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The Traditional Battlefield

We think that the Battle of Hastings was fought at Hurst Lane near Sedlescombe. If so, it was not fought at the traditional location around Battle Abbey. Here we explain why the traditional battlefield is an unlikely battle location, check its supporting evidence, investigate how the traditional narrative might be mistaken, and look at why Battle Abbey might have been built where it is.

Figure 51: The traditional Norman attack

If anyone is unfamiliar with the traditional battle narrative, here is a recap. Harold, incandescently angry about the Norman invasion, raced down to Sussex hoping to execute a surprise attack on the Norman camp. Such was his haste that he left half of his army behind. He camped on Caldbec Hill. The Normans were camped at modern Hastings. Soon after dawn on the day of battle, Harold, too impatient to await the arrival of the rest of his men, ordered his understrength rag-tag army to attack the Norman camp. They set off southeast along the Hastings Ridge. Simultaneously, William ordered his men to attack the English camp. They set off northwest up the Hastings Ridge. Scouts on both sides alerted their commanders that the enemy was heading towards them. The Normans halted at Hechelande near modern Telham where they formed a battle camp. Harold realised that the Normans were too powerful to fight on level ground, so he ordered his men to occupy the nearest hill, which happened to be the ridge at modern Battle (white dots on Figure 51). The English formed a tightly packed straightish shield wall near the top of the hill. Harold commanded his troops from behind the middle of the line (X). The Normans marched out along Telham Hill, formed into three divisions to the south of Battle Ridge and attacked up the slope (cyan line and arrows on Figure 51). After fighting all day without making a dent in the English line, William ordered a feigned retreat on one of the flanks. Some of the English chased, leaving a gap in the shield wall through which Norman horsemen got behind the line to attack and kill Harold. The rest of the English army held out until dusk, then fled.

There are major inconsistencies between this narrative and the contemporary accounts. Brevis Relatio and Wace, for example, say that Harold went straight to modern Battle and waited to be attacked. This would resolve one awkward issue about why Harold would try an understrength ‘surprise’ attack on a fortified Norman camp that could not be taken by surprise, insofar as Brevis Relatio and Wace say that he didn’t. But it would create another. There is no conceivable reason that Harold would go to modern Battle, or anywhere else, and set the terms of a battle that he could not possibly win and would quite probably lose. Yet this would be the consequence of establishing a static shield wall at Battle. It also contradicts Carmen which says that the Normans see the English occupy the battlefield on the morning of the battle.

There is no agreement on the size or shape of the English shield wall either. Every reputable historian agrees that the battle was fought on the 2km long pseudo-ridge that is usually referred to as Senlac Hill or Battle Ridge (white dots on Figure 51). Early historians assumed that both sides had 25000 or more men, enough for the English to set up a shield wall along the entire length of the ridge. In 1897, Willhelm Spatz calculated that neither side could have had more than 8000 men, probably less, so most subsequent analyses suppose that there were between 5000 and 8000 men on each side. It is not enough men to defend the entire ridge, so historians assume that Harold just defended the central 400m to 800m. Some propose that the line was straight, others that it was curved, others that it doglegged, and others still that it was straight but with ‘refused’ (i.e. bent) flanks.

Another inconsistency is the direction of the Norman advance. The cyan line on Figure 51 shows the traditional route. It is a partial match for Wace’s description of the Norman advance, but it crosses a boggy stream in Malthouse Wood. Some historians believe that the Normans avoided this stream by staying on the Hastings Ridge until modern Starr’s Green (route shown in cyan dots on Figure 51). But neither advance makes military sense because they both force the Normans to attack uphill. A better alternative, originally proposed by Time Team and now endorsed by English Heritage and others, would have been to stay on the Hastings Ridge and attack along the ridge crest from the east (teal dots on Figure 51). This is militarily most plausible, and it would explain why no archaeology has been found on the traditional battlefield, but it would contradict several contemporary account battlefield clues, including every aspect of Wace’s description of the Norman advance and the steep battlefield. It would also mean that the English shield wall was facing in the wrong direction.

Here then is one reason to be sceptical about the traditional battlefield location. Every reputable historian that has written about the orthodox battle proposes a new scenario. They differ about the size and composition of the armies, where the English camped, how and why the English arrived at the battlefield, the direction from which the Normans attacked, the size and shape of the English shield wall, how and why William failed to outflank the English line, and so on. Some variables have many possibilities - 30 different shield walls are depicted blog. This creates thousands of potential permutations, a huge number of which have been proposed as the most likely. There is not one orthodox battle consensus, but scores of competing hypotheses. A H Burne analysed all the proposals that had been published before 1950, lamenting: “There is a disparity of views. How are we to judge between such eminent authorities? When the doctors disagree, who shall decide?”. He decided that they were all wrong, so he proposed yet another. Few historians were persuaded his theory was any better than its predecessors. Subsequent historians still think they are all wrong, so a constant flow of new permutations has been proposed.  

Historians are too polite to openly criticise their colleagues, but in effect, each new engagement theory at the orthodox battlefield is saying that there are fundamental flaws in all the theories that have been proposed before. But other historians find just as many flaws in the new ones. In other words, leaving aside the participants and outcome, reputable historians do not accept any aspect of the orthodox battle narrative, other than that Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield. And that is fishy, as we shall see next.

A monastery on a battlefield?

The entire orthodox battle narrative is based on Battle Abbey having been built on the battlefield. It is incredibly unlikely.

No medieval Christian monasteries purport to have been built on a battlefield combat zone, apart from Battle Abbey. One reason is that medieval people were terrified of being haunted by the souls of victims of violence. Another is that it would be widely perceived as the glorification of violence. William would have been especially sensitive to this because he wanted to earn the Pope’s absolution for the death and violence he caused at the Battle of Hastings. Building his Abbey on the battlefield would have done the opposite, exacerbating his sins in the eyes of the Pope.

Some contemporary accounts go further, claiming that the Abbey was built on the exact spot where Harold died. It would have been naïve of William to mark that spot for posterity. It would create a permanent shrine, a place for Saxons to venerate Harold as a martyr and a focus for insurgents. Contrary to the orthodox narrative, in our opinion, the location of Harold’s death would have been the very last place that William would have chosen to build his Abbey.

Then there is the Abbey’s name, and that of the surrounding town, Battle. Many perceive them to be self-evident proof that the Abbey was built on the battlefield, but they only became known as ‘Battle’ in Middle English. The Abbey’s original name was ‘Sancti Martini de Bello’. ‘bello’ means ‘to wage war’, so it was ‘St Martin of the War’, making it sound like a memorial to the entire Conquest rather than just the battle. It is entirely consistent with the Abbey being at modern Battle, which was in what we might refer to these days as the ‘theatre of war’. The Latin words for ‘battle’ were ‘pugna’ and ‘preolium’. ‘battlefield’ was usually ‘locus pugnæ’, or occasionally ‘acies’. If the Abbey had been built on the battlefield and William wanted to announce it, he would surely have named his Abbey ‘Sancti Martini de Pugna’. Contrary to popular opinion, the names Battle Abbey and Battle are evidence that the battle was not fought there rather than that it was.

Evidence that Battle Abbey is on the battlefield

English Heritage’s Roy Porter published a paper entitled ‘On the Very Spot: In Defence of Battle’ to collate all the evidence that the Battle of Hastings was fought at Battle. It was endorsed by the Battlefields Trust, Royal Armouries, the Sussex County Archaeologist, Mark Morris and others, so they presumably did not have any extra evidence to add.

Porter summarises: “The Chronicle [of Battle Abbey] stands as the summation of a tradition placing the abbey on the battlefield, a tradition which is attested by several documentary sources which allow us to trace it back to within living memory of 1066. This historical evidence, buttressed by the physical peculiarities of the abbey, is enough to make a compelling case for the traditional site.” This evidence needs to be checked.

Documentary evidence that the Abbey is on the battlefield

Porter’s only significant evidence that the battle was fought at Battle Abbey is documentary sources: Nine statements in contemporary accounts that say or imply that the Abbey was built on the battlefield. Here they are, using Porter’s choice of translators. Note that he uses ‘…’ to skip some parts of these statements for conciseness. We have filled them in, for completeness. Following our normal practice, translations to ‘Hastings’ have been reverted to the place named in the original manuscript.

1. The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, written by the monks of Battle Abbey contains what historians refer to as William’s ‘battlefield oath’ (Searle): “And to strengthen the hands and hearts of you who are about to fight for me, I make a vow on this very battlefield I shall found a monastery for the salvation of all, and especially for those who fall here, to the honour of God and his saints, where servants of God may be supported: a fitting monastery, with a worthy liberty. Let it be an atonement: a haven for all, as free as the one I conquer for myself.” Six or seven years after the battle, CBA says that William invites some monks from Marmoutier to build his abbey. They tell William that the battlefield is an inappropriate site for a monastery, but CBA (Searle) reckons that William tells them to build it there anyway: “When the king heard this he refused angrily and ordered them to lay the foundations of the church speedily and on the very spot where his enemy had fallen and the victory been won.”

2. Brevis Relatio, also written at Battle Abbey (Van Houts): “And so Harold departed from London with all his troops and arrived at a place which is now called Battle”. Later it says: “This battle took place on 14 October on the site where William, count of the Normans, but afterwards king of the English, had an abbey built to the memory of this victory, and for the absolution of the sins of all who had been slain there.”

3. Wace (Burgess): “He [Harold] led his men forward, as troops who were fully armed, to a place where he raised his standard; he had his pennon fixed at the very spot where Battle Abbey was built. He would, he said, defend himself against anyone who attacked him at that place.”

4. John of Worcester (McGurk): “In the diocese of Chichester in Sussex two new monasteries have been founded. First St Martin at Battle which King William the Elder founded and erected at the site of his battle in England. The church’s altar was placed where the body of Harold (slain for the love of his country) was found.”

5. William of Malmesbury (Mynors): “The other monastery he built at Hastingis in honour of St. Martin, and it is called Battle Abbey because the principal church is to be seen on the very spot where, according to tradition, among the piled heaps of corpses Harold was found.”

6. Orderic’s recension of Juimiège’s Gesta Normanorum Ducum (Van Houts): “The site, where, as we mentioned above, the combat took place is therefore called Battle to the present day. There King William founded a monastery dedicated to the Holy Trinity, filled it with monks of Marmoutier founded by Saint-Martin near Tours, and endowed it with the necessary wealth to enable them to pray for the dead of both sides.”

7. Orderic’s Historia Ecclesiastica (Van Houts): “he [William] built the abbey of the Holy Trinity at Senlac, the site of the battle, and endowed it with wealth and possessions.”

8. Henry of Huntingdon (Greenway): “The battle took place in the month of September [sic], on the feast day of St Calixtus. In that place King William later built a noble abbey for the souls of the departed, and called it by the fitting name of Battle.”

9. ASC-E (Garmonsway), in its obituary for William: “On the very spot where God granted him the conquest of England he caused a great abbey to be built; and settled monks in it and richly endowed it.”

At face value, as Porter says, these statements look like compelling evidence that the Abbey was built on the battlefield, perhaps at the exact location where Harold died. It is less convincing under the hood.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the only report from the losing side and the only one written within comfortable living memory of the battle. Porter says: This evidence, written by an Englishman in English and emphatic in its identification of the abbey site being on the battlefield of Hastings (‘On ðam ilcan steode’), is crucial on two counts: it is the earliest surviving reference to the dual location and it was written well within living memory of 1066, almost certainly before the end of the 11th century.” It is not as emphatic as he makes out.

Firstly, Garmonsway’s translation is quirky. Old English ‘steode’ means ‘place’, so Dorothy Whitelock translates William’s obituary in the ASC as: “In the same place where God permitted him to conquer England, he set up a famous monastery and appointed monks for it”. ‘steode’ has no implication of precision. While it could be a specific spot, thereby matching Garmonsway’s translation, it could be as large as a kingdom. Its meaning depends on the remoteness of the place, its population density, and the context. For instance, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that the place where Harold moored his fleet before the invasion was the Isle of Wight. Sub-Andredsweald East Sussex was just as remote and sparsely populated, so perhaps five miles of precision is all that can be expected.

Secondly, it is not obvious what the ASC means by ‘where God permitted him to conquer England’. It seems unlikely that it referred to the battlefield because it would have been easier and clearer to say: ‘William built a great abbey on the battlefield’. We think it is trying to say that William built his Abbey on what we would refer to these days as the ‘theatre of war’.

Regardless, in our view, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s obituary for William is far from emphatic. It does not say that the Abbey is on the battlefield. On the contrary, in our opinion, it is more likely to be saying that the Abbey is not on the battlefield than that it is.

Something similar is going on with Huntingdon, Brevis Relatio and Orderic. Huntingdon says ‘Quo in loco’, Brevis Relatio ‘in eo loco ubi’. Latin ‘loco’ means ‘place’. Orderic does not explain what he meant by the term ‘Senlac’, but some of his other references to it encompass both camps and the battlefield, so it must have been large. We discuss what it probably meant in Clue 18. For our purposes here, it is sufficient to say that it is also an unqualified ‘place’. An unqualified ‘place’, just as with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s ‘steode’, can be vague in remote and sparsely populated areas like medieval sub-Andredsweald East Sussex. If, as seems likely, it referred to the theatre of war, there is no reason these statements are more likely to apply to the orthodox battlefield than to any of the other candidates.

Before discussing the next group, have you ever wondered, Kipling-like, how the ‘Battle of Hastings’ got its name? Obviously not because it was fought near modern Hastings, or anywhere that Normans might have referred to as Hastinges. Rather, it is to do with the Latin word ‘bellum’ and its declensions. As we say in Clue 2 above, for no rational reason ‘bellum’ is invariably translated as ‘battle’ in statements about the Battle of Hastings. The term ‘Battle of Hastings’ derives from ‘bello de Hastinges’, first used in Domesday. But ‘bello’ almost never means ‘battle’. It is a verb usually meaning ‘to wage war’. So ‘bello de Hastinges’ means ‘War of Hastinges’. The war encompassed the battlefield, landing sites, camps, flight route, roads, rivers, skirmishes, foraging farms, and so on. These days it might be referred to as the ‘theatre of war’, and Hastinges (Hæstinaport) was the best-known place in this theatre of war. Hence the battle’s original name.

Much the same applies to Battle Abbey and the town of Battle. The former was originally named ‘Sancti Martini de Bello’, from which the town was named ‘Bello’. They took their names from the war rather than the battle. All three switched to ‘Battle’ during the transition to Middle English. There is no etymological justification. We suspect that the monks of Battle Abbey picked the new names for reasons of self-interest (more below).

bello has a wider significance with these ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ references. They were all written in Latin, apart from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Wace. The normal Latin word for battle is pugna’, so a battlefield is usually ‘loci pugnatum’ or sometimes ‘acies’. Orderic’s extension of Gesta Normanorum Ducum is the only ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ statement to use this term. We will return to it momentarily. His other reference says the Abbey is ‘ubi bellum factura est’. Huntingdon says it was ‘Commissum est autem bellum’. Both are in the context: ‘where the war took place’. This is consistent with the Abbey’s location in the theatre of war, even if the battlefield was three miles away. Indeed, these accounts would probably have said that the Abbey was on the ‘loci pugnatum’ if it was on the battlefield, so they too are more likely to be saying that the Abbey is not on the battlefield than that it is.

That leaves the four accounts which specifically say that the Abbey was built where Harold’s body was found, and the two which say that Harold came to ‘the place now named Bellum’, or similar, where he defended himself (Orderic’s GND interpolation is double counted because it does both). Five of the six – Malmesbury being the important exception - are unequivocal, as far as we can see, not liable to significant translation errors or misinterpretation. If they are wrong, it is because they were part of a well organised campaign of disinformation or were influenced by one.

The only organisation with the means, the opportunity and the motive to run a prolonged campaign of disinformation on this subject was the monks of Battle Abbey. Eleanor Searle gives the background in the introduction to her CBA translation. She says that William established Battle Abbey as a richly endowed ‘Royal Peculiar’, independent of diocesan control, but he failed to permanently protect its status with a charter. After William Rufus’s death, it became a plum asset that fell under immediate and regular threat of subjugation. Matters came to a head in the 1150s when Battle Abbey’s abbot, Walter de Luci, was threatened with excommunication for contumacy, partially fuelled by a feud with the Bishop of Chichester who was trying to subjugate the Abbey. Walter needed a royal charter to give him personal immunity and to substantiate Battle Abbey’s status as a Royal Peculiar. Then, suspiciously, a series of writs appeared that did exactly that.

These Battle Abbey writs are reproduced and translated in Professor Nicholas Vincent’s books about Henry II’s writs as numbers 134, 137, 138 and 139. Their preambles contain the first mention of William’s battlefield oath, in which they claim he vowed to build an abbey if God granted him victory. Some of them also say that the Abbey was built on the location where Harold died. These two notions are developed and embellished in the Chronicle of Battle Abbey (see above).

Searle and Vincent are convinced that the Battle Abbey writs are forgeries, commissioned by Walter de Luci to save his skin and to protect the Abbey’s independence. They are also convinced that William’s battlefield oath was fabricated. Indeed, Vincent is sceptical about the entire contents of the CBA: “This in turn raises doubts over the abbey’s chronicle [CBA], generally considered reliable save where indubitably proved false, better regarded, I would suggest, as unreliable in anything that cannot be independently substantiated”.

Summarising, Searle and Vincent believe that the monks of Battle Abbey ran a campaign of disinformation through the second half of the 12th century to protect the Abbey’s independence. It is possible that copies of the forged writs made their way to Wace, who might have been duped into using them as the source for his ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ statement. But this could not apply to the other ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ references all of which date to the first half of the 12th century.

Brevis Relatio is the earliest of the other ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ sources, and therefore the only one that could have influenced all the others. Elisabeth van Houts dates it to between 1114 and 1120. Their abbot at the time was Ralph of Caen. According to Van Houts (in ‘The Memory of 1066 in Oral and Written Traditions’), his failing health might have led the Abbey scriptorium to write Brevis Relatio, hoping to protect the Abbey’s independence after his death. If so, Ralph’s idea was effectively to claim that the battlefield was the location of divine intervention, where God turned the Battle of Hastings in William’s favour in exchange for William’s pledge to build a monastery on the battlefield. It’s a good idea. Future kings would be reluctant to meddle for fear they angered God who might then rescind Norman power. Future bishops would be reluctant to meddle for fear they violated God’s will.

The key question is whether Brevis Relatio records the de-facto truth that the Abbey was on the battlefield or whether the monks invented it. The only way to prove it, either way, will be to find physical evidence. In its absence, there is plenty of reason to think the notion was invented.

We explain above why it is unlikely that anyone would build a monastery on a battlefield, and why it is especially unlikely that William would do so. The monks of Battle Abbey had the motive to take unpious actions to protect their wealth and independence, and showed in later years that they would do whatever was necessary. They had the means to fabricate a creation myth that the Abbey was built on the battlefield. They had the opportunity to disseminate a creation narrative in Brevis Relatio. But just because they had the motive, means, opportunity and track record, does not mean they are guilty. The only evidence that they invented the creation story is in the way it is reported in the other contemporary accounts.

All the ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ references - bar the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Brevis Relatio and CBA - must have been sourced from Brevis Relatio or a lost account. Wace and Malmesbury are known to have seen Brevis Relatio. It is not unreasonable to suspect that most of the others had seen it to. Malmesbury qualifies his ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ statement with the words ‘fuisse memoratur’, ‘it is said that’. This is a Latin way of saying something is unreliable hearsay. Greenway translates as ‘by tradition’, Giles translates ‘as they report’, ‘they’ being the monks of Battle Abbey. This is the only occasion in his entire chronicle that he uses this phrase, even though most of it derives from third party chronicles. It implies to us that he was convinced that the monks of Battle Abbey fabricated the notion that Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield.

John of Worcester’s ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ statement is scribbled in the margin by a different hand. It was clearly a later addition, perhaps influenced by Brevis Relatio. Orderic seems to change his mind. He specifically says that the Abbey is on the battlefield in his interpolation of GND, but does not in his own work, as if he thought better of it during the intervening years. He is known to have visited William of Malmesbury, so perhaps he was influenced by Malmesbury’s scepticism. Wace is the only non-Battle Abbey account that reports unqualified and uncorrected that the Abbey was on the battlefield, but he was writing 90 years after the battle, so he would have been easier to dupe, and after the forged writs had been published, so he was susceptible to them.

In summary, there is reason to distrust all the documentary evidence that the Abbey was built on the battlefield, and reason to believe that it was not. Why then did no one contradict ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ references at the time? No one would contradict the ASC statement because it accurately says that the Abbey was built in the place of war. One battle participant, Robert de Beaumont, was still alive (just about) when Brevis Relatio was written. As William’s cousin, he was probably at the dedication for Battle Abbey, so he would have known whether the Abbey was on the battlefield. But he lived in the English Midlands. There is no obvious reason he would ever have heard of Brevis Relatio, let alone read it, and he probably could not read anyway. The monks of Marmoutier who oversaw the Abbey’s construction would have known whether it was on the battlefield, but it is unlikely that any survived long enough to read Brevis Relatio.

Professor Searle was too wily to contradict the orthodox battle narrative, but we think she worked this all out thirty years ago. She said: That the abbey was founded by the Conqueror, and on the scene of the battle, there need be no doubt”. It is hardly a ringing endorsement. A ‘scene’ is far from a ‘spot’. She could just as easily have said: “That the abbey was founded by the Conqueror and built on the battlefield there need be no doubt”. It looks like weasel words to us, only acknowledging that the Abbey was in the vicinity of the battlefield, which would be right for all the battlefield candidates.

Non-documentary evidence that the Abbey is on the battlefield

Roy Porter has one non-documentary argument that the Abbey was built on the battlefield: “Building the abbey on the side of a hill presented the monks with practical difficulties they could have avoided had they chosen to build elsewhere. It is difficult to see why they would have chosen to build the abbey in such an awkward spot without a compelling reason”. He implies that one reason that Battle Abbey might have been built on the side of the Hastings Ridge is that William demanded that his Abbey be built on the spot where Harold died and that was where he died. We are sceptical. 

For a start, the original Abbey was not on anything normally recognised as a side slope. If it was not on the crest of the Hastings Ridge, it was precious close. Indeed, as A H Burne indicates by a dotted line on his troop deployment diagram (Figure 56, right), it looks like the ridgeway originally ran straight between modern Powdermill Lane roundabout and Abbey Green. In other words, Battle Abbey was built on the ridgeway, so the ‘road’ was re-routed around it. A ridge crest location would be an obvious choice for a monastery, being level and clear of vegetation, and having good access. It looks like the original chapter house was on something of a side slope, but it would not have presented any significant practical difficulties for the Normans, who were master stone masons.

Also, note that ‘difficulties’ are different from ‘impossibilities’. At the end of the day construction ‘difficulties’ are just a matter of cost and time, both of which had been indemnified by William. The construction was not that difficult anyway. When the original Abbey fell in the 13th century, its replacement could have been built anywhere, but they chose to build it down the side of the Hasting Ridge where the slope was significant.

Battlefield location clues and the orthodox battlefield

✓✓✓ = Unique match;  = Match;  = Consistent

= Inconsistent; ✖✖ = Contradictory

Battle Abbey

Orthodox battlefield clues

 

1. Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield

 ✓✓✓

2. The battlefield was in the vicinity of Battle Abbey

 ✓✓

3. The Normans advanced up a steep slope

 ✓✓

4. The battlefield was at or near the top of a hill

 ✓✓

Battlefield fingerprint clues

 

5. Non-fluvial ditches near the battlefield

 ✖✖

6. Wace’s description of the Norman advance

 ✖

Battle enigmas

 

7. Why Harold went to Sussex

 ✖✖

8. Logistics & Harold’s route to the battle theatre

 ✖✖

9. The shield wall was wedge-shaped

 ✖✖

10. The shield wall was enclosed

 ✖✖

11. William’s military tactics

 ✖✖

12. Harold did not withdraw or flee before the battle

 ✖✖

13. Contemporary Archaeology

 ✖✖

Proximity to English and Norman camps

 

14. The battlefield was roughly an hour’s march from the Norman battle camp

 ✓

15. The battlefield was nine Roman miles from ‘Heastinga’

 ✖

16. The battlefield was visible from the Norman battle camp and close enough that the English troop deployment and English Standards could be seen

 ✖

17. The battlefield was adjacent to the English camp

 ✓

Placename clues

 

18. The battlefield was at or near ‘Senlac’

 ✓

19. The battlefield was at or near ‘Herste’

 ✖✖

20. The battlefield was near a ‘spinam’

 ✖✖

21. The battlefield was at or near ‘haran apuldran’

 ✖

22. The battlefield was on ‘planis Hastinges’

 ✖

Geographic clues

 

23. A lateral ditch adjoined the battlefield

 ✖✖

24. There was a plain below the contact zone

 ✖

25. The battlefield was overlooked by another hill

 ✖

26. The battlefield was a small hill

 ✖✖

27. The battlefield was narrow

 ✖✖

28. The fighting was more intense in the middle

 ✖✖

29. The battlefield was steeper than the approach

  ✓

30. The battlefield was on a north-south ridge/spur

 ✖

31. The English army was difficult to encircle tightly

 ✖✖

32. The battlefield was adjacent to roads, woodland, untrodden wastes, and land too rough to be tilled

 ✖

33. The battlefield was not on the Hastings Peninsula

 ✖✖

Some of these clues are self-evidently consistent with the orthodox battlefield: Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield (Clue 1); the battlefield is in the vicinity of Battle Abbey (Clue 2); the Normans advanced up a steepish slope (Clue 3); the battlefield is near the top of a hill (Clue 4); the battlefield is roughly a one hour march from the orthodox Norman battle camp (Clue 14);  the battlefield was just a mile away from the orthodox English camp at Caldbec Hill (Clue 17); there was a plain below the shield wall, albeit a long way – 300m - for the English to chase out of the shield wall (Clue 24); the battlefield was steeper than the approach (Clue 29).

Some of these clues are self-evidently inconsistent with the orthodox battlefield or contradict it: It has no nearby non-fluvial ditches (Clue 5); its shield wall was not wedge-shaped (Clue 9) or enclosed (Clue 10); it has no contemporary archaeology (Clue 13); it was a lot less than nine Roman miles from the orthodox Norman camp at modern Hastings (Clue 15); it is on an east-west pseudo-ridge, so it is not on a north-south spur (Clue 30) and its crest does not have a western side (Clue 20); it was not at or near anywhere known as ‘haran apuldran’ (Clue 21); it was not at or near anywhere known as ‘planis Hastinges’ (Clue 22); it was not beside a lateral fluvial ditch (Clue 23); it was not a small hill (Clue 26); it was not narrow (Clue 27); it would not have been difficult to encircle and it would have been irrational to do so (Clue 31); it was not close to untrodden wastes or to a road suitable for an army (Clue 32); it was on the Hastings Peninsula (Clue 33).

Note that, ‘Abbey on the battlefield’ references aside, the orthodox battlefield only matches the most general of these clues while it contradicts the more intricate clues. The other clues need some explanation.

Wace’s description of the Norman advance (Clue 6)

By tradition, the Normans started their advance from their battle camp at Hechelande. The name has been lost but CBA says it was near modern Telham. Wace describes the Norman advance, seen through Harold’s eyes.

Wace (Taylor) “The Normans appeared, advancing over the ridge of a rising ground; and the first division of their troops moved onwards along the hill and across a valley … another division, still larger, came in sight, close following upon the first; and they wheeled towards another side of the field, forming together as the first body had done.”

If the Normans advanced along modern Telham Lane, then headed north from Lower Telham, they would have crossed the stream that now feeds the pumping station. They would have appeared over the rising ground upon which the B2095 now runs. They would then have crossed Sandlake Brook. New Pond was not dammed in those days, so they might have marched along the north bank of Sandlake Brook, which is a hill of sorts. The Norman flanks might then have wheeled a bit to face the English line. If the order of the events were jiggled around, the orthodox battlefield would be only marginally inconsistent with Wace’s description.

Logistics & Harold’s route to the battle theatre (Clue 7)

Figure 52: Edward Foord - Harold's route to the war through the Andredsweald

There is a suspicious reticence to write about the orthodox battle’s logistics. We have read a hundred or more accounts of the Battle of Hastings. None of them mention Harold’s baggage train or the English victualing needs. They do not have much to say about Harold’s route from London either.

Freeman’s immensely detailed 2200-page book about the Norman Conquest just has this to say this about Harold’s route: “His course lay along the line of the great road from London to the south coast. He halted on a spot which commanded that road, and which also commanded the great road eastward from William's present position.” The fact that he thinks modern Battle is on that road implies that he thought the English came down what was then known as Hastings Road, on the route of the modern A21. The first analysis to depict the English route from London – and still one of only a handful - is by Edward Foord in 1915 (Figure 52). He shows Harold marching directly to ‘Senlac’ along the approximate route of the A21.

Lots of Battle of Hastings analyses are accompanied by initial troop deployment diagrams. Oman’s (Figure 53) and Freeman’s (Figure 54) are two examples among dozens shown here.

Figure 53: Oman battlefield deployment diagram with routes labelled
Figure 54: Freeman battlefield deployment diagram with routes labelled

These troop deployment diagrams almost invariably label the A2100 as ‘To London’ or ‘To Tonbridge’, implying that the main route between the south coast and London was along the route of the A21, and therefore also by implication that this was the route upon which Harold arrived.

It is all nonsense. The route of the A21 was only cleared for the construction of the Hastings to Flimwell turnpike in the 1750s. The English could not possibly have got their baggage train through the Andredsweald in less than a month. They must have used a metalled road and there were only two in the 11th century: the Lewes Roman road to the west and the Rochester Roman road to the east.

Frank McLynn is one modern historian that seems to have sussed it. He says of Harold’s march: “The only real result of his overwhelming confidence was that he wore his men out by a gruelling 58-mile forced march over three days” The A21 route was 53 miles according to Google Maps whereas both Roman road routes were 58-miles. He must be referring to one of the Roman roads but does not say which.

In practice, the English could not have used the Lewes road because it does not pass within 15 miles from the Hastings Peninsula isthmus. It would have taken weeks to get hundreds of carts from the Lewes road to the theatre of war on forest tracks, whereas they arrived in no more than four days. Therefore, the English must have arrived on the Rochester road.

If the English arrived on the Rochester Roman road, the battle could not have happened at the orthodox battlefield. It is on the Hastings Ridge. The Rochester Roman road crossed the Brede at Sedlescombe (S on Figure 43). A metalled Roman mining track could have got the English as far as the Beauport Park bloomery. Then what? The Romans discovered that the steepest hill that a heavily laden cart could safely negotiate was about 9% but the climb from Beauport Park onto the Ridge was over 20%. The English would have had to unload their carts and carry their cargo onto the Ridge. It would have taken all day, during which they would have been hopelessly vulnerable on a steep downslope with no weapons, no shields, no armour. The Normans would have wiped them out. It is implausible.

Harold would only have ascended the Hastings Ridge if he thought the Normans were at their traditional camp near modern Hastings. His only credible motivation would have been to blockade them on the relatively barren eastern end of the Hastings Ridge or to try a surprise attack. Both are implausible. On the second, William knew where the English were because they had been exchanging messages, he had fortified his camp and he had posted guards against an attack. Harold’s traditional plan would have been a Rorke’s Drift style mass suicide. On the first, the Normans could circumvent a Hastings Ridge blockade by descending to the Roman mining track between Sedlescombe and modern Winchelsea, from where they could trap the English army on the eastern side of the Hastings Peninsula. Even if the English did get onto the Ridge above Beauport Park hoping to implement a blockade or a ‘surprise’ attack on the traditional Norman camp, they needed to stay put or move towards modern Hastings, whereas they would have had to move away from modern Hastings to get to Battle, or Telham Hill or Caldbec Hill.

Evans worked this out independently. He has been sheepishly teaching his students that the English are more likely to have left the Rochester Roman Road at Cripps Corner (CC Figure 43), to cross the Brede at Whatlington ford (W) and climb up to the Ridge on the route of the modern Whatlington Road. ‘Sheepish’ because the drop from Woodmans Green to Whatlington is 15% in places, too steep for heavily laden carts on unmade tracks. Worse, the first carts would have rutted the ford and the riverbanks, and William would almost certainly have ambushed them at the crossing.

There is one other feasible route the English might have taken to get onto the Hastings Ridge, exiting the Rochester Roman road at Cripps Corner and then marching along ridgeways via Netherfield (N). But it is also slopey, exceeding 10% in places, and it required a risky crossing of the narrow ambush-prone isthmus at Sprays Wood (I).

In practice, it is logistically implausible that the English arrived at the battle theatre on any route other than the Rochester Roman road, and therefore logistically implausible that they ever climbed onto the Hastings Ridge, so the battle was not fought at the orthodox location.

Harold’s strategy and why he ventured so close to the Norman army (Clue 8)

Most of the contemporary accounts say that Harold went to Sussex because was driven by rage to try a surprise attack on the Norman camp, which could be consistent with the orthodox battlefield location if the Norman camp was at modern Hastings. But none of the contemporary accounts, were privy to the English court. They are guessing Harold’s motivation based on their perception of his actions, and they have guessed wrong.

Harold could not possibly have been trying a surprise attack on the Norman camp because he had been exchanging messages with William on his trip down. William’s messengers would have reported back his exact location and his route, so William was prepared. Harold would not have been so stupid as to try a surprise attack on an enemy that could not be taken by surprise. Moreover, as we explain in Clue 8 above, it would have been totally out of character for Harold to act rashly or precipitately.

Frank McLynn ridicules all his predecessors for saying that Harold’s motivation was to try a surprise attack on the Norman camp. Instead, he reckons that Harold was trying to blockade the Normans on the Hastings Peninsula. He has got the right tactic but the wrong blockade. Shortly after the English arrive at Caldbec Hill, McLynn says: “William tried to break out of the peninsula and, to forestall this, Harold sent his men to seize Battle Hill.” Marjorie Chibnall says something similar, that Harold chose to defend Battle Hill because he: “may have supposed that he could effectively bar William’s advance towards London.” Other historians, if they have anything to say about Harold’s route and destination, offer some similarly vague guff.

It is ludicrous nonsense. The route to and from the East Sussex coast was along the Rochester Roman road. It crossed the Brede at Sedlescombe. Historians – wrongly in our opinion (see ‘The Landing’ above) – believe that the Normans camped at modern Hastings. It seems unlikely that they would suddenly want to leave the Hastings Peninsula when they could have done freely so at any time in the previous two weeks. But, even if they did, the route would be along the Hastings Ridge to Baldslow and then down the Beauport Park mining track to Sedlescombe and off up the Rochester Roman road. English troops up at modern Battle would have been 3½ miles away from the egress route.

In our opinion, McLynn is right that Harold went to the theatre of war intending to blockade the Normans on the Hastings Peninsula, but he has confused the roads. The only way to implement a blockade was to barricade the landward side of the three egress points, at Sedlescombe, Whatlington and Sprays Wood, in which case Harold never crossed onto the Hastings Peninsula and the battle was not at the orthodox battlefield.

The shield wall was enclosed (Clue 10)

The orthodox battle narrative has a straight or straightish shield wall that self-evidently contradicts Clue 10. It is possible that the historians have the right location but the wrong shield wall deployment. Figure 55 shows what an enclosed shield wall with 6000 to 8000 men would have looked like at the orthodox battlefield. It is roughly on the 80m contour.

Figure 55: Enclosed shield wall on Battle Ridge

This English troop deployment would explain why William failed to outflank the English line, and it would explain why Baudri’s men behind the line did not attack Harold from the get-go. Of course, this would apply anywhere if the shield wall was enclosed.

If William was faced with this enclosed shield wall, he would have split his forces to attack along the shallow ridge crest to the east and northwest (cyan arrows on Figure 55). This would contradict some key clues that the orthodox battlefield previously matched: Clue 3, that the Normans advanced up a steep slope; Clue 9, that the three Norman divisions attacked from the same direction within sight and hearing of William in the middle; and Clue 23, that there was a plain below the contact zone. It would also be an even worse match for Clue 27, that the battlefield was narrow, and Clue 28, that the fighting was more intense in the middle.

If Harold had found himself defending the orthodox battlefield, he would have deployed his troops as shown on Figure 55. It would have given him a reasonable chance of surviving the day. But it is not the battle described in the contemporary accounts.

William’s military tactics (Clue 11)

Every Battle of Hastings military analysis ever produced, bar this one, proposes that Harold deployed a straight or straightish shield wall. William had a huge cavalry, Harold had none. William’s best chance of victory against an open shield wall would have been to outmanoeuvre his footbound adversaries. At the orthodox battlefield, as we briefly explain in Clue 11 above, this means he would have sent his cavalry around the ends of the English line to lop off Harold’s head before any fighting had begun.

Figure 56: Some proposed English troops deployments at the traditional battlefield

Figure 56 shows two typical examples of shield walls that have been proposed at the orthodox battlefield - note that we added the red shield wall overlays for clarity and consistency. These two are by Major-General J ‘Boney’ Fuller (L) and Lieutenant-Colonel A H Burne (R). Four more are shown on Figure 35, Figure 53 and Figure 54, by Major E R James, Colonel C H Lemmon, Sir Charles Oman and Augustus Freeman respectively. Dozens of others are shown here. They are all implausible.

Figure 57: Flank attack on narrow shield walls

Figure 57 overlays five shield walls that have been proposed at the orthodox battlefield onto a heat relief map. Harold was commanding the troops from behind the English line, always assumed to be at the location of the quire of the original Battle Abbey, shown as a white X on Figure 57. He was protected by his personal guard, which put up no significant defence in the real battle.  If William had been faced by any shield wall that has been proposed at the orthodox battlefield since the turn of the 20th century, he would have sent his cavalry around the ends of the English line on the route shown by black arrows.

Some historians have suggested natural barriers that protected the English flanks. Allen-Brown and McLynn propose impenetrable woodland, Freeman and Fuller propose ravines, Foord, Oman, Lemmon and Lace propose marshland. They are all wrong. There are no ravines near the orthodox battlefield today and erosion makes fluvial valleys deeper. There is not enough water near the Hastings Ridge crest to create a ravine anyway. The slope is too steep for water to accumulate other than in small clay pools. Dr Helen Read, a world-renowned expert on medieval woodland, confirmed to us that there is no such thing as impenetrable mature deciduous woodland in temperate latitudes. Indeed, quite the opposite: The more mature a deciduous woodland, the denser the canopy, the greater the gap between trees, and the less vegetation on the understorey.

Figure 58: Streams flanking the traditional battlefield, northeast to the left and west to the right

The only landscape feature that might have hindered the Norman cavalry from outflanking the defence is streams. There was one on each side of the orthodox battlefield. In practice, they would have offered no protection at all. Figure 58 shows us standing over them at the locations the Norman cavalry would have crossed. They have barely more than a trickle of water. Dr David Robinson, a world-renowned expert on medieval landscapes, told us: “away from the immediate coast, rates of erosion are very slow and the physical form and depth of the valleys are unlikely to have changed since the 11th century.”  In other words, they would have been no more daunting in the 11th century than today, and they would not daunt a hedgehog today.

All these 20th and 21st century shield wall proposals have been influenced by Willhelm Spatz’s 1898 analysis that showed neither army had more than 8000 men. Beforehand, it was assumed that each army had 20000 men or more, enough to occupy the entire length of Battle Ridge. Figure 59 shows 25000-man shield walls that were proposed by Freeman and George. It would have done nothing to prevent getting flanked. It just means that the Normans would have had to cross 200m downstream, following the route of the black line.

Figure 59: Shield wall dispositions and Norman loop

Military historians worked this out long before us. They have devised other excuses for William’s failure to outflank or loop the defence. Major James says: Flank attacks were but little practised in 1066, and Harold did not think of one as possible”, Lieutenant-Colonel Burne: “Enveloping or flanking moves were seldom attempted”. Both are right when the adversaries have similar mixes of infantry and cavalry because they are similarly mobile, but they are patently wrong when infantry comes up against cavalry. Forming enclosed loops to prevent getting flanked by cavalry had been standard military practice since Roman times. Just two weeks previously, Harald Hardrada looped his shield wall to prevent getting flanked by the English cavalry at Stamford Bridge. In practice, medieval military commanders were obsessed with protecting their flanks and devising ways to outflank the enemy. William and Harold would have been no exception.

Even if the English did have some sort of natural flank protection, the Normans could have looped behind the English line by backing up to the Rochester Roman road and following whatever route the English used to arrive at the battlefield. Moreover, Baudri (Otter) says: “Backing up the enemy line, at a distance, were horsemen, waiting to intercept anyone trying to flee”. In other words, there were already Norman horsemen behind the English shield wall before the battle began. If they could get there, so could the rest of William’s cavalry. If there were any horsemen behind an open shield wall, they could have ridden up from behind to kill Harold before the battle began.

In summary, the orthodox battlefield contradicts William’s military tactics.

Harold did not withdraw or flee before the battle (Clue 12)

A passive shield wall has no hope of victory, its best outcome is to survive. If Harold’s objective was to survive and he was at the orthodox battlefield, he would have withdrawn or would have left to recruit more men.

Safety was just four miles from the orthodox English camp at Bodiam. Right up to an hour before of the battle, the English could have reversed to safety back up the way they came, or Harold could have returned to London to collect the rest of his army. If Harold was not there, William would not have attacked. Even when the Normans were at the bottom of the battlefield hill, perhaps 30 minutes before hostilities began, Harold could have ordered his men to melt away into nearby woodland and make their way to safety through Lordship Wood. Instead, according to Wace, the English watched the Normans appear over rising ground, getting ever more discouraged about their chances of survival.

The only plausible explanation for Harold’s failure to flee or withdraw is that he couldn’t. This would only be so if the English were trapped, or at least if Harold thought they were trapped. This could not be the case at the orthodox battlefield, so it contradicts this clue.

The battlefield was visible from the Norman battle camp and close enough that the English troop deployment and English Standards could be seen (Clue 16)

Brevis Relatio (Dawson) describes William’s arrival at the Norman battle camp: “Accordingly, coming to a hill which was on the side of Hastings, opposite that hill upon which Harold with his army was there under arms, they {William and his commanders] halted for a short time surveying the army of the English”, then: “he [William] began to enquire of a certain soldier who was near him, where he thought Harold was. The soldier answered that he thought he was in the midst of that dense array, which was before them on the top of the hill, for as he was thinking, he saw Harold's standard there.”

The highest part of Telham Hill, near the Hastings Ridge, is at an elevation of 125m. Battle Abbey, where Harold and his Standard are assumed to have been, is at 85m. His men are supposed to have been 10m below at roughly 75m. In between, blocking the view, is Starr’s Green at 100m.

Figure 60: Battle Abbey (red arrow) viewed from Telham Hill

There is an east-west ridge between Telham Hill and Battle. It is at 110m on the ridge, falling to 95m at Loose Farm, to 70m where the public footpath passes west of Glengorse, back up to 80m over a conical hill beside the railway, then down to 50m at Battle Abbey Farm. Moving west along Telham Hill, improves the view around the shoulder of Starr’s Green, but lowers elevation so that it is obstructed by the Loose Farm ridge. There is only one view of Battle Abbey (red arrow), shown on Figure 60 from 50.8989, 0.5046, 100m east of the power transformer. Even here, the bottom of the Abbey buildings, and therefore the orthodox location of Harold’s shield wall, are obstructed by vegetation on the Loose Farm ridge. The view of Harold’s traditional left flank is obscured by the shoulder of Starr’s Green (magenta arrow). The view of his traditional left flank is obscured by the hill adjacent to the railway.

In summary, there is no view of the orthodox battlefield from the orthodox Norman battle camp equivalent to that described in Brevis Relatio.

The battlefield was at or near ‘Senlac’ (Clue 18)

Orderic has the only reference to ‘Senlac’, and no one knows what he meant by it. By tradition, it was a Norman French name meaning ‘bloody lake’. But Orderic says that the place was ‘anciently known as Senlac’, which means that it is an Old English name. If so, it meant ‘sandy lake’ or ‘sandy loch’, which we think referred to the upper Brede estuary or, less likely, the entire Brede estuary or the Brede basin. The orthodox battlefield would contradict all these meanings. We have no proof these meanings are right. The only certainty is that Senlac was ‘where the war took place’, which is consistent with the orthodox battlefield.

The battlefield was at or near ‘Herste’ (Clue 19)

Here is Eleanor Searle’s translation of the relevant CBA statement about ‘Herste’.

CBA Folio 12 (Searle): “The monk went quickly to Marmoutier and brought with him into England four monks from there: Theobald, nicknamed ‘the old’, William Coche, Robert of Boulogne, and Robert Blancard, men of outstanding in character and piety. They studied the battlefield and decided that it seemed hardly suitable for so outstanding a building. They therefore chose a fit place for settling, a site located not far off, but somewhat lower down, towards the western slope of the ridge. There, lest they seem to be doing nothing, they built themselves some little huts. This place, still called Herste, has a low wall as a mark of this.”

Searle’s translation is ambiguous, unclear whether the battlefield or the little huts are at Herste, or both. Here is a transcript of the original Latin passage from ‘They studied’:

Qui memoratum belli locum considerantes, cum ad tam insignem fabricam minus idoneum, ut videbatur, arbitrarentur, in humiliori non procul loco, versus ejusdem collis occidentalem plagam, aptum habitandi locum eligentes, ibidem ne nil operis agere viderentur mansiunculas quasdam fabricaverunt. Qui locus, huc usque Herste cognominatus, quandam habet spinam in hujus rei monimentum.

Roy Porter discusses this in his 2014 paper ‘On the very spot: In defence of Battle’. He summarises Nick Austin’s argument that Herste referred to his proposed battlefield at Crowhurst: “Austin says that the use of ‘qui’ at the start of both sentences implies that the original author intended their mutual subject to be the battlefield … Herste is the monastic scribe’s mistaken attempt at writing a phonetic version of ‘Crurst’, which he claims was the local dialect form of Crowhurst.”

Porter responds: “First, the double use of qui does not imply that both sentences have as their subject the battlefield. Searle’s translation uses a standard usage known as a connective relative to differentiate between the monks in the first sentence and the battlefield in the final sentence. The subject of the first sentence is the group of monks from Marmoutier, who are listed in the immediately preceding sentence. The subject of the final sentence refers to the place the monks chose instead of the battlefield. This was Searle’s understanding of the text, as in a footnote to this passage she notes that Herste is identified elsewhere in The Chronicle as being to the north-west of the abbey site and that this alternative location offered the monks a more suitable building site, being level ground by comparison with the hillside on which the battle was fought. When considered on its own merits, Austin’s interpretation of this passage is eccentric, but when viewed in the context of The Chronicle as a whole it seems perverse. This is because the whole thrust of this part of the narrative is to underline that the abbey was built on the battlefield at the express order of William I.”

Confusion reigns! Porter argues that Austin’s grammatical argument is faulty, implying that the little huts were at Herste, not the battlefield. Then, in the same paragraph, he agrees with Eleanor Searle’s argument that the battlefield was at Herste. Austin shoots himself in the foot too. Having provided his Latin grammar evidence that Herste was the name of the battlefield, in the next paragraph he argues that Herste referred to Crowhurst, 1400m from the battlefield, where he thinks the monks built their little huts.

Perhaps one source of the confusion is that there are some unfortunate typos in Porter’s paper and an important one in Searle’s. He misspells ‘agere’ as ‘agree’ and ‘quandam’ as ‘quondam’, he copies Searle’s typo omitting the space between ‘huc’ and ‘usque’, and he misses some punctuation. These errors give a very different meaning to the original Latin text, but it is difficult to know whether he and/or Searle made the typos before or after they did the analysis.  

We  agree with Searle, and therefore with Austin’s grammatical argument, that CBA is saying that the battlefield was at a place named Herste. Some of the confusion is that Searle divides one long Latin sentence into three English sentences. The subject of the Latin sentence is the battlefield, so Herste refers to the battlefield. It is not only semantics. It would be absurd for CBA to record the location of some temporary little huts but to omit the location of the battle. More important here, the little huts were ‘not far off’ from the battlefield, so they were probably both in Herste.

Time to take a step back. Why does the Chronicle of Battle Abbey go to such lengths to explain that the battlefield/huts are at Herste? As Porter says, the purpose of this CBA passage was to show that the Abbey was built on the battlefield. Elsewhere, CBA Folio 21 says that Herste was near the Abbey. Therefore, CBA is corroborating itself through the backdoor to claim that the Abbey is on the battlefield. The monks invented and/or forged all the other evidence that the Abbey is on the battlefield. Were they telling the truth about the battlefield being at a place named Herste?

CBA Folio 12 says that the battlefield ‘is still called Herste’, which implies it was known as Herste at the time of the battle. Herste is an Old English word which also implies that it dates to the battle. Yet no evidence of Saxon era settlement has ever been found in the vicinity of the orthodox battlefield. If the orthodox battlefield had no Saxon era settlement, there was no reason for it to have had an Old English name. ‘herste’ means ‘wood’. The Abbey is on the ridgeway, which would not have been wooded and CBA says that the Herste next to the pilgrim house was an orchard rather than a wood. There would not have been an orchard in somewhere with no population, so it was probably planted by the monks and got its name long after the battle. Even if it was there at the time of the battle, it would not have been named Herste because Old English has other words for ‘orchard’. These include the generic term ‘ort-geard’ from which orchard derives, ‘apple-tún’ for an apple orchard, and ‘pir-gráf’ for a pear orchard. For all these reasons, it seems implausible that there was a place named Herste at or near the orthodox battlefield at the time of the battle.

Therefore, the monks gave the name Herste to a place adjacent to the Abbey. There was a manor named Herste just three miles away. Monks spent most of their time scheming ways to acquire nearby land. It is totally implausible that they did not know of this manor. Choosing that particular name was bound to create confusion and ambiguity. Compound names including ‘herste’ were very common. Croherste, Bodeherste, Lankherste and Cogherste, for example, were all nearby. The monks could easily have avoided any confusion by picking a unique name with a ‘herste’ suffix, or indeed any unique Old English name. We think they wanted to cause some confusion and/or ambiguity.

The monks of Battle Abbey wanted everyone to think that the Abbey was built on the battlefield. If the battle was fought at Herste and it was more than, say, one kilometre from the Abbey, there was a danger of getting debunked if an external reference divulged the battlefield’s name. By giving the name Herste to somewhere near the Abbey, external references to the battlefield’s name would endorse their argument rather than debunk it. This is exactly analogous to what we think happened with the Norman battle camp: it was somewhere named Hechelande in the wrong direction from Battle Abbey for the battle to have been fought there, so they invented a Hechelande in the right direction.

Thus, this clue contradicts the orthodox battlefield because the Abbey’s Herste was a post-Conquest name given by the monks of Battle Abbey. The Herste that existed at the time of the battle was somewhere else.

 Porter goes onto say that Austin’s Herste battlefield theory is ‘eccentric’ and ‘perverse’ because “because the whole thrust of this part of the narrative is to underline that the abbey was built on the battlefield”, but he misses the point. Austin reckons that the monks inserted fake evidence into what was previously a genuine battle narrative. ’s point but Austin does argue that the . So they both argue that Herste is the name of the battlefield and the name of the place where the huts were built.  the thrust of the passage is to show that the Abbey is on the battlefield, but Austin agrees. His argument hitherto is neither eccentric nor perverse. It is better described as inconsistent. It does get a little surreal when he goes on to argue that Herste was a local dialect pronunciation of ‘Crowhurst’, although he does have some supporting circumstantial evidence.

A lateral ditch adjoined the battlefield (Clue 23)

Wace says that there was a ditch into which the Normans were shield charged at the start of the battle. He goes on to say that more Normans died in this ditch - all crushed or suffocated - than in the whole of the rest of the battle. He says that the Normans passed this ditch during their advance without noticing it. They could not have marched over this ditch without noticing it, so it must have been lateral, to the side of the battlefield and parallel to it. The battlefield was on a slope, so this lateral ditch was probably fluvial.

There were some fluvial ditches near the orthodox battlefield – shown on Figure 51. None of them could have been Wace’s shield charge ditch. Asten Brook was below the orthodox shield wall, but it crossed the battlefield approach so the Normans could not have passed it without noticing, and it was 300m away, too far for the Normans to have been shield charged. Streams also radiated away from the orthodox battlefield, one heading east, one heading west, but the Normans would not have passed them on their advance, and they would need to have been shield charged in a semi-circle to fall into either of them.

By tradition, all the 13 contemporary account references to ditches near the battlefield, including Wace’s shield charge ditch, referred to one ditch that is known under the umbrella term ‘Malfosse’. Many places have been proposed as the Malfosse ditch, the most popular of which is Oakwood Ghyll, some 1300m north of the orthodox battlefield. None of them are within shield charge distance.

This clue contradicts the orthodox battlefield.

The fighting was more intense in the middle (Clue 28)

Wace (Taylor) says that William chooses to: fight in the middle throng, where the battle shall be the hottest”. Figure 61 shows the slope analysis at the traditional battlefield, with level ground shown in green, 10% slopes in yellow, and 20% in red. The cyan arrows show the consensus three Norman divisions, with the consensus shield wall shown in transparent grey.

Figure 61: Slopes around traditional battlefield

You will need to use some imagination to regress the terrain. The land to the east of Battle Abbey has been built on, creating artificial slopes. The terraces south of the Abbey were made when the land was flattened for the 13th century abbey. Try to smooth it out in your mind. Hopefully, you will see that the ground in front of the middle division had a 15% slope, whereas the ground in front of the flank divisions was barely 5%.

It will hopefully be clear that if the battle was fought at the traditional location, the fighting would have been more intense on the shallow flanks than the relatively steep centre. Indeed, there is no reason there would have been any fighting on the steep slope in front of the Abbey terrace, so this clue contradicts the orthodox battlefield.

Why Battle Abbey is where it is

English Heritage say: “there is a widespread consensus among historians that William the Conqueror founded Battle Abbey as a penance for the blood shed at the battle and to commemorate his great victory”. They are probably right, but neither of these reasons ties the Abbey to the battlefield. Æthelstan’s Muchelney Abbey was penance for the Battle of Brunanburh which happened hundreds of miles away. Richard de Luci’s Lesnes Abbey was penance for his role in Thomas Becket’s death which happened fifty miles away. Contemporary medieval battle memorials are never positioned on their battlefield, which is one reason why no medieval battlefield have been found. Instead, they are located in population centres, where lots of people will see them. Think Karnak, Titus Arch and Trafalgar Square, for instance.

There are plenty of alleged religious motives for William to have built his Abbey. CBA (Searle): “I [William] shall found a monastery for the salvation of all, and especially for those that fall here, to the honour of God and of his saints, where servants of God may be supported: a fitting monastery with a worthy liberty. Let it be an atonement: a haven for all, as free as the one l conquer for myself.” Brevis Relatio (Van Houts): “[William] had an abbey built to the memory of this victory and for the absolution of the sins of all who had been slain there.” Any or all of these are plausible, but again, none of them tied the Abbey to the battlefield. As far as we know, there is no religious merit in the notion that proximity to the place of sin helps the salvation of the sinner. If this were true, there would be lots of monasteries on medieval battlefields, whereas there is no evidence there are any.

Professor Searle discounted all these reasons too because she thought that William placed his abbey on the battlefield to curry favour with his barons; an act of insolence to humiliate the English. It seems unlikely to us. The Abbey was clearly going to take a long time to build, by which time the worst of the danger would be over. Battle Abbey was so remote that Anglo-Saxon renegades are unlikely to have given two hoots what it was used for. And, anyway, the local population, just 370 families on the entire Hastings Peninsula, were mostly Jutes. If William wanted to humiliate anyone important, he would have built his abbey at Tamworth or Winchester (and, perhaps for this very reason, he built a castle at Tamworth and a cathedral at Winchester). 

In our opinion, the entire argument is inside out. We think that William would have wanted his abbey anywhere except the battlefield and absolutely anywhere other than where Harold died. Putting it elsewhere would rob English insurgents of a focus. It would prevent the English from using the abbey to venerate Harold as a martyr. It would prevent the monks from being haunted by the souls of unburied English warriors - a huge fear at the time. It would prevent scavenging on the abbey grounds. It would let William hide the evidence of his sins. It would be clear that he was not glorifying violence. It would let him use the battlefield land for his own purposes. It would let him choose a location for his abbey where it might help the defence of his new realm. 

Conversely, it is perfectly plausible that the Abbey was built at Battle despite the battle having happened elsewhere. In addition to all the reasons just mentioned, perhaps the battlefield land belonged to another religious order. If so, William would not have wanted to rile the Pope by sequestering land from the Church when the whole idea was to earn the Pope’s absolution. Or perhaps the monks of Marmoutier decided to build it elsewhere. CBA says that they thought the battlefield was inappropriate for an important abbey. It goes on to say that William instructed them to build his abbey on the battlefield anyway, but perhaps this last bit was invented whereas the need to build elsewhere was not.

Assuming the battle happened elsewhere, why might William have chosen to build his abbey on the summit of Battle Ridge where the building materials had to be hauled uphill and where there was no running water? CBA says that this was not a problem because they were mysteriously found nearby after the Abbey construction had been started. It sounds fabricated to appear to be divine intervention. Springs are never on hill crests, there is no evidence of nearby quarrying, and the building materials on show in the Abbey museum are from Caen and Purbeck.

It is possible that William instructed the monks of Marmoutier to build his Abbey on a hill because he wanted it to be prominent. Battle Ridge is not as prominent as Caldbec Hill or Blackhorse Hill, but perhaps William preferred it because it was closer to the battlefield, or more reminiscent of the battlefield, or perhaps he just liked it. Or perhaps the monks of Marmoutier preferred it because it was treeless on the summit and therefore had better foundations and less need for site clearance. Professor Searle reckons that William probably wanted to position his Abbey on the Hastings Ridge for defensive purposes. She notes that it played an important defensive role when Sussex was invaded by the French several centuries later. But he could have chosen anywhere on the ridge. Blackhorse Hill and Caldbec Hill were both 40m higher and had better defensive possibilities.

We think the overwhelming reason for the Abbey’s general position was the route of Marley Lane. We explain in Clue 7 above that there was only one metalled road from the Rochester Roman road onto the Hastings Ridge, a mining track through Beauport Park. It was designed to drop iron ore carts down to the Brede, far too steep to haul cargo up. The only route that carts could have taken between the Rochester Roman road and the Hastings Ridge was modern Marley Lane. It was an unmetalled track in those days, too rutted and bumpy for an army baggage train, but it was shallow enough - never more than 8% - to haul building materials onto the ridge for the construction of the Abbey, at least during the summer months. Moreover, the land was probably in Harold’s ownership which became William’s upon accession. As far as we can see, placing the Abbey at Battle would have been convenient for construction, politic and militarily sensible.

Figure 62: Battle Abbey lines of sight

We think that the Abbey’s exact location was probably chosen for line of sight (Figure 62). It is at the only exact location on the Hastings Ridge that had a treeless view towards Old Winchelsea and Old Pevensey (black dotted lines), the two most likely incursion points for a future invasion. There would not be many days when either could be seen with the naked eye, so we guess that there were message relay towers on Standard Hill and Lower Snailham. It also happens to be the only place on the Hastings Ridge that has line of sight to part of our proposed Hurst Lane battlefield. This might have had some significance in its placement.

None of this absolutely refutes the possibility that the Abbey is on the battlefield. Only physical evidence elsewhere can do that. Rather, it is to say that the evidence that the battle happened at the traditional location is flimsy and probably contrived. The battle could have happened on pretty much any hill within, say, five miles of Battle. And, given the lack of archaeology and poor match with the contemporary account battlefield clues, it is unlikely to have happened at the traditional location.