The tower stands near the location of 'Egbert's stone' where it is believed that Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, rallied the Saxons in May 878 before the important Battle of Ethandun, where the Danish army, led by Guthrum the Old was defeated.
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Henry Hoare II planned in the 1760s the tower to to commemorate the end of the Seven Years' War against France and the accession of King George III near the location of 'Egbert's stone' where it is believed that Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, rallied the Saxons in May 878 before the important Battle of Ethandun.
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According to legend, King Alfred once hid out in a countryside homestead during war, and was put in charge of removing baking from the oven when it was done.
In the medieval period, their construction was attributed variously to iconic figures such as King Arthur, King Alfred, the Danes, Julius Caesar, and even giants.
In Saxon times, King Alfred's military road, the Herepath, ran up from Combwich, Cannington (a possible site of the Battle of Cynwit) and Over Stowey, along the present course of the Stowey road, across Dead Woman's Ditch to Crowcombe Park Gate, south along the main ridge of the Quantocks to Triscombe Stone, then west across the valley to the Brendon Hills and Exmoor.
Lych or Lich being the Old English name for a corpse, it is assumed that the pit was therefore some kind of mass burial ground, local tradition associating it with the Danish victory over Alfred's Saxons at the Battle of Basing in 871.
One possibility is that it is the namesake of Bishop Asser, a friend and biographer of King Alfred in the 9th century.
Wincon was a series of British science fiction conventions, initially envisaged as a one-off entry in the Unicon sequence (1980 onwards) but which subsequently took on a life of its own as an occasional event held at King Alfred's College, Winchester.
Indeed Nottingham was once known as Tigguo Cobauc meaning Place of Caves and was referred to as such by the Bishop of Sherborne Asser in The Life of King Alfred (893AD).
The King Alfred Chair of English Literature was founded at the University of Liverpool, England in 1881.
When his novel was first published, Williams photocopied portions of the book detailing the King Alfred Plan and left copies in subway car seats around Manhattan.
Performer and musician Gil Scott-Heron created the song "King Alfred Plan," included on his (1972) album Free Will, that takes the Plan at face value.
This material includes a good portion of the law-codes that were issued by Anglo-Saxon kings, from King Ine of Wessex (appended to King Alfred's domboc) to King Cnut, all in Latin translation.
Bishop Asser – Welsh monk, religious advisor to King Alfred, enemy of Uhtred
Shippey says that Tolkien knew well the translation of Boethius that was made by King Alfred and he quotes some “Boethian” remarks from Frodo, Treebeard and Elrond.