Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of Danes Moor


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Battle of Edgecote Moor. This is clearly something for which we need experts. But among the people here who sound like they know what they are talking about, all agree that this is an alternate name for the 1469 Battle of Edgecote Moor, so the redirect makes sense. And among these editors, only one person believes that we have enough sourcing to write an article about a much earlier battle of the same name.  Sandstein  22:18, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Battle of Danes Moor

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There was no such battle. It would have taken place in the territory of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians but it is not mentioned in her biography or in histories of Mercia, or in biographies of Edward the Elder, or histories of the Vikings, or histories of Anglo-Saxon England, or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It is not found on a search of Google Scholar and a Google search finds no reliable sources. The only source I know of (apart from Google ones which may be based on the Wikipedia article) is the one cited in the article and this is a bare mention in a book which is not written by an Anglo-Saxon specialist and which cites no sources. Dudley Miles (talk) 20:40, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 21:08, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 21:08, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. North America1000 14:04, 11 January 2020 (UTC)


 * redirect to Battle of Edgecote Moor, for which it serves as an alternate name in some works. As for the supposed pre-conquest battle, I found this: "South of the village is a valley called Danesmoor, or Dunsmore, as it is commonly called, where, according to the tradition of the neighbourhood, a battle was fought between the Saxons and Danes, but history is silent on the subject." Mangoe (talk) 04:57, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect, whether's its a fake, hoax, or an alternate name, per WP:CHEAP. Bearian (talk) 22:39, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * We don't seem to be short of references to the battle. "by tradition, recorded by Morton (p.542) and by Beesley (p.56) in the 18th and 19th centuries the moor gained its name as the place of a battle between Saxons and Danes in the 9th century." , but the stub article contains all there is about it. Usually we know of a battle but not its exact location; here we have a location, but few other details; we don't even know who won.   Hawkeye7   (discuss)  18:39, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It is possible that there was a battle in the ninth century which is only remembered in local tradition, but the article is about a battle in 914, which is in the tenth century. It is also possible that the tradition was invented to explain the place name. The preceding sentence to the quote above says: "According to Gover the derivation of the name is obscure but certainly does not refer to Danes".  A vague tradition of a battle which is not mentioned by historians of Anglo-Saxon England does not provide the basis for a Wikipedia article. Dudley Miles (talk) 15:05, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Can you trace the source for Gover, who was (or is) a place-name specialist? Peterkingiron (talk) 16:05, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Gover is not available online, but there is a copy in the library here.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  20:24, 15 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep -- The problem is not with whether there was a battle but where it was. A. Beesley, The History of Banbury (1841), pp.53-7 summarises the evidence for a conflict between the local Saxons and the Danes in the area.  I would suggest that locating it at Danesmoor depends solely on the place-name, which could be a back-formation, the conversion of a name to what someone thought it ought to be.  Beesley also associates events with Hook Norton and with certain camps, which are probably Iron Age hillforts, but in the state of knowledge of the period such a mistake is understandable.  Bessley quotes his sources, which are ASC and Florence of Worcester.  Merging should not be an option as the merge target is the Civil War battle of Edgecote, over 700 years later.  Even if the battle is fake news, it is an old enough error to need a WP article explaining it.  The difficulty is that this is taking us rather close to primary research, which WP does not like.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:05, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I have amended the article to reflect what Beesley and ASC say. The 1874 directory will not be an independent source.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:56, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Redirect. Beesley quotes ASC and Florence of Worcester only for the attack on Hook Norton. His only source for Danes Moor is Morton's 18C book. There must have been many unrecorded battles in the area, but a Wikipedia article requires reliable sources, and in this case they do not exist. Dudley Miles (talk) 00:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.