scene was Winchester, and the occasion was the unveiling of a larger-than-life bronze statue of King Alfred the Great, erected to commemorate what was believed to be the thousandth anniversary of his death.

It is perhaps not surprising to discover that the demise of a ninth-century king was remembered in 1901. Throughout the Victorian age, the speed of contemporary industrial and social change caused the future to be contemplated with apprehension and history, conversely, to seem increasingly appealing. This new attraction included something of a mania for commemorating historical dates. Throughout 1897, for instance, every edition of the Cornhill Magazine carried an “anniversary study” of a significant historical event. As the work of many modern scholars has shown, it is also far from startling that a king from the medieval period, in particular, should have been venerated. After the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829, the Middle Ages – which undeniably represented several centuries of Catholicism in Britain's past – took on a new interest for writers, historians and the general public. This was then fostered by Victorian Britain's industrial and colonial success, which tended to increase national pride and thus encourage the early British past to be hailed as equal in interest and import to the classical period.

That the residents of Winchester should have been eager to erect a statue of a king who had died in their town and, more importantly, made it the capital of his kingdom, is also hardly remarkable. By the late nineteenth century, in response to the growing centralisation of political and economic life in London, a great many provincial areas of Britain were asserting the richness of their local history and were consequently restoring monuments, unearthing remains or erecting memorials.