A HISTORIAN is set to ask city councillors for money to pay for a celebration of Oxford being burned to the ground.

Retired history teacher Roger Jenking is asking for £5,000 for a commemoration of the 1,000th ann-iversary of Oxford being set ablaze by Danish Viking raiders.

In 1009, they sacked the city as revenge for a national slaughter of Vikings ordered by the then Anglo-Saxon King of England, Ethelred the Unready.

An Anglo-Saxon re-creation organisation contacted by the Oxford Mail said it could deliver three days of staged “battles”, with up to 120 authentically-dressed Vikings at South Park for £5,000.

Mr Jenking, a part-time attendant at the Museum of Oxford, will make a five-minute speech at the city council meeting on Monday, April 20, to ask for the grant.

The 61-year-old, of Joan Lawrence Place, Headington, said: “This is a landmark event in our civic history and a once-in-a-lifetime, or indeed a once in many lifetimes, chance to mark this anniversary.

“I think there’s a good case for the council to put money into this, as it could be done fairly cheaply and easily.”

He said he believed a re-enactment would attract thousands of people to South Park, as a recreation of the city’s Civil War siege in the 1980s had proved a popular event.

He would also like the council to host a civic lecture on the historical event at the Town Hall later in the year.

cwalker@oxfordmail.co.uk