I could just about bear the flight to Edinburgh, but then it's another 50 mins on the road..
But it’s not about what you can bear, it’s about the best place for your DS to study what he’s interested in.
My field is a bit later than Anglo Saxon and Medieval, but Lancaster is excellent in both.
Exeter is a small very friendly campus-based university with a big history department- although I’d say their specialties are more in world history and imperial studies.
Bristol is a rather sprawling city university with an excellent history Department.
Your DS should take a look at the respective departmental websites (not the UCAS/Admissions advertising) and look at what the staff work on, what they teach, and what books they’ve written. You’ll usually get the highest quality undergrad education from research-active teaching staff - be taught by the people writing the books in the library, not the staff just following along!
Your DS should look at the information tabout a typical degree structure, the types of modules available, what’s compulsory and what range of optional modules are typically offered.
Where I did my History degre( one of the oldest and more venerable places) there was a pretty inflexible structure -stuff we had to do. But many universities now offer more optionality.
Although this inevitably means that it’s hard to fins much depth pre-1700, sadly. So it’s going to be important for him to go to a department where there are specialists in the periods he’s interested in.
That is far more important than proximity to home, frankly. Don’t waste the only opportunity for relatively carefree study on a degree done just because it is close!