An English camp at the battlefield

It did not make sense to us that the English would leave their fortified camp to fight a defensive battle somewhere else. The traditional explanation is that they were caught trying a surprise attack. Poppycock. Harold knew of the Norman cavalry by the day of battle. He and William had been exchanging messages, so each knew the other’s camp. William had prepared for a surprise attack. There is no way Harold would have tried a shorthanded attack on the Norman camp if the Normans were prepared. Having discovered the Norman cavalry, Harold would either retreat to Bodiam or fortify the English camp while they awaited reinforcements. If they had retreated, the battle would not have happened. We therefore assumed they fortified their camp and stayed there, exactly as Wace suggests.

We originally concluded that Carmen was either mistaken about the English emerging from woodland as the Normans approached – albeit an oddly detailed mistake – or it was trying to say that reinforcements were arriving from woodland when the Normans attacked the camp. Wace does say that English reinforcements were arriving all the time, so perhaps some of them poured forth from woodland to augment those that were already in their camp.

If the English were attacked in their camp, it had to fit descriptions of the battlefield. All the primary sources agree that the ground was steep and difficult. Carmen says it was untilled; probably heathland. WP says that at the start of their attack: “The Duke and his men, in no way daunted by the difficulty of the place, began slowly to climb the steep slope". CKE says that the English: “roused with indignation as the Normans strived to gain the higher ground, drove them down into the valley beneath, where hurling their javelins and rolling down stones on them as they stood below, destroyed them to a man". Carmen says: “In summo montis vexillum vertice fixit", which Morton & Muntz translate as: “On the highest point of the summit he planted his banner". 

Historians have always interpreted these statements to mean that the battlefield hill is high, steep, conical and topped by a distinct summit. Their reasoning is not complicated. Carmen says that Harold planted his banner on a ‘montis’, Latin for mountain. There are no mountains in southern England - presumably why Morton & Muntz ignore it - but it sounds like it must be a high hill. “Slowly began to climb the steep slope" implies that the hill is high and steep. Carmen seems to confirm this by going on to say that the Duke: “boldly approached the steep slope". For stones to be rolled as weapons the hillsides must be steep. The Normans would not attack up a steep slope if the battlefield hill had alternative shallow slopes. The only hills that do not have shallow slopes are conical or ridges. Ridges seldom have distinct summits. Q.E.D.

We looked for a high steep conical treeless hill that was close to the Roman road and close to a freshwater stream. There are none. There are a few raised sections along the Rother Ridge near its intersection with the Roman road at Cripps Corner. By definition, they are conical near the top. We examined them. Compasses Hill (B on Figure 38) is most similar to our traditional image of a steep conical battlefield hill, but it is only 200m across and it is covered in trees. Hook’s Beech (C) is a better size for an English camp site, but it too is covered in trees. Yeakell and Gardner's 1770 map and MAGIC suggest that both have been woody since ancient times. That left ‘The Beacon’ (A).

We spent a week investigating The Beacon (apart from its battle possibilities it has some fascinating WWII anti-tank placements). It is a plausible camp and battlefield. It has sparse tree cover, a flattish top, several nearby lakes and it is steep around perhaps 240° of its circumference, especially to the west. On the other hand, it is big and flat-topped to be defended by 6,000. The enclosed shield wall around the flat-top shown in green on Figure 39  is 1750m long, nearly twice the length at the traditional battlefield. Also, it is at the ‘T’ junction of the Udimore Ridge and the Rother Ridge, which gives it three shallow ridge-crest approaches: to the north, east and southwest.

Harold might possibly have protected the northern approach with a fosse across the ridge crest (shown in red). If so, he could have covered the shallow east and southwest approaches eight deep and still leave enough men to be two deep elsewhere. Perhaps he had more men than we calculate. Our bigger issue is that there was almost certainly a ridgeway (yellow dots) on the Rother Ridge that crossed the western side of the summit. It would have given the Normans direct access to the shield wall on an easy shallow dry slope, quite unlike the primary source descriptions of steep slopes on difficult untilled ground. It also lacks some of the more enigmatic details mentioned in the primary sources, such as it has nowhere that might be described as a “a narrow place", no way to “enclose the battlefield" and it is not above a plain.

Try as we might, we could not come up with a scenario that matched The Beacon to the primary source camp or battlefield descriptions. William would clearly have split his forces to attack from different directions, whereas the primary sources say that they attacked in three divisions from the same direction. They would have attacked on the shallow approaches which would contradict the primary source descriptions of a steep untilled slope. There was no valley in javelin range. Stones would not be dangerous on any slope the Normans would use to attack. The English would not have entered the battlefield in a column. It has nowhere that might be described as a “a narrow place", no way to “enclose the battlefield" and it is not above a plain. We could think of no way, given what was at stake, that a fosse could not be bypassed. The line would be too thin away from the shallow approaches. We are convinced the Normans would have contrived a way to break through on the shallow southern slope.

Reluctantly, we abandoned the combined English camp/battlefield theory. This meant we would have to come up with a plausible explanation for why the English might leave their fortified camp to fight a defensive battle somewhere that was unfortified; and we would have to explain why Poitiers and Wace imply that the English were attacked in their camp if they were not. But it did mean that the English could have camped south of Cripps Corner on a hill that was not high, steep, conical or treeless.