Synonyms:
Wessex
Meaning: a Saxon kingdom in southwestern England that became the most powerful English kingdom by the 10th century
Usage examples
The mind of the people in Wessex had changed and they had elected him king.
Pigs were rather plentiful hereabout, being bred and fattened in large numbers in certain parts of North Wessex.
In these Wessex nooks the busy outsider's ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his present is futurity.
"But whatso hap at the end of the world, Where Nothing is struck and sounds, It is not, by Thor, these monkish men These humbled Wessex hounds--
Centre and right the Wessex guard Grew pale for doubt and fear, And the flank failed at the advance, For the death-light on the wizard lance-- The star of the evil spear.
There was that in the wild men back of him, There was that in his own wild song, A dizzy throbbing, a drunkard smoke, That dazed to death all Wessex folk, And swept their spears along.
And the great kings of Wessex Wearied and sank in gore, And even their ghosts in that great stress Grew greyer and greyer, less and less, With the lords that died in Lyonesse And the king that comes no more.
(as Drayton sang it), was, and is, in itself the city of a dream. Vague imaginings of its castle, its three mints, its magnificent apsidal abbey, the chief glory of South Wessex, its twelve churches, its shrines, chantries, hospitals, its gabled freestone mansions--all now ruthlessly swept away--throw the visitor, even against his will, into a pensive melancholy, which the stimulating atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel.