Wessex was the name of one of the original Dark Age Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. ‘Wessex’ is still commonly used today to refer to Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Wight and Wiltshire. Here, with the possible exception of Dorset, fairy belief was all but dead by the 1850s as the railway and industrialisation arrived.
Wessex Fairy Tales
Church Moving on the Isle of Wight
Farmer Surprises Fairies In His Barn
Wessex Fairy Beliefs
Fairy Fears on the Downs (Hampshire)
Fairy Rings (Berkshire)
New Forest Pixies (Hampshire)
Seventeenth-Century Wessex Belief in Changelings
Wessex Fairy Sightings
Anne Bodenham and the Little Ragged Boys
Being Led Away by the Fairies in Wiltshire
Blackberrying and Fairies (Berkshire)
Fairy Invasion (Hampshire)
Lippin Wood Fairy Cake (Hants)
New Forest Fairies (Hants)
Okeford Hill Fairy Encounter (Dorset)
Portsmouth Bedroom Fairy (Hampshire)
Quinsy Fairies (Hampshire)
Typewriter Fairy (Hants)
Warnford Fairies (Hampshire)
West Meon Fairies (Hampshire)
Wood Oven Pixie (Hampshire)
Wessex Fairy Books
Boase, Wendy The Folklore of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (London: Batsford 1976)
Chadwick, John C. Folklore and Witchcraft in Dorset and Wiltshire (Nigel J. Clarke Publications 1984)
Doel, Fran and Goff D. Doel Folklore of Dorset (Stroud: The History Press 2007)
Legg, Penny Folklore of Hampshire (Stroud: History Press 2010)
Newland, Robert Dark Dorset Fairies (SB Publications 2006)
Nicholls, Jeff Our Mysterious Shire: Myths, Legends and Ghost Stories of Berkshire (Corinthian Publishers, 1985)
And try the fabulous Dark Dorset website…