Can you help add any details about this family fun event which was held, it is thought, in 1994 on the playing fields behind St Mary’s Church close to the railway line where the original Viking boats were found when the railway line was built.
‘They burnt the Danish boats in Benfleet Creek and the charred remains of these, together with skeletons, were discovered in 1855 when navvies were driving piles for the railway track’ ‘Bygone Benfleet ‘ Norman M. Chisman. 1991, Phillimore,
It is thought that the Viking family fun day and re-enactment was in celebration of 1100 years since the Battle of Benfleet and the creation of St Mary’s Church as a place of worship, as churches were often built on the site of a battle and this may have happened in Benfleet.
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I would love to see any pictures taken of me and my pet ! If you were there you would remember me because I was dressed all in white from head to toe, as Mary with my naughty donkey Sunny. She spooked all the horses when we were supposed to lead the Viking ship procession from Benfleet school. Besides loving children and company, she eats anything, garden flowers, shrubs, sausages, hamburgers, cakes, sweets, broke into someones garden and ate their lettuces, then pitched in the cornfield up Ëssex Way for an hour before I finally dragged her home just before sunset.
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