The meeting place (or moot) of Swanborough Hundred, Wiltshire, was at Swanborough Tump, a hillock in the parish of Manningford Abbots. It was a moot-place mentioned in the will of King Alfred.

My Newman and Hayes ancestors lived at Manningford Abbots.

The tump was the agreed meeting place for Alfred and his brother King Ethelred I in 878 before the battle of Ethandun, when Wessex was being attacked by the Danish invaders. A passage in Alfred’s Will reads:

But it came to pass that we [Alfred and Aethelred] by all the heathen folk [the Danes] despoiled were. Then discoursed we concerning our children that they would need some support to be given by us out of these estates, as to us was given. Then were we in council at Swinbeorg; when we two declared, in the West-Saxon nobles’ presence, that which soever of us two were longest liver, that he should give to the other’s children those lands that we two ourselves had acquired, and those lands that Athuf the king gave to us two while Aethelbolde was living; except those that he to us three brothers bequeathed. And of this, each of us two to the other his security did give, that whether of us two should live longest, he should take both to the land and to the treasures; and to all his possessions, except that part, which either of us to his children should bequeath.