Battle of Hastings Place Names

Introduction

Nothing, in our opinion, has caused as much confusion about the Battle of Hastings as the translation of place names from the contemporary accounts. Those accounts refer to a Norman landing and/or camp near ‘Hæstingaport’ or ‘Hastingas’ or similar. These place names are invariably translated as ‘Hastings’, which historians always interpret to mean modern Hastings. A Norman camp at modern Hastings is the only plausible justification for Harold trying a surprise attack along the Hastings Ridge, and therefore the only unbiased evidence that Harold was anywhere near the orthodox battlefield. In our opinion, Hastingas and cognates did not refer to modern Hastings, so there is no unbiased evidence that the battle took place at the orthodox location.

¹Hæstingas, Hastingas, Hastinges, Heastinga, Heastingum, Hestingan, Hestinga, Hestenga, Hastingae, Hastingum, Hastingis, Hastingues

It is much the same with the Norman landing, albeit inconsequential to the rest of the Conquest narrative. The places named on the Norman arrival sound, more-or-less, like ‘Pevensey’. They are always interpreted as ‘Pevensey’ and always interpreted to mean modern Pevensey. The translations are misleading, and the interpretations of them are flawed.

²Pevenesæ, Pefenesea, Pefnesea, pefnes ea, pefenes ea, Peneuessellum, Peneuesellum, Pevenessellum, Peuenesea, Peuenesel, Peuenisel, Penevesel, Penress

Here is a summary of what we think the contemporary account place names probably mean. They are all Old English, Latin or Romanz, inflected languages that might take the relevant conjugations.

1. Hæstingas was the Old English name for the Hastings Peninsula. This is its meaning in Saxon Charters, the ASC, the Tapestry and some Anglo-Norman accounts.
2. Hastinges had three different meanings. It was:
   • The pre-Conquest and early post-Conquest name used by Normans in Normandy for Hæstingaport
   • The early post-Conquest name used by Normans in England for Hæstingaceastre
   • The 12th century name for the settlement that grew up around the Norman castle at modern Hastings.
3. To prevent confusion between the Hastinges meanings, the Norman castle at modern Hastings was initially known as Nove Hastinges. As it gradually dropped the Nove part of its name during the 12th century: Hæstingaport was increasingly referred to as Port de Hastinges (Latinised to Portus Hastingas or Hastinges Portus) by Normans in Normandy; Hæstingaport was increasingly referred to as Wincenesel by Normans in England; Hæstingaceastre was absorbed into Iham and Wincenesel.
4. Hastingas the root of much confusion, was the Latin translation of Old English Hæstinga and all meanings of Norman Hastinges.
5. Hæstingaport was the Old English name for the international port on the Hastings Peninsula. It had three centres:
   • Hæstingaport’s docks, warehouses and fiheries were at Old Winchelsea, on a shingle island at the mouth of the Brede. That island was known to Saxons as Winchelse and to Normans in England as Wincenesel.
   • Hæstingaport’s dry docks, ship builders, chandlers and artisans were at Iham in the northern part of modern Winchelsea.
   • Hæstingaport’s commerical centre, mint, ship owners and businessmen were at Hæstingaceastre in the centre of modern Winchelsea.
6. Hæstingaceastre was the Old English name for a Roman fortification and Alfredian burh located on the summit of modern Winchelsea. It was known to Normans in England as Hastinges until the 12th century.
7. Penevesellum was on the north bank of the Brede estuary, most likely at modern Cadborough.
8. Pefenesea was the contraction of 'pefenes ea'.
9. 'pefenes ea' was an island harbour some 2km southeast of modern Pevensey. It was destroyed by storms in the early 13th century. Its population moved to modern Pevensey. This is analogous to what happened at Old Winchelsea and Old Romney, so we will refer to the 11th century ‘pefenes ea’ as ‘Old Pevensey’.
10. The Norman fleet did not land at or near Old Pevensey but moored in the shallows offshore to wait for sunlight and the flood tide.
11. Pevenesel was the Frankish translation and transliteration of pefenes ea (i.e., the contraction of pevenes îles) used by Franks and Normans to refer to Old Pevensey, then from the early 13th century to refer to modern Pevensey.
12. The Roman fortress of Anderitum is at modern Pevensey. It was garrisoned until a few weeks before the Norman invasion but was otherwise unoccupied. The fortress was known to the Saxons as Andradesceaster and later as ‘castele a Pefenesea’. It was known to the Normans as Castelli Pevenesel, Latinised to Castrum Pevenesel.
13. Rameslie was a manor that lined both banks of the Brede estuary. It did not, as tradition dictates, extend south of the River Pannel. It belonged to the Norman Abbey of Fécamps before and after the invasion but had been sequestrated at the time of the invasion.

Some notes about spelling might help. Classical Latin ‘v’ could be pronounced as a long vowel or as a consonant sounding somewhere between modern English v and b. The vowel version was eventually replaced by u to reduce confusion. Some transcriptions of the Conquest accounts use u, some v, some u as v. Where they use consonantal u we will substitute v (mea culpa - in revisions of this document before 16 we did the reverse). Placenames were spelled phonetically in medieval times. All the ‘Hastings’ spelling variations derive from the Old English stem Hæstingas, all the ‘Pevensey’ variations from ‘pefenes ea’. There was no Latin equivalent of the Old English ‘æ’ sound, so it is sometimes transliterated into Latin as ‘e’, sometimes as ‘a’, sometimes as ‘ea’. There was no Latin equivalent of the Old English ‘f’ sound, so it is transliterated to ‘v’. Latin i and Latin short e were pronounced similarly, making them interchangeable in Latin transliterations of foreign place names. All this and the huge number of possible conjugations leads to many spelling variations (listed in the footnote above). In the remainder of this document, we use the placename spelling in the original manuscript where applicable, or ‘Hastingas’ and ‘Pefenesea’ where not.

Primary source abbreviations

Most of the place name clues appear in a dozen or so contemporary accounts For the sake of brevity, in the remainder of this document, we will usually abbreviate them as follows

ASC = Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (reasonably contemporary with events)
ASC-C, ASC-D, ASC-E = ASC recensions
Tapestry = Bayeux Tapestry; finished c1077
Benoît = Chronique des Ducs de Normandie; Benoît de St-Maure; c1170
Carmen = Carmen de Hastingae Proelio; c1067
CBA = Chronicle of Battle Abbey; c1170
John of Worcester = Chronicon ex Chronicis; John of Worcester; c1125
Malmesbury = Gesta Regum Anglorum; William of Malmesbury; c1135
Domesday = Domesday Book; 1086
Huntingdon = Historia Anglorum; Henry of Huntingdon; c1129
Orderic = Historia Ecclesiastica; Orderic Vitalis; c1125
Wace = Roman de Rou; Master Wace; c1160
Jumieges = Gesta Normannorum Ducum; William of Jumieges; c1070
Poitiers = Gesta Guillelmi; William of Poitiers; c1072

Landing place orthodoxy

The meaning of Hastingas, Hæstingaport and cognates is crucial to the invasion narrative because most of the contemporary accounts name somewhere that sounds like one or the other as a Norman landing site and/or the location of their main camp.

Hastingas and cognates referred to modern Hastings according to the orthodox interpretation. This is based on two clues. One is etymological: Hastings is the only surviving place on the Hastings Peninsula with a name that might have derived from Hastingas. This name evolution is not uncommon. Kemble lists more than 100 analogous examples, including Readingas which became Reading and Wellingas which became Welling. The other clue is a passage in the Chronicle of Battle Abbey. Lower translates it as: “Hechelande, situated in the direction of Hastinges”, the context implying the direction is from Battle Abbey. CBA had previously said that Hastinges was a port and that Hechelande was adjacent to Telham. Turning the words around, Hastinges was on a line from Battle Abbey through Telham. That line extrapolates to the coast at modern Hastings.

Hastingas and cognates are linked to Hæstingaport through the second Norman fortress. ASC-D says that the Normans “built a fortress at Hæstingaport”. CBA says that the Normans constructed a fortress at “a port named Hastinges”. Brevis Relatio says that William: “arrived with his whole army at another port nearby named Hastingas”. Jumièges says that William: “hurried to Hastingas where he built another fortress”. Poitiers says that the Normans: “occupied Penevessellum with their first fortification, and Hastingas with their second”. John of Worcester refers to Hæstinga and Hæstingaport as Heastinga, then says that Harold: “Gave them battle nine miles from Heastinga, where they had built a fortress”. So, Hastingas, Hastinges, Heastinga and Hæstingaport seem to be cognates.

Bayeux Tapestry panel 45 is captioned “ISTE JUSSIT UT FODERETUR CASTELLUM AT HESTENGA CEASTRA”, which is usually translated as something like “He ordered that a fortress be constructed at Hæstingaceastre”. This too refers to William’s second fortress, thereby implying that Hæstingaceastre was yet another Hastingas cognate.  ‘ceastre’ is usually the Old English word for a Roman stronghold or fortress but there are no known Roman strongholds or fortresses on the Hastings Peninsula. However, toponymist Eilert Ekwall suggests that the ceastre name might occasionally apply to Iron Age hillforts. Alfred is known to have built some of his burhs on Iron Age hillforts, and there is archaeological evidence of an iron age hillfort under Hastings Castle. This seems to create a chain that corroborates modern Hastings as the location of all these fortifications: Hastings Castle, the ruins of which survive, was built on the site of William’s wooden fortress which was built on the site of Alfred’s burh which was built on the site of an Iron Age iron age hillfort the remains of which are still there.

There is an apparent inconsistency. Hæstingaport’s docks  would have been at sea level whereas Hæstingaceastre would have been on a promontory and William’s second fortress is depicted at a hill on the Tapestry, so they could not be cognates. Historians resolve this issue by assuming that Hastingas referred to the settlement of Hæstingaceastre on top of the bluff while Hæstingaport referred to the port in the Priory Valley below. This leads to the orthodox narrative that the Normans landed in the Priory Valley then climbed up the cliff to assemble William’s second wooden fortress and make camp at the location of Hastings Castle.  

Switching to modern Pevensey, historians almost universally agree that it was where the Normans first landed. Etymology again provides the main clue. Two early and trusted accounts, the Bayeux Tapestry and ASC-D, are thought to be saying that the Normans landed at Pefenesea. Modern Pevensey is the only surviving place in the region with a name that might have derived from Pefenesea.

The post-Conquest F recension of the ASC translates Pefenesea as Pevenesel. Benoît says that the Normans: “Arrived at Pevenesel, at a harbour beneath a fortress handsome and strong”, presumably referring to Anderitum. Three accounts of Odo’s rebellion - ASC, John of Worcester and Symeon - refer to Pevensey Castle as the fortress of Pefenesea while a fourth, William of Malmesbury, refers to it as the fortress of Pevenesel. After the Conquest, Pevensey Castle was usually known as Castelli Pevenesel, Latinised to Castrum Pevenesel. Pevenesel is therefore probably a cognate of Pefenesea.

Three other early and trusted contemporary accounts – Poitiers, Jumièges and Orderic - specifically say that the Normans landed at Penevesellum. Notwithstanding the n/v switch, it looks like a Latin conjugated corruption of Pefenesea. Moreover, the names are linked through Gesta Stephani which has two references to Penevesel that unambiguously refer to Pevensey Castle. Penevesel looks like an unconjugated version of Penevesellum. Thus, it is widely assumed that Penevesel and Penevesellum were cognates of Pefenesea and Pevenesel. If so, it sounds like all the accounts that mention a temporary initial landing were trying to say that it was at modern Pevensey.

Errors in the landing place orthodoxy

A Norman landing at modern Pevensey is militarily and logistically implausible. It held the only known major fortification between Lympne and Portchester. Surely William would not aim to land at the only place opposite Normandy that was likely to be well defended. It was in a saltmarsh. Surely William would not land where his cavalry would be impotent, or where his horses would have no food. It was at the end of a narrow-necked peninsula that had no running fresh water. Surely William would not land where the wells might be poisoned and/or a few hundred English defenders might blockade the invaders. It was on the western side of a huge tidal lagoon with no road to William’s destination on the Hastings Peninsula. Surely William would not aim to land 30 riding miles from his destination, only accessible through treacherous marshland and the hostile Andredsweald forest. Indeed, in the unlikely event that the Normans entered Pevensey Lagoon, as Ramsay pointed out 100 years ago, they would surely have avoided all the hazards by landing on the east bank at Hooe rather than on the west bank at modern Pevensey. No surprise then that none of the contemporary accounts actually do say that the Normans landed at Pefenesea, as we explain in the section about Pefenesea below.

Carmen says that the Normans waited for dawn and the tide, then landed somewhere three hours away. Poitiers says that they were “bourn by a favourable breeze to Penevesellum”, which implies it was some distance away. We have no reason to doubt Poitiers and Jumièges, the two most trusted Norman accounts, which specifically say that the Normans landed at Penevesellum. It seems implausible that that it was anywhere near modern Pevensey because none of these accounts mention it having a huge existing fortress. Three other Norman accounts say that the initial landing was near Hastingas (and therefore Hæstingaport), which implies it was on or near the Hastings Peninsula, at least twelve miles from modern Pevensey by sea and thirty miles away by land. We will explain where we think Penevesellum and Hæstingaport were in the relevant sections below. Neith of them were at modern Pevensey.

If Penevesellum was a different place than Pefenesea, Orderic’s Odo obituary and Gesta Stephani’s references to Penevesel are faulty. They were written 60 years or more after the Conquest. Perhaps the authors accidentally switched the n and v in the Norman name Pevenesel, or more likely we think, they were unfamiliar with the geography and got confused.

Switching to Hæstingaport, the conventional Priory Valley location is unsound, not least because it was in a gorge with no road to get freight up or down from the surrounding cliffs and there was no metalled road on the ridgeway for the distribution of freight.

Hastingas and Hæstingaceastre are no more likely to have been at modern Hastings. While Hastings Castle was, most probably, built on an Iron Age hillfort, there is no evidence to link them with Hæstingaceastre or William’s second wooden fortress. Ekwall’s speculation that ‘ceastre’ names might apply to Iron Age hillforts only applied to Northumbria. He is probably wrong about Northumbria, and he did not say that it might apply to southern England anyway. Every known ceastre in southern England is at a former Roman stronghold or fortress, but there is no evidence of Romano-British occupation at modern Hastings, let alone a fortified Roman garrison. Nor is modern Hastings likely to have had an Anglo-Saxon burh fortress because dozens of excavations have failed to unearth any evidence of Saxon era occupation.

There is an accepted excuse for the lack of archaeology: Hæstingaceastre burh was made of timber, so it rotted away, while Hæstingaport was destroyed by storms and sea erosion. Bluster. Hæstingaceastre was the military and administrative hub of its ‘borough’. It would have had a hundred or more families. They would surely have left some evidence of their presence. The sea cliffs at modern Hastings have receded by 300m or more, but any port would have been upstream, where it would have been protected and where a ramp up the cliffs could be made, yet no evidence of pre-Conquest quays, jetties, ramps or access roads has been found.

There are a bunch of other invasion reasons to think that the Normans did not land in the Priory Valley or camp at modern Hastings:

• Modern Hastings would be a logistically poor camp, barren, with no running fresh water, no wells, and nothing for horses to eat.
• The orthodox location for William’s second fortress is out along a bluff where it would have served no defensive purpose.
• The Priory Valley was small, barren and siege prone.
• The Priory Valley’s strand was too short to accommodate a quarter of the Norman fleet.
• Access to the Priory Valley from the sea was through a treacherous narrow gap in sea cliffs which would have been risky for normal port traffic, and potentially disastrous for the Norman fleet.
• The sea cliffs were 300m or more out to sea in those days, creating a long narrow access gorge which would be difficult and dangerous to navigate, and which could be blocked by shoving boulders off the cliff tops.
• The steep cliffs would have left the Normans trapped in the valley bottom if, as William expected, an English garrison was defending the landing area.
• Henry III’s 1247 Charter to acquire Rameslie manor’s towns of Old Winchelsea and Rye and their ports does not mention modern Hastings, implying that Hastings was not in Rameslie manor and/or that it did not have a port, meaning in either case that it was not Hæstingaport.

Hæstingaport’s orthodox location gets the cart before the horse by assuming that the port grew up near the settlement. It cannot have done. Hæstingaport vied with Dover and Southampton as the biggest port on the south coast. According to Domesday, there were less than a thousand families on the entire Hastings Peninsula, nowhere near enough to import goods that might need a major port. It must have been an export hub, shipping natural resources. It could not have been at modern Hastings then, where there was no salt, no timber, no roads and, by Saxon times, no iron. A hundred years after the battle, De Viis Maris specifically says that modern Hastings did not have a port. A hundred years later still, after huge Norman population expansion around Hastings Castle, tax records show that the main port in the Hastings region was still exporting more than ten times the volume of its imports, and it was still not at modern Hastings.

The traditional etymological arguments for Hastingas at modern Hastings and Pefenesea at modern Pevensey cannot be trusted because the coastal geography has changed out of recognition. In the 11th century, Romney Marsh Lagoon and Pevensey Lagoon were separated from the sea by shingle bars which were gradually destroyed by storms in the 13th century. Ports and harbours on those shingle bars moved inland. We think Hastingas and Pefenesea were among them. Historians are associating the names Hastingas and Pefenesea with their post-relocation meaning instead of their contemporary meaning.

In summary, the conventional Norman landing at modern Pevensey and/or modern Hastings, and the conventional Normans camp at modern Hastings are based on faulty interpretation of the contemporary account and faulty translation of the contemporary account placenames. Those accounts clearly state that: 1) The Norman fleet moored in the shallows within sight of Anderitum but do not mention any landing; 2) The fleet waited for daylight and the flood tide before sailing three hours to Penevesellum where they landed and made a first camp; 3) That the following day they moved to a new camp at Hæstingaport and/or Hæstingaceastre where they stayed until two weeks after the Battle of Hastings. In the remainder of this document, we will explain where we think these places were.

Norman conquest place names

Hastinges / Hastingas / Hæstingas

Most of the contemporary accounts name somewhere that sounds like Hastings as the Norman landing site and/or camp. A few say that it was in Sussex. CBA alone hints at where in Sussex, but it is untrustworthy on this subject. Somewhere that sounds like Hastings also appears in some ASC entries and in several Saxon Charters without adding any details beyond that it was on the coast in a manor named Rameslie. Occam’s Razor adherents, including us, would love all these references to ‘Hastings’ to have a simple single meaning, common to all the contemporary accounts. The reality, we fear, is a lot more complicated.

Hæstingas in the English accounts

If it were not for the Norman invasion accounts, there would be little doubt that Hastingas referred to a substantial area on the south coast of England. The ASC entry for year 1011 gives the clearest clue. It says that Vikings overran the land south of the Thames, which it defines as Kent, Hæstingas, Sussex, Hampshire and Surrey. It implies that Hæstingas was a county-sized area between Sussex and Kent. If so, it referred to the Hastings Peninsula or to an area that encompassed the Hastings Peninsula.

Symeon of Durham describes Offa’s defeat of the ‘Hestingorum gentem’ [the Hæstingas nation] in 771, which means it was a substantial area. Saxon Charter S318, dated 857, refers to monks residing in Hastingas. Charter S686, dated 960, refers to farmland in Hastengas. They could be referring to a manor but give the impression it was somewhere bigger. Malmesbury says that William’s other monastery was in ‘Hastingis’. That monastery was Battle Abbey, which was not in a manor named anything like ‘Hastingis’, so it implies that Hastingis referred to the Hastings Peninsula. Huntingdon refers to ‘planis Hastinges’ (the plains of Hastinges), which only makes sense if it is an extensive area. Writ 206 dated 1085 records the gift of the Manor of Bury to the Abbey of Fécamps as compensation for “property which they had in Hastinges in king Edward’s time”, which only makes sense if Hastinges was a substantial area.

Tapestry Panel 40 (Figure 1) provides another clue to Hastingas’s meaning. It is captioned: “ET HIC MILITES FESTINAVERUNT HESTINGA UT CIBUM RAPERENTUR”, ‘and here the knights have hurried to Hestinga to seize food’. William landed on or near the Hastings Peninsula and needed to feed perhaps 10000 men. His knights would not have wasted their time chasing a few goats and hens around a port or any other settlement. They needed to secure a month’s worth of food, and they needed to do it quickly because, given half a chance, the locals would have driven away their livestock and burned their grain stores. The Norman knights must have raided the biggest grain stores and the richest pastural farmland. Domesday lists ten manors between the Brede and the Rother with 35 acres of meadowland between them; barely enough to sustain the Norman army for a week. It lists four manors between the Hastings Ridge and the Brede estuary with only 6 acres of meadowland between them. The Norman knights must have headed for Hooe, Filsham and Crowhurst, which had 116 acres of meadowland between them; enough livestock for a month. Therefore, the Tapestry’s Hestinga referred to the Hastings Peninsula or, less likely, just the part south and west of the Hastings Ridge.

All these references suggest that Hastingas was a large district or a small county sized area, yet it is not listed as such in Domesday or elsewhere. So, what was it?

Briggs explains that the Old English suffixes -ing and -ingas mean ‘followers of’ or ‘dwellers in’, depending on whether the stem is a person’s name or a landscape feature. Thus, Hæstingas is thought to mean a place inhabited by followers of Hæsta. There are many places in East Sussex with -ing suffixes that might previously have had -ingas names, including Guestling and Wilting on the Hastings Peninsula. They were no bigger than a hundred. Hæstingas seems to have been far more substantial.

There are other substantial -ingas places, perhaps most notably Iclingas and Wuffingas, the founding territories of Mercia and East Anglia. John Blair thinks they were once statelets or sub-kingdoms which he referred to as ‘regio’. He studied two more, ‘Woccingas’ and ‘Godhelmingas’. Both left a vestigial geographic meaning for their homeland, eventually evolving into modern Woking and Godalming. We think something similar is going on with Hæstingas.

The early Anglo-Saxon Dænningas and Tendringas tribes left a vestigial geographic meaning for their homelands, namely the Dengie Peninsula and Tendring Peninsula in Essex. Likewise, the Wihtwara left a vestigial geographic meaning for their homeland, the Isle of Wight. They had a lot in common: physically isolated, big enough to protect themselves, yet small enough and passive enough to stay under the radar. Their occupants were among the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlers, which perhaps helped them retain racial integrity. The same applies to the Hæstingas tribe.

In summary, we think that Hæstingas was the Old English name for the Hastings Peninsula, consistent with all these references.

Hastingas in the Norman accounts

Most of the contemporary invasion accounts tell a different story. Poitiers, Jumièges, Huntingdon and Benoît say that the Normans built a fortress at Hastingas, as if Hastingas were a settlement. CBA says that the Normans constructed a fortress at “a port named Hastinges”. Brevis Relatio says that William: “arrived with his whole army at another port nearby named Hastingas”. Malmesbury says that William: “built another monastery near Hastingis, dedicated to St. Martin”. That monastery was Battle Abbey, so it only makes sense if Hastingis was a settlement. Benoît says that after the battle: “William placed his best knights to guard the fortress at Hastinges”, which only makes sense if Hastinges was a settlement. John of Worcester says that Harold: “… gave them battle at a place nine miles from Heastingam”, which can only refer to a settlement. They all suggest or say that Hastingas was a settlement or port, which means that it was probably a settlement at a port.

Looking at the authors, all the accounts that suggest Hastingas was a substantial area were written in England by people born in England, whereas those that suggest it was a settlement or port were written by Normans or in Norman monasteries. We interpret this to mean that Anglo-Saxons used the term Hæstingas to mean the Hastings Peninsula whereas Normans, at least until the mid-12th century, used the term Hastinges – often Latinised as Hastingas - to mean Hæstingaport.

The reasoning is straightforward: as long as it does not lead to ambiguity, humans tend to abbreviate for convenience and tend to think in terms of their own experience. So, almost everyone in Britain refers to ‘London Heathrow Airport’ as ‘Heathrow’ because the tiny village of Heathrow had nothing else of any significance. Most of us refer to the ‘Port of Rotterdam’ as ‘Rotterdam’. The French refer to the ‘Port of Dover’ as Douvres. Pre-Conquest Normans traded with Hæstingaport. They had no interaction with anywhere else on the Hastings Peninsula. It would been human nature to abbreviate ‘Portus Hastinges’ to ‘Hastinges’.

Hastingas exceptions, anomalies and alternative theories

Domesday is an exception. It lists a place named Hastinges within the manor of Rameslie. If it was consistent with the other Norman and Anglo-Norman accounts, this Hastinges should refer to Hæstingaport, and several Saxon era charters confirm that there was a port in Rameslie. But it is listed with only 4 burgesses and 14 bordarers whereas the much smaller harbour of Pevenesel is listed with 110 burgesses. Also, there is no obvious reason the port would be broken out from the rest of Rameslie. Indeed, the port was one of Rameslie’s main attractions and an important reason it was coveted by the Abbey of Fécamp. We think it was broken out because it was an area within Rameslie manor for which the Abbey of Fécamp was not taxed. The most obvious reasons are that it was a military garrison and/or administrative centre before the completion of William’s Castle at modern Hastings. This implies it referred to Hæstingaceastre (see below).

There are a couple of other anomalies. Some later Norman accounts refer to ‘portus Hastingas’ and ‘Hastinges portus’, which would be tautologies if Hastingas or Hastinges referred to Hæstingaport. The cause, we think, was William’s castle at modern Hastings. According to the 1182 Pipe Rolls, it was initially known as ‘castelli Nove Hastinges’. The settlement around the castle was therefore known as ‘Nove Hastinges’, ‘Nove’ presumably to differentiate it from the existing Norman Hastinges at Hæstingaport. During the late 12th and early 13th centuries, Normans gradually dropped the ‘Nove’, so something had to be done to prevent confusion with Norman Hastinges at Hæstingaport. We think they assimilated the pre-Conquest Old English names for these places – see below. Meanwhile, Normans in Normandy, who had no familiarity with pre-Conquest Old English place names, simply stopped abbreviating the name, so increasingly referred to Hæstingaport as ‘Hastinges portus’.

If we are right about this name evolution, Hastingas in the 11th century Norman accounts - Poitiers, Jumièges and Carmen - meant Hæstingaport. Hastinges was increasingly likely to have meant Hastings Castle through the 12th century, but we think it probably happened too late to affect the contemporary accounts. Even CBA, the latest of them, seems to follow the Norman convention by explicitly saying that Hastinges was a port.

There are two other complications. One is that four of the contemporary account authors - John of Worcester, Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon - were Anglo-Normans with English mothers. They might have been raised to use the Old English meaning of Hæstingas. Malmesbury, we think, did so. All three of his references to Hastingas seem to mean a substantial area. Huntingdon too. Two of his references were copied from the ASC, the third is his reference to the ‘plains of Hastingas’. John of Worcester and Orderic, we think not. John of Worcester’s references all seem to be settlements, and he removes Hæstingas from the 1012 list of counties occupied by the Danes, presumably because he thought it was a settlement rather than a county. Orderic says that Hastingas was a seaport.

The other complication is that some of the references to Hastingas are in verbal quotes. These quotes might have been reported verbatim, so Hastingas meant what it did at the time of the quote, or they might have been edited for the meaning at the time of writing. We think they were left verbatim. The most important was Wace, a Channel Islander. He is pedantic about ports, using the term ‘port de Lune’ for Bordeaux, ‘port de Saint-Morin’ for Morin, ‘port de Hantone’’ for Southampton, etc. He does not refer to ‘port de Hastingues’, which hints that he was referring to an area using the English convention, but his references to Hastingues are in verbal quotes, so we guess they refer to the port.

In principle, the Anglo-Saxon region of Hæstingas might include land beyond the Hastings Peninsula. It cannot have extended east of the Rother, which was in Kent. According to Mark Gardiner, it probably did not extend west of Pevensey Lagoon because its placename conventions are different. The most likely extensions are the adjacent peninsulas of Wartling to the west and Udimore to the north (Figure 2). Doubtless members of the Hæstingas tribe spread from the Hastings Peninsula and established communities outside. Perhaps the Hæstingas statelet included these extensions. But, by the time Hæstingas only had a geographic meaning, we think it was geographically bounded, by the sea to the south, by Pevensey Lagoon to the west, by the Ash Bourne estuary to the northwest, and by the Brede estuary to the north.

Kathleen Tyson has a different contra-orthodox theory about Hastingas. She thinks that it was the Frankish name for the Brede basin, which was bounded by the Udimore and Hastings ridges. She reports it as fact, but then contradicts herself by saying that Hastingas was the cape between Winchelsea, Icklesham and Fairlight. We could not find her evidence for either argument. Both seem unlikely. The Brede basin and the Hastings Cape are too small to be the county-like place mentioned in ASC 1011 and too big to be a settlement or the port. We think our theory is more credible.

Hæstingaceastre

To summarise from above, most of the Norman and Anglo-Norman contemporary accounts say that the Normans camped at a port named Hastingas. It is safe to assume it is one and the same as the place named Hæstingaport in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because both sets of accounts say that this is where William assembled his second wooden fortress. By the same token, it was also known as Hæstingaceastre, because the caption on Bayeux Tapestry panel 45 says that William assembled his second wooden fortress at ‘HESTENGA CEASTRA’. This is important in the search because we can be moderately confident about Hæstingaceastre’s location.

Hæstingaceastre is listed on the Burghal Hidage as one of Alfred the Great’s 33 ‘burh’ fortifications, constructed in the late 9th century to defend Wessex against Viking attacks. These were substantial places, precursors of the modern borough with self-sustaining land and workforce. The burh fortification was the administrative centre for its proto-borough and the defensive refuge for its district. All but one pair of south coast Alfredian burhs are separated by 20 to 30 miles. Hæstingaceastre appears second on the list, immediately before Lewes, which suggests it was 20 to 30 miles east of Lewes, between Bexhill and modern Winchelsea.

Modern Hastings is roughly midway between Bexhill and modern Winchelsea, in the right vicinity to be Hæstingaceastre. But, as we say above, many excavations have uncovered no evidence of Saxon era or Roman era occupation at Hastings Castle or elsewhere in modern Hastings, so it is unlikely.

Horace Round pondered this in his 1899 paper ‘Some Early Sussex Charters’. He conjectured that Hæstingaceastre is more likely to have been at modern Pevensey. This theory was picked up by Pamela Coombes in her 1995 paper ‘Hastings, Haestingaceaster and Haestingaport’, and more recently by Jeremy Haslam in his 2020 paper ‘The location of the burh of hæstingeceastre of the Burghal Hidage’. They all note that Anderitum at modern Pevensey is the only known Roman fortification between Lewes and Kent, and it was referred to as a ceastre. It sounds like a good argument, but there are reasons to be sceptical:

1. Anderitum is only 13 miles east of Lewes. All but one pair of south coast burhs are separated by 25 miles or more. The exception is Twynham and Wareham, but even they are 16½ miles apart. Thirteen miles seems too close for Anderitum to have been an Alfredian burh.
2. Anderitum already had an Old English name, ‘Andradesceastre’. Admittedly, the only reference to it appears 600 years before the Conquest, but there is no obvious reason it would change.
3. A passage in Neustria Pia describes land gifted to the Abbey of Fécamps in 1054. It ends: “Deinde in Horsea similiter est terra cum prato. Item apud Cæstram cum salinis et duodecim domibus. Quræ omnia Leuigar et Eggardus presbyteri quoad vixerunt a predictis regibus sine diminutione in elemosina tenuerunt.” As Horace Round says, all the places named in this gift surround Pevensey Lagoon. The ‘Cæstram’ must therefore be Anderitum, yet it is not referred to as Hæstingaceastre, and the absence of a proper noun or adjective component in its name implies it was unoccupied at the time.
4. Excavations inside Anderitum uncovered no evidence of pre-13th century civilian occupation. Excavations outside Anderitum uncovered no evidence of any pre-13th century occupation. Hæstingaceastre was a substantial place through Saxon times. Its civilian inhabitants should have left some evidence of their occupation but there is none at modern Pevensey.
5. Modern Pevensey was not established as a civilian settlement until 1207 according to its foundation charter, consistent with the archaeological evidence. This charter states that modern Pevensey was established on the headland already occupied by Anderitum, and that it was visible from the sea between the coastal islands of ‘langeney’ and ‘pefenes ea’. We will discuss this more below. It is sufficient here to say that the ‘pefenes ea’ referred to in pre-13th century charters and manuscripts was this island harbour. One of those manuscripts is Domesday, which refers to the manor of ‘Pevenesel’ (a ‘pefenes ea’ cognate for reasons we explain below). If Hæstingaceastre was at Anderitum, it seems implausible that the Domesday manor would be named after the island harbour of ‘pefenes ea’.
6. Anderitum was only 4m above the 9th century sea level and at least a mile from the coast. Hæstingaceastre burh is unlikely to have been at modern Pevensey, where it would have had a restricted sea view, blocked towards the prevailing wind by Beachy Head, and the sea view from a 10m tower would be less than six miles because it was so low-lying. It would be an atypical place for Alfred to place one of his burhs.
7. There is no reason to believe that Hæstinga expanded west of the Pevensey Lagoon. Mark Gardiner explains that the Hæstingas tribe, the first Anglo-Saxon occupants of the Hastings Peninsula, were Jutes closely related to the people of Kent but unrelated to the Saxons of Sussex. He says that the only evidence of expansion is east into Kent. If Hæstingas did not expand west of the Pevensey Lagoon, there is no reason for the Anderitum to get the Hæstinga part of Hæstingaceastre’s name.

This falls short of proof that Hæstingaceastre was not at modern Pevensey, but there are so many contra-indicators that it seems implausible to us.

Another Hæstingaceastre’s location theory appears in Martin White’s submission to the Bexhill Bypass commission where he suggests that it was at Wilting in Combe Haven. This is the site proposed by Nick Austin for the second Norman camp. White’s submission has three items of evidence. One is the impression of a Roman enclosure he has found on a LiDAR scan of Wilting which seems to conform with Hæstingaceastre’s listing in the Burghal Hidage. Second, he believes that nearby Silverhill might have taken its name from the Hæstingaceastre mint. Third, he has found a nearby area of land named ‘Burghs’ in the 1847 Hollington tithe maps, which might have taken its name from Hæstingaceastre burh.

The planning authority was unimpressed, and so are we. It is only to be expected that the Romans would build an enclosure to administer their port at Monkham Wood. They did the same for most of their ports, but these enclosures were not fortified enough to be known as ceastre’s. There are no known references to Silver Hill before the 18th century, and it is named Salver Hill on Yeakell & Gardiner’s 18th century map. We suspect its name was changed by an enterprising Georgian estate agent. And most medieval ports were ‘burghs’, of a sort. The term typically means that they have royal liberties. This would probably have applied to both Bulverhythe and Filsham after the Conquest, not least because they serviced the new Norman castle at modern Hastings. Their market would naturally have been on the high ground at the top of Gillman’s Hill, on the land known in the 19th century as the Burghs. But this does not mean it was a Saxon burh beforehand and it is 1500m from White’s proposed Hæstingaceastre burh location. The argument, in our opinion, is feeble.

Kathleen Tyson thinks that Hæstingaceastre was at Icklesham. She notes that it had a Roman bloomery, so it might have had a Roman fortification to become a ceastre in Saxon times. It has an Old English name, and it appears in some Anglo-Saxon Charters. On the other hand, it has no evidence of Roman buildings or a burh wall, and it would be a poor lookout station, more than two miles from the sea, no sea view and no view of the Fire Hills messaging beacon. Kathleen’s theory is not impossible, but in our opinion, it is unlikely.

We think that Hæstingaceastre’s location has been hiding in plain sight, pointed to by Margary 13, the Rochester Roman road. Consider this: 1) The Rochester Roman road terminated at modern Winchelsea; 2) Roman roads linked garrisons, so there was a Roman fortification at modern Winchelsea; 3) Modern Winchelsea was on a defensively sound promontory with a wide sea view, typical of the places that Alfred liked to build his burhs; 4) We think that Old English Hæstinga referred to the Hastings Peninsula and Hæstingaceastre was the only place on the Hastings Peninsula with the characteristic ‘ceastre’ name. So, we think that Hæstingaceastre was at modern Winchelsea, which means that Norman Hastingas and Old English Hæstingaport were there too.

There is no physical supporting evidence to prove that Hæstingaceastre was at modern Winchelsea, but we are not without hope that some might be found. The northern part of modern Winchelsea, a section of which might have been within the walls of Hæstingaceastre, belongs to the National Trust. They have always prohibited archaeological work and metal detecting on that land. It is not so much that no supporting evidence has ever been found, than that no one has been allowed to look for it. Tantalizingly, the field that covers most of the National Trust land is named ‘Castle Field’. There are no known castles at modern Winchelsea, but Hæstingaceastre was an Alfredian burh which would have been a sort of castle.

There is a complication. The location of the first burh on the Burghal Hidage list, Eorpeburnan, has been lost. The next eleven – skipping over a four-burh diversion up to Chisbury - progress eastwards along the south coast. A few experts think this implies that Eorpeburnan was east of Hæstingaceastre near the Wessex-Kent coastal border. This would make modern Winchelsea an unlikely Hæstingaceastre candidate because it is only five miles from the current Sussex-Kent border, far too close to an eastern Eorpeburnan. Those experts are in the minority. There is no evidence that Eorpeburnan was near the coast. Most think it was at Newenden, some 8½ miles from the medieval coast. We suspect it was further north. The biggest single gap between any two Alfredian burhs is fifty miles between Southwark and Hæstingaceastre. It seems likely to us that Eorpeburnan plugged the gap, probably on the north scarp of the Andredsweald. The most promising location we have found is Brenchley Castle (51.1594, 0.4185). It makes little difference here. If Eorpeburnan was not near the coast, Hæstingaceastre can be at modern Winchelsea.  

One argument that Hæstingaceastre could not be at modern Winchelsea is that it does not appear in the ‘Comes litoris Saxonici per Britannias’ section of the Notitia Dignitatum, the source of the famous ‘Saxon Shore Forts’. Indeed, Notitia lists no fortresses between Lemmanis at modern Lympne and Anderitum at modern Pevensey. The Notitia is not infallible, so it might just have been omitted. We think there is a more likely explanation.

Henry Cleere analysed more than a thousand Classis Britannica tablets that were found at Beauport Park. It showed that the iron workings were abandoned in the middle of the third century, presumably because the ore was mined out. Beauport Park was by far the biggest of the Brede basin’s four giant iron ore mines. The others were presumably already mined out. Cleere thinks that the Brede estuary provided the low hanging fruit of iron ore in the Weald. When it got mined out, he thinks that the miners moved to the much smaller, more distant, High Weald iron ore mines. Their blooms would have been shipped out from a port at the mouth of the Rother, so we guess that the Roman fortress at modern Winchelsea was abandoned in the 3rd century. It would have fallen into disrepair by the time the Notitia was being compiled and was probably unoccupied, which we think to be why it was omitted.

Hæstingaport

We explain above that there is a link between Hæstingaceastre and Hæstingaport and Norman Hastinges insofar as different contemporary accounts say that William assembled his second fortress at each was these places. This implies that the names were cognates or that the places were adjacent or encompassing. There are other reasons to think so. John of Worcester repeats ASC entries about Hæstingaceastre and Hæstingaport, referring to both as Heastinga. Hæstingaceastre was one of 36 ‘Grately Code’ places in England that were licensed by Æthelstan as mints. Coins from that mint are stamped with an abbreviation of ‘HÆSTINGACEASTRE’ or an abbreviation of ‘HESTINGAPORT’. We presume that Hæstingaceastre mint melted and restamped foreign coin and bullion taken as payment from Hæstingaport customers.

Hæstingaceastre could not have encompassed Hæstingaport, nor were they cognates, because the former was an elevated burh in a Roman fortification whereas the latter was at sea level. The reverse is possible though. It was very common in medieval times, and still is in many parts of the world, to physically separate smelly stevedores and loutish sailors from refined businessmen and artisans. We guess that Hæstingaport was divided, such that the mercantile part of the port - businessmen, mint, financiers, and artisans – was at Hæstingaceastre. If Hæstingaceastre was at modern Winchelsea, the docks, warehouses and fisheries were at Winchelse (Old Winchelsea), an island located a mile or so offshore that is recorded as a ‘portus’ in Saxon charters, Pipe Rolls and De Viis Maris (see below).

We are not the first to suggest that Hæstingaport was not at modern Hastings. The other candidates are Bulverhythe at the mouth of Combe Haven, and Northeye at the mouth of Hooe Haven and the Ash Bourne. But Old Winchelsea is the only Hæstingaport candidate that is consistent with the numismatics and De Viis Maris:

1. Two King Edgar coins minted at Hæstingaceastre were stamped ‘WENCLES’ which Ruding, Lindsay and others believe to be an abbreviation of ‘Winchelse’, the island port adjacent to modern Winchelsea.
2. De Viis Maris lists the international ports, even the bad ones, from which crusaders might leave for the Continent in the 12th century. Between Folkstone and Beachy Head it has entries for Lympne, Romney, Hythe, Winchelse (Old Winchelsea), Peneness (pefenes ea) and La Crumbie (probably Hydney, now in Eastbourne). One of these was surely Hæstingaport in Saxon times, which was the only well-known Saxon era international port between Dover and Southampton. No ports are listed between Old Winchelsea and pefenes ea. This gap includes Bulverhythe and Northeye, implying they did not have international ports in the 12th century. They cannot have silted up during the intervening 130 years because they were active ports in the 13th century. De Viis Maris therefore implies that Hæstingaport was at Old Winchelsea.

Old Winchelsea is also the only Hæstingaport candidate that is consistent what is known about the Norman landing:

1. Camen says that the English and Norman battle camps were linked by a Roman road, and a Roman road would have been ideal for easy movement, plundering and foraging. The Brede estuary was crossed by the only paved Roman road in the region. The other landing candidates were close to ancient trackways or metalled mining tracks which might have been adequate if they were well maintained, but there is no evidence that they were maintained after the Romans left.
2. Carmen and Wace say that the landing site was overlooked by a sea-cliff. The Brede estuary is the only landing site candidate overlooked by sea-cliffs, those at Cadborough.
3. The Norman invasion was probably devised and planned, as Jo Kirkham proposed in the 1990s, by monks from the Abbey of Fécamp. They were Norman and therefore probably loyal to their patron William. They may well have resented Harold for having dispossessed and banished Normans from England. Some of them lived near to the Hastings Peninsula long enough to learn the language - Wace says that William brought some monks from Fécamp Abbey to act as interpreters - so they would have known the local terrain intimately. William would surely have tapped their local knowledge. The Fécamp cell was in Rameslie manor which lined the Brede estuary.
4. Carmen says that the Norman fleet arrived at ‘safe landing grounds’ at the third hour of the day. It is not referring to the actual landing ground because they expected it to be defended. We interpret Carmen to mean safe from natural hazards, which along the East Sussex coast most likely refers to the sea cliffs between Hastings and Fairlight. These cliffs would not jeopardise a landing in the Ash Bourne or Hooe Haven, but they would jeopardise a landing in Combe Haven or the Brede estuary, especially with a southerly breeze. Assuming the overnight mooring was somewhere between pefenes ea and the Royal Sovereign Shoals, and that the Norman fleet left at dawn, three hours would be about right for the 20-mile reach to Old Winchelsea on a southerly breeze against the tide. It seems improbably long for a ten-mile run on a southerly breeze to Bulverhythe, let alone a six-mile run downwind to The Crumbles.
5. William waited in Normandy for nearly a month for a south wind. As it happened, this worked in his favour because Harald Hardrada invaded northern England in the meantime. William was not to know. He would have wanted to invade as soon as possible. Most commentators reckon that there was a persistent north wind for the entire month. They are wrong. There has never been more than seven days of constant north wind in September since records began, and Wace says that they sailed from Dives to St Valery on a west wind which would have been perfectly adequate for a Channel crossing. Moreover, the weather was fine and warm at the Battle of Stamford Bridge two days before they sailed, which means it was probably from the south or southwest. It is clear to us that William waited for a south wind because he needed it for the landing rather than for the crossing. There is no reason he would have needed a south wind to land in Combe Haven, Hooe Haven or the Ash Bourne, but he would have needed it to land in the Brede estuary, as we explain in our main text.
6. The Brede estuary was the only landing site candidate that is likely to have been lined with a flat plain that was long enough to accommodate the entire Norman fleet, firm enough underfoot to support mounted horses, and level enough to assemble a kit-fortress without first digging a motte, all as described by Wace. That flat plain was made by Rameslie’s 100 saltpans, as listed in Domesday. Over the centuries, the ground would get levelled by repeated flooding. By the end of September, the last of the concentrated brine would have been harvested to leave a wide flat straight-edged dry plain just above the estuary bank, ideal for the simultaneous mass landing described by Wace.
7. John of Worcester says that Harold: “… gave them battle at a place nine miles from Heastingam, where they had built a fortress”. Heastingam is a Hastingaport cognate using the Norman convention, so it is saying that the Normans built their fortress and made their camp at Hæstingaport. It cannot have been at Bulverhythe or Northeye because nine Roman miles from either of them would take the battle out into the Andredsweald. The only port that fits the description is Old Winchelsea.

Hæstingaport’s location can be verified by two more methods. The Hastings Peninsula and its surrounds were too small, too sparsely populated and too short of hinterland to have had more than one major international port, so its only international port was Hæstingaport. The local population was too small to generate a significant volume of imports, so Hæstingaport must have been export oriented, shipping a prodigious volume of natural resources. Its location can therefore be corroborated: 1) From references to the region’s major port; and 2) From proximity to the major natural resource production centres.

Domesday says that Rameslie manor in the Brede basin had 100 saltpans, the greatest concentration in the south of England. Bulk products like salt and timber would not have been hauled up and over the Hastings ridge to a port at Bulverhythe or Northeye. They would have been processed or shipped from a port at the mouth of the Brede’s estuary, which means from Old Winchelsea.

S982 authorises the Abbey of Fécamp to take two-thirds of the tolls from Wincenesel (the Norman name for Old Winchelsea). There would be no point in making this provision if the tolls were not substantial. Yet the Abbey of Fécamp would not be taxing their own salt. Something valuable other than salt must have been shipped out of Old Winchelsea. There were not enough people to make anything valuable. It must have been some sort of natural resource other than raw salt.

Fish were perhaps the most valuable natural resource in the region. There were sea fish all year around, augmented by huge herring shoals at certain times of year. Some fish would be landed for gutting, salting and packing. Others would be gutted and salted at sea. In both cases they would be brought to a source of salt. Hooe is the only other manor on the Hastings Peninsula that is listed with salt-pans in Domesday, but it only had 35. At least three-quarters of the Hastings Peninsula’s fish would have been processed at Old Winchelsea.

Timber was another rich natural resource in the region. The south coast of England and most of its estuaries were lined by woodland in Saxon times. Uncut timber would have been almost impossible to move on the gloopy rutted tracks that were typical at the time. Daniel Defoe, the novelist, says that it took 22 oxen to pull a cart with one log, and progress was so slow that it sometimes took two years to drag a log to Chatham. The ground would have been just as gloopy and rutted in the 11th century. The Brede estuary, uniquely for the region, was lined by steep slopes on both banks. Timber would have been slid down to the Brede on log chutes. Local historian Mark Freeman has found what looks like a medieval log chute in Steephill Wood. Nearly all timber exports from this region would have been floated down the Brede to be shipped from Old Winchelsea.

In summary, the Brede basin produced 70% of the region’s salt, 70% of the region’s salted fish and probably close to 100% of the region’s timber. All of it would have been shipped from Old Winchelsea. Natural resource production in the Combe Haven basin and the Pevensey Levels basin was relatively small, making Old Winchelsea the most likely Hæstingaport candidate.

The other way to validate Hæstingaport’s location is through references to the major port in the region. We have said that Old Winchelsea must have shipped an order of magnitude more natural resources than any of the other Hæstingaport candidates. This should be reflected in the figures.

Domesday shows that Rameslie manor – which included Old Winchelsea - was far more populous than the manors containing the other Hæstingaport candidates: 189 households compared to 14 at Wilting, and 73 at Hooe (and most of those would have been occupied on its huge farmland).

The 1204 Pipe Rolls records that Winchelse (Old Winchelsea) was the biggest port between London and Southampton. The other Hæstingaport candidates at Bulverhythe and Northeye are listed but negligible in comparison.

The relative importance of Old Winchelsea can be corroborated from ‘Ship Service’ records. They are an interminable source of confusion, often interpreted to mean the biggest port in the region was at modern Hastings. We will try to explain what they are saying.

Ship Service refers to a deal whereby the King could requisition ships and crews from local fleets in exchange for liberties; the more valuable the liberties, the more ships. It was established by Edward the Confessor and reinstated by the Plantagenets. A 1227 Charter, as reproduced by Jeake, defines the following ‘Head Ports’: Hastyng, Doverr, Romone, Hethe and Sandwich – Hastings, Dover, Romney, Hithe and Sandwich - the original Cinque Ports. They were charged with getting their apportionment of ships from ‘member’ towns in their vicinity. They were not chosen because of the size of their port but because they were the administrative hub for their section of the coast. The Ship Service is really saying that the Count de Hastinges, for instance, had responsibility to supply ships from the manors around him. It does not necessarily mean that Hastings provided any ships or, indeed, that it had a port.

The 1227 Charter demands 57 ships, listed as 21 from Hastings, 10 from Winchelse, 5 from Rye, 5 from Romney, 5 from Hithe, 21 from Dover, 5 from Sandwich. Lots of historians have looked at these figures and inferred that the port of Hastings was more than double the size of Winchelse and, crucially, that it was somewhere other than at Winchelse. They are not mathematicians. These apportionments add up to 72.

Jeake explains that the sums only work if the ‘Ancient Towns’ - i.e. Winchelse and Rye - are included in Hasting’s 21, and they are described as ‘members’ rather than Head Ports. The 57 then, are 21 from Dover, 21 from Hastings, 5 from Romney, 5 from Hythe and 5 from Sandwich. Within Hastings’s 21, there were 10 from Winchelse, 5 from Rye and 6 from the other ports which are listed as Seaford, Pevensey, Hydney, Northeye, Bulverhythe, Iham, Beaksborne, Grench and, perhaps, modern Hastings. Iham was the old name for part of modern Winchelsea, so the Brede estuary (Old Winchelsea, Rye and Iham) provided more than 15 ships. Each of the other Hæstingaport candidates provided less than one. Exactly as expected, the combined ports at the mouth of the Brede were more than ten times bigger than any other Hæstingaport candidate.

These figures show that Old Winchelsea was the major port in the region a hundred years after the Conquest. It does not necessarily follow that it was the region’s major port at the time of the Conquest. But nothing significant had changed. Doubtless England’s new masters imported enormously more wine and olive oil, but Old Winchelsea was an export hub. Sylvester reports that at the turn of the 14th century modern Winchelsea exported 15 times as much as it imported, and that is after the huge increase in Norman wine and oil imports. Fishing, salt, timber and iron production techniques did not change significantly through the dark ages so there is no likelihood of exponential (or even significant) growth in any of those exports.

If Old Winchelsea was the region’s dominant port when Domesday was collated and at the second crusade, and in 1204 and 1227 and later, we are convinced it would have been the region’s dominant port at the time of the invasion, and therefore the most likely place to have been Hæstingaport.

Pefenesea, Pevenesel and Old Pevensey

Pefenesea is universally understood to have been the Old English name for the place that eventually became modern Pevensey. It is almost universally accepted as where the Normans landed. Both notions are wrong.

The former can be worked out from modern Pevensey’s founding charter issued in 1207: “… we have granted to the barons of Pevensel and confirmed by this our present charter that they may build a town on the headland between the harbour of Pevenesel and Langeney, which lies within the liberties of the Cinque Ports, to keep and maintain according by which our subjects of the Cinque Ports possess.” It is saying that modern Pevensey was established in 1207 between ‘pefenes ea’ and ‘Langeney’. In other words, pre-13th century references to pefenes ea, Pefenesea and cognates, including all the Norman invasion references, referred to this pefenes ea not to modern Pevensey.

We interpret the founding charter to mean that Pevensey was analogous to Winchelsea and Romney: A coastal port or harbour that was threatened and eventually destroyed by storms, and that like Winchelsea and Romney, its population moved inland taking the name of their former home with them. We will therefore refer to pefenes ea in this document as Old Pevensey, analogous with Old Winchelsea and Old Romney.

The founding charter gives enough information to work out pefenes ea’s location. First, in this vicinity, and perhaps everywhere, Old English ‘ea’, means island, other than occasionally when inland and preceded by ‘l’ or ‘d’. The modern spelling might be ‘ea’, ‘ey’ or ‘eye’. There are a dozen or more in the Pevensey Lagoon alone (Langney, Mountney, Rickney, Southeye, etc - see Figure 3 for those depicted by Tom Chivers). Second, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1049 in C, 1050 in D, 1052 in E) and a series of Anglo-Saxon Charters (S133, S1186, S318 and S686), pefenes ea was a refuge and harbour. So, pefenes ea was an island harbour.

In the 11th century, Pevensey Lagoon was retained behind a shingle bar known as the ‘Crumbles’. It is analogous with the Camber shingle bar that retained Romney Marshes and it was also divided into islands. Modern Pevensey’s founding charter says that it was located between pefenes ea and Langney. pefenes ea was a harbour, so the charter cannot mean ‘flanked by’. We interpret the charter to mean that modern Pevensey was between Langney and pefenes ea when viewed from the sea. This means pefenes ea was as depicted on Figure 4, some 2km southeast of modern Pevensey.

Norman accounts refer to pefenes ea as ‘Pevenesel’. R G Roberts explains how the name was probably coined in his 1914 book ‘The Place-Names of Sussex’. Roberts says that the ‘el’ at the end of Pevenesel is the Frankish root for the modern French word île meaning ‘island’. Bar place names that end ‘del’, e.g. Arundel, the only other known Saxon, Latin or Norman place name ending ‘el’ is ‘Wincenesel’, the Frankish and/or Norman name for Winchelse. The most likely explanation, we think, is that pefenes ea and Winchelse were part of Bertoald’s 8th century gift (attested in Charter S133 and S318) to the Frankish Abbey of St Denys. In their own records, they would transliterate pefenes to Pevenes, and translate ‘ea’ to ‘el’, to make the name ‘Pevenesel’. The Normans presumably adopted the name when they were gifted Rameslie manor by Cnut.

So, even if the contemporary accounts are saying that the Normans landed at Pefenesea, pefenes ea, Pevenesel or cognate, they would not be landing at modern Pevensey but on the island harbour of pefenes ea. It is even less plausible than a landing at modern Pevensey. pefenes ea had a mill according to Domesday but was otherwise a barren shingle island with no running fresh water and no farmland according to Domesday. No farmland means no fodder for horses. Even if this were not so, the Normans could not have landed on an island because Tapestry panel 40 says that the Norman knights ride from the landing site to ‘Hestinga’.

It should come as no surprise then that none of the contemporary accounts say that the Normans did land at Pefenesea or any of its cognates (note that we think Penevesellum is not a cognate). The Tapestry says that they: “came to Pevenesæ”. ASC-D says that: “Earl William came from Normandy to pefnes ea”. Benoît says the Normans: “Arrived at Pevenesel”. Brevis Relatio is usually translated to be saying that the Normans “landed at Pevenesel” but it uses the Latin verb ‘appello’ which is just as likely to mean ‘arrived’. If the Normans arrived at pefenes ea but did not land, they must have moored in the offshore shallows, which is exactly what Poitiers says: “having reached shallow water off the English coast, William drops anchor to wait for the rest of the fleet to catch up”. Carmen confirms that they moored offshore: “On the open sea you moor offshore”. John of Worcester ties all these accounts together, saying that William: “moored his fleet at a place named Pefnesea”.

Our proposed pefenes ea location is consistent with all the clues. We will run through them, noting where modern Pevensey is inconsistent.

1. Old English ‘ea’, in this area at least, means ‘island’. To get a name, it was probably inhabited in Saxon times. pefenes ea was therefore an inhabited island. Modern Pevensey was never an island and was not inhabited by civilians before the 13th century according to Dulley’s archaeological excavations in the 1960s.
2. Domesday lists the manor of Pevenesel with 110 burgesses and a mill in 1086. There is no reason they might not have been at pefenes ea but they were not at modern Pevensey where there is no archaeological evidence of civilian inhabitants before the 13th century.
3. Kathleen Tyson resolves the name ‘pefenes ea’ to mean ‘near-the-ness island’. Modern Pevensey was the only ness around the Pevensey Lagoon. Our proposed location for pefenes ea was ‘near the ness’ of modern Pevensey, whereas modern Pevensey was not ‘near the ness’ of itself.
4. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1049 in C, 1050 in D, 1052 in E) refers to pefenes ea as a maritime refuge, which is likely for the location we propose but unlikely at modern Pevensey because it was too far from the coast.
5. Anglo-Saxon Charters S133, S1186, S318 and S686 refer to pefenes ea as a harbour, which is likely for the location we propose but unlikely at modern Pevensey because it had no pre-13th century civilian population.
6. The only pre-invasion Saxon reference that almost certainly refers to modern Pevensey names it Andredesceaster. There is no obvious reason its name would change to Hæstingaceastre, but it would not need to if pefenes ea was where we propose.
7. Saxon Charter S527, dated 963, gifts a saltearn opposite ‘pefenes ea’ and land at ‘hanecan’ (later named ‘hacanan hamme’) near ‘glindlea’. Glindley and Hankham survive, not far from modern Pevensey. This is consistent with our proposed location for pefenes ea but less so for modern Pevensey because it was an enclosed loop which would not have had an opposite.

The only contra-argument against pefenes ea being an island harbour is that there are a number of 10th, 11th and 12th century references Anderitum where it is named “Castrum Pevenesel”, “Castelli Pevenesel” or “castele a Pefenesea” in Latin, Old French and Old English respectively. Some people have contacted us to say this proves that modern Pevensey was named Pefenesea and Pevenesel before the 13th century. We think not. Domesday’s listings are to manors. Modern Pevensey was less than 2km from our proposed location for pefenes ea, so it was probably in Pevenesel manor. Anderitum would therefore be “Castrum Pevenesel”, “Castelli Pevenesel” and “castele a Pefenesea” even though it was not on the island of pefenes ea. This would make it analogous to Castelli Windelesores, which took its name from its nearest named settlement Windelesores (now Old Windsor), four miles away. And, also like Windsor, its inhabitants eventually moved to the castle, taking the name of their former settlement with them.

Our proposed location for Old Pevensey sheds a new light on S133, a Saxon Charter dated 790 which gifts land in East Sussex and elsewhere to the Frankish Abbey of St Denys. The gift included a port: “de portu super mare, Hastingas et Pevenisel”, “the coastal port of Hastingas and Pevenisel”. Note ‘port’ singular. It is ambiguous. It could be trying to say: “the coastal port of Hastingas et Pevenisel”, with ‘Hastingas et Pevenisel’ as a compound noun, or “the coastal port of Hastingas, and Pevenisel”, with Pevenisel somewhere other than the port. In the first edition of our book, we speculated that that the former was more likely, because we thought that it could be synonymous with the port mentioned by Orderic as Hastingas et Penevesellum. We have subsequently refined our understanding of Penevesellum – see below - which makes this unlikely. We now think that the latter is more probable. The attestation in S318 suggests so, in that it refers to the gift as land in/at Hastingas and land in/at Pevenisel, as if they are separate places.

Kathleen Tyson has an alternative theory that Pefenesea was somewhere on the Camber shingle bar near Lydd. We think it unlikely. It would contradict De Viis Maris and S527, both of which specifically say that pefenes ea was near where we propose. It would also contradict Benoît’s description of William “arriving below a fortress handsome and strong”.

There are a few puzzles about the Norman Channel crossing and Pefenesea that we would like to tidy up.

ASC-D, the Tapestry and John of Worcester immediately pass from the Norman arrival at Old Pevensey to the construction of a fortress or, in the case of John of Worcester, to the battle. Historians read into this an implication that the Normans landed at Pefenesea even though the sources do not specifically say so. We think the journey from the mooring place to the landing place and the landing were redacted from these accounts. All three of them are heavily abridged, covering the invasion in a few paragraphs. They had to redact uneventful details, and according to the other accounts, the journey to the landing site and the landing were eventless.

Why did the Normans moor near Old Pevensey if their ultimate destination was the Hastings Peninsula? We guess that it was standard practice for Norman trading ships to moor off Old Pevensey before docking at Hæstingaport. We suspect the reason was that they had to drift into the port at Old Winchelsea on the flood tide and that is the direction the tide flows. The only unmissable shallows off the Hastings Peninsula were Royal Sovereign Shoal, five miles south of modern Pevensey, and Four Fathom Sand Ridge, four miles south of modern Hastings. The latter was closer to Hæstingaport but also close to a rocky lee shore, a dangerous place to sail in a ship with no centreboard, especially in the dark. Royal Sovereign Shoal was off the Crumbles shingle bank, which would have been a comfortable place to land if there had been a minor navigation error or a sudden squall. Wace says that the fleet steered towards a port/harbour, which was presumably well known to his sailors and navigators. We think that harbour was Old Pevensey whereas Four Fathom Sand Ridge was not in the direction of a port or harbour. Poitiers explains that William wanted to avoid sailing in dangerous or unknown waters at night. Royal Sovereign Shoal would have been well known and safe whereas Four Fathom Sand Ridge was unsafe.

Why did William delay the invasion for a month – as Carmen, Poitiers and Wace describe – to wait for a southerly breeze? It is very odd. The fleet started at Dives-sur-Mer, needing to sail north-northeast to arrive near Pevensey. Poitiers says that they were born to St Valery on a westerly breeze. But they could easily have made the Channel crossing on a westerly breeze. Indeed, it would have been the optimal wind direction if they used an ebb tide to offset leeway. Instead, they sailed to St Valery, from where they needed to sail northwest to arrive near Pevensey. A 60° change of direction, yet William still waited for a southerly breeze. We explain in our main Battle of Hastings at Sedlescombe book that William needed a Brede estuary landing required a southerly breeze.

A Brede estuary landing and Penevesellum

Three of the earliest and most trusted primary sources specifically say the Normans landed at Penevesellum. One of them says that William returned there six months after the invasion, reiterating that it is where the Normans landed. They are unambiguous but provide few clues about where it was. 

Historians think that Penevesellum referred to modern Pevensey, partly because it looks like a Latin conjugation of Penevesel which in turn looks like a corruption of Pevenesel (note n/v switch), and partly because Gesta Stephani has two unambiguous references to Penevesel that refer to Anderitum. The logic as far as it goes is undeniable, but we explain above why it is implausible that the Normans landed anywhere near modern Pevensey and why Penevesellum was a fair distance from it. Something else must be going on.

The first thing to note is that Penevesellum only appears in Norman accounts. It is a Latin format name but with no obvious Old English place names in the vicinity upon which it might have been based. The only likely reason that the Normans might have their own name for somewhere in Sussex, especially one with no English root, is that it was part of the land that belonged to the Norman Abbey of Fécamp. In this vicinity, this means that it was part of Rameslie manor, nowhere near modern Pevensey.

There are four references to Penevesellum. Poitiers and Jumièges say that the Normans landed at Penevesellum then went to Hastingas, building a fortress at both. Orderic says that Harold withdrew his ships and troops from “Hastingas et Penevesellum”. Later he says that the Normans occupied “Penevesellum et Hastingas” upon landing, leaving a body of men to guard them both. Note the reversal of names, so they are not ‘Tyne and Wear’ style composite proper nouns. At least one, probably both, are saying that Penevesellum and Hastingas were separate settlements or small areas. If they were protected by ‘a body of men’, they must have been close, probably adjacent. This is also consistent with Poitiers and Jumièges.

So, Penevesellum was close to, or adjacent to, Hastingas, which we think referred to Hæstingaport in these early Norman accounts. Hæstingaport was at Old Winchelsea (Winchelse). Pett was adjacent to Old Winchelsea, but the Pannel did not have a long enough strand to land more than half the Norman fleet. Therefore, the Norman fleet must have landed in the Brede estuary. There is an entire section on this in our book.  

It is interesting to speculate about a more precise location for Penevesellum. It seems to us more likely to have been on the north bank than the south bank, not least because:

• The south bank strand was too short, barely 2km around what is now Pewis Marsh. It could hold barely half the Norman fleet.
• The south bank would have been in shade for much of the day, so the Brede estuary’s 100 salt-evaporation ponds would have been on the north bank. Therefore, unlike the north bank, the south bank would not have been lined with a firm dry level plain to aid the landing.
• The south bank would be in consistent with Tapestry Panel 40 which is captioned: “here the knights hurry to Hestinga to forage for food”. As we explain in Appendix A, we think the Tapestry’s Hestinga referred to the Hastings Peninsula. If the knights hurried there, they started somewhere that was not on the Hastings Peninsula. The Brede south bank was on the Hastings Peninsula. The north bank was not yet was within easy riding distance, consistent with Panel 40.
• The Sowdens pinch point – barely 100m across – would help protect a north bank landing, buying time to unload the horses and build a bridgehead, whereas the south bank was exposed.

The Brede north bank is also consistent with what else the contemporary accounts say about Penevesellum. Poitiers and Jumièges say that the Normans landed at Penevesellum then went to Hastingas, building a fortress at each. Quedam Exceptiones says that William: “landed at Penevesel, where at once he restored the most strongly entrenched fortification”. Poitiers says that William returned there six months after the invasion, reiterating that it is where the Normans landed. Orderic says that Harold withdrew his ships and troops from “Hastingas et Penevesellum”. Later he says that the Normans occupied “Penevesellum et Hastingas” upon landing, leaving a body of men to guard them both. Note the reversal of names, so neither is a ‘Tyne and Wear’ style compound proper noun. At least one, probably both, are saying that Penevesellum and Hastingas were separate settlements or small areas. If they were protected by ‘a body of men’, they must have been close, probably adjacent. This is consistent with CBA which says that the port named Hastinges was “not far” from where they landed.

So, Penevesellum was close to, or adjacent to, Hastingas. Both had English garrisons, albeit empty on the day of invasion. We think Hastingas referred to Hæstingaport in these early Norman accounts, and that it was at Old Winchelsea and modern Winchelsea. There would be no point having two nearby garrisons on the same riverbank or on the same cape, so Penevesellum was either on the south bank of the Pannel or on the north bank of the Brede. William could not have landed in the Pannel estuary because its strand was too short, and it is unlikely to have had a fortress because it had nothing valuable to defend. Thus, we are convinced that Penevesellum was on the north bank of the Brede.

There is a probable sixth reference to Penevesellum in the Warenne Chronicle. It says: “in Angliam transvehitur, nulloque resistente inter duo castra Hastinges atque Penenesellum, terram Anglorum ingreditur”. Van Houts translates that William: “crossed to England; without any resistance, between the forts of Hastinges and Pevenesellum he entered the land of the English”. She translates Penenesellum to Pevenesellum, the u+n spelling which our rule defines as Pevenesel, thereby implying one fortress was Pevensey Castle. The only likely ‘fort of Hastinges’ is Hæstingaceastre, we think at modern Winchelsea. Thus, she seems to be saying that the Normans entered the land of the English in an estuary or inlet between modern Winchelsea and modern Pevensey, which would mean Combe Haven. We think she has made a transliteration and/or translation error.

Figure 6: Norman fleet route for a Brede estuary landing

Penenesellum is a misspelling in the manuscript, meant be Pevenesellum or Penevesellum. Van Houts picked the first, without saying why. It looks like a valid Latin declension of ‘Pevenesel’, the Norman name for Old Pevensey, but Pevenesel never takes the ‘um’ declension. We think Warenne Chronicle is trying to say ‘Penevesellum’, so: “William entered the land of the English unopposed between the fortresses of Hastinges and Penevesellum”. Its meaning depends on punctuation. If a comma was wrongly omitted after “nulloque resistente”, it might be trying to say that William was unopposed while sailing along the English coast between two far separated coastal fortresses. It seems more likely to us that the punctuation is correct, so William was unopposed as he passed between two fortresses entering England. In other words, there were fortresses at Hastinges and Penevesellum that were either side of the estuary or inlet that William used to enter England. Therefore, William entered England on the Brede estuary between Hastinges on the south bank and Penevesellum on the north bank (Figure 5).

Perhaps we can be more precise still about Penevesellum’s location. It is a Latin declension of Penevesel which has the ‘el’ suffix that Roberts reckons to be distinctively Frankish in origin. It looks analogous to Pevenesel and Wincenesel, the Frankish versions of Pefenesea and Winchelsea, with ‘el’ - the Frankish root of the modern French word îles - being a direct translation of Old English ‘ea’, both meaning ‘island’. This makes some sense because the Brede basin once belonged to the Frankish Abbey of St Deny.

But the only known island, albeit probably only at high tide, on the north bank of the Brede in Saxon times was Rye. Rye has shown no evidence of Saxon era occupation, despite dozens of archaeological excavations. Indeed, unsurprisingly for somewhere with no population, Rye does not seem to have had a Saxon era name. Its name was probably taken from Rai in Normandy after the Conquest after. It seems unlikely then that Penevesellum referred to Rye.

The last syllable of Penevesel is interesting because ‘sel’ is Old Frankish for salt and the Brede estuary was famous for its salt. If it follows the model of Pevenesel and Wincenesel the first two syllables are transliterated from Old English. ‘penn’ is Old English for an enclosure. ‘fæs’ is the first part of ‘fæsten’, Old English for ‘stronghold’. It is possible then that Penevesel meant something like ‘salt stronghold’, a fortification within a walled enclosure to defend the salt-pans. Kathleen Tyson interprets the name to mean ‘fortress in the wash’. Neither could apply to Rye, which has no evidence of Saxon era occupation, let alone a Saxon era fortress.

So, Penevesellum’s name has something to do with a fortress or stronghold. It might have something to do with an enclosure and/or being tidal and/or guarding the salt-pans. Quedam Exceptione says that William restored a fortress near where he landed at Penevesel. Carmen says that William restored more than one fortress near where he landed. These restored fortresses are in addition to the kit fortress that Poitiers and Jumièges say that the Normans built near where they landed at Penevesellum. Warenne Chronicle implies that there was a fortress at Penevesellum, opposite a fortress at Hastingas. Orderic gives the impression that there was a garrison at Penevesellum, presumably in some sort of stronghold, and that it was near to Hastingas, close enough for both to be guarded by one group of men.

 

Yeakell & Gardner (Figure 6), surveyed around 1770, might help. It labels modern Cadborough as ‘Caresborough’. The Brythonic term ‘caer’ and the later ‘cad’ often mean ‘fortress’. Many ‘boroughs’ were Saxon lookout or messaging towers, sometimes within fortifications. Y&G’s ridgetop road seems to detour around the south of a rectangular enclosure. That enclosure is consistent with all the clues listed above. We therefore believe that Penevesellum referred to the place that became modern Cadborough, originally built to defend the salt-pans. It would have ideally suited Harold’s needs, with a wide sea view and in a good location to defend the north bank of the Brede and the rest of the Rother Peninsula.

Kathleen Tyson has a different interpretation. She proposes that Penevesellum’s fortress was at modern Udimore village, where William later built a grand manor house on the site of modern Court Lodge. She says that it would be an ideal place to build a fortress because it was at “a chokepoint across the Romano-British causeway for taxing trade between Hæstingaport and hinterland in Kent” and a “magnificent place for a signal beacon that could signal other beacons neighbouring the Brede basin, Battle, Cap Gris Nez and St Valery-sur-Somme”.

We are sceptical about Kathleen’s details. Udimore has shown no archaeological evidence of pre-Conquest occupation, let alone a fort. It has a severely restricted sea view, making it a poor place for a signal beacon, and that view pointed to Boulogne in what was Hauts-de-France rather than to Normandy. Udimore is 114km from St Valery, so it would need a 900m high navigation signal to be visible over the curvature of the earth. It is difficult to believe that the Saxons had the wherewithal or skills to construct a pioneering 2km tidal causeway, especially when there was a low-water ford and a bridge a few miles upstream. And Udimore was 6km from the end of the Udimore peninsula, so it was barely ‘in the wash’.

Penevesellum’s fortress seems more likely to have been at Cadborough than at Court Lodge. It is closer to the sea. It is better protected with a sea cliff to the south and downslope to the east. It has a wider sea view. It better fits the etymology and the contemporary account Penevesellum clues.

We are not suggesting that the Normans landed immediately below Cadborough. It had a dangerously narrow strand and a steep cliff. Rather we think that it was the closest place to the landing that had a name, at least one that Normans would recognise. Most likely, they landed upstream of Cadborough, between Float Farm and Brede ford - Figure 8. This would be below Court Lodge, so Kathleen Tyson may well be right that Court Lodge commemorated the place where the Normans landed.

Figure 8: Salt plain landing upstream of Penevesellum

So, in our opinion, a Brede landing (as shown in Figure 5) best fits the primary source descriptions, best fits the terrain, best fits William’s military aspirations and it is logistically feasible. Appendix C gives one more cross check, by working out the approximate timing against the tides.

Rameslie manor

Rameslie was a big and wealthy manor in Guestlinges hundred, which it shared with the manors of Guestlinges and Ivet. Manors in the same hundred were not always contiguous, but most are, especially as in this case, when one is dominant over the others. Guestling survives as a settlement south of the fluvial part of the River Panel. Ivet was very small. There are no other hundreds in the vicinity. Therefore, it is safe to assume that part of Rameslie manor filled the Winchelsea Peninsula between the Panel and the Brede.

Domesday lists Rameslie manor with 100 saltpans, 35 ploughlands, 7 acres of meadowland, 2 woodland swine renders and 5 churches. The Winchelsea Peninsula was not big enough to hold it all. It must have had a lot of other land, including perhaps four other significant settlements each with a church.

In 1247, Henry III did a deal negotiated through the Pope to swap Old Winchelsea and its port for lands elsewhere, claiming it was vulnerable to an invasion because monks could not defend themselves. There is no mention of modern Hastings which implies that it was not in Rameslie and/or that it did not have a port, even in 1247.

By tradition, Rameslie stretched from Rye to modern Hastings. The Rye part is good: Rye and Old Winchelsea were still in Rameslie manor when they were exchanged by Henry III in 1247. Like so much else, the rest is derived from the traditional location of Hæstingaport below modern Hastings. Rammesleah manor was gifted to the Norman Abbey of Fécamp by King Cnut as a dowry for his Norman bride Emma of Normandy in 1017. Rameslie manor was held by the Abbey of Fécamp in Domesday and Rammesleah looks like an alternative spelling of Rameslie. We assume they were one and the same. The gift is described in a Charter (S949), which notes that the manor had saltpans and a port. The only significant port in the vicinity was Hæstingaport, traditionally located in the Priory valley. This is how Rameslie traditionally stretched along the coast from north of Rye to southwest of modern Hastings.

Rameslie’s traditional 30km² footprint is implausibly gigantic for somewhere with only seven acres of meadowland. No one would haul bulk freight like salt or timber from their source in the Brede basin up and over the Hastings Ridge to be shipped from modern Hastings, so there is close to zero chance that it held the port mentioned in S949. Moreover, Dawson and Taylor reckon that Ivet manor was around modern Pett, so Guestlinges and Ivet manors bounded Rameslie to the south. Thus, Rameslie did not extend south of the Pannel, and it did not come within five miles of modern Hastings.

If Rameslie did not stretch south of the Pannel, it must have stretched west and/or north from the Winchelsea Peninsula. Matthew concludes that Rameslie spanned the Brede. It certainly contained Old Winchelsea, modern Winchelsea and Rye on either side of the Brede. Medieval salt evaporation ponds in this region average 30m across. They are best placed on the north strand of a wide east-west estuary, where they get reflected sunlight, no riverbank shade and have no need for deforestation to prevent tree shade. Better on an east flowing river, where they are protected from storm surges or bores that might flood the saltpans. Most estuaries on the south coast are south flowing. The east flowing Brede was the only east-west estuary on the south coast that was long enough to hold 100 saltpans. If these saltpans were predominantly on the north bank, Rameslie must have stretched at least as far west as Brede Place on the north bank of the Brede.

This is still not big enough for five churches. Iham (which became modern Winchelsea) had one, St Leonards. Old Winchelsea had two, St Thomas and St Giles, the latter known to have been built by the Abbey of Fécamp. Two more to find. S982 confirms that the manor of Bretda was included in Cnut’s gift of Rammesleah to the Abbey of Fécamp. Manors that are worth coveting should be wealthy enough to have a church. Bretda is never mentioned again, so it was presumably absorbed into Rameslie. We think it accounted for one of the two remaining churches, probably at Brede village. By a process of elimination, the fifth was probably at Cadborough, Rye or Icklesham, the only other Domesday era settlements adjacent to the Brede estuary. We think Cadborough because there is a legend that the stones for St Mary’s Udimore came from a church closer to the sea (we are unconvinced about the part of the legend that they were moved by angels).

Cooper must have gone through similar reasoning 170 years ago, because he worked out – without saying how – similar locations for Rameslie’s five churches. He says that one was at Brede village, one in Rye, two in Winchelse (St Thomas and St Giles), and one at Winchelsea (St Leonards). We think he is right, other than that his church at Rye (see Rye below) is more likely to have been at Cadborough or Icklesham.

The fact that Bretda’s status had to be confirmed in S982 suggests that it was not specified in the earlier S949 Charter. This means that Bretda did not incorporate the port or the saltpans. Its name makes it sound like it was beside the Brede, in which case it was either west of Brede Place on the north bank, or west of Guestling on the south bank, or both.

Bretda’s location could be narrowed down by excluding land occupied by other Brede side manors. Ivet (sometimes spelled Luet) was once thought to be centred on Lidham, and therefore with estuary frontage, but it is now thought to be centred on Pett. The only other Domesday manors in the vicinity that might have had estuary frontage were Sedlescombe and Dodimere. Sedlescombe was south of the Brede and upstream of the current the Sedlescombe crossing in the 11th, at least 1km beyond the head of tide. That leaves Dodimere.

By tradition, Dodimere manor surrounded the settlement of Udimore on the Udimore ridge. East Sussex HER says that Dodimere was a dispersed ridgetop hamlet on the Udimore Ridge. This seems unlikely because ‘mere’ is the Old English term for a body of water, which would not apply to a ridgetop settlement. The manor is not listed with any saltpans, which implies it did not have Brede estuary frontage. It was in Babinrerode hundred, whose only other manor was tiny Kitchenham (2 households) on the Rother. If Dodimere was on the Udimore Peninsula, Goldspur hundred would have separated it from Kitchenham. Divided hundreds are not uncommon, but it would be very odd for one that only has two manors when the other is tiny. Something must be wrong.

Dodimere manor is associated with Udimore because Robert Count de Eu was Lord of the manor and Dodimere sounds like Udimore which was named after him. But he was Lord or Tenant-In-Chief of over 100 East Sussex manors any of which might have been named after him. We suspect that Dodimere and Udimore were different places that were independently named after him, and that Dodimere manor spanned the Rother Peninsula north from Beckley Furnace.

If we are right, Bretda manor lined one or both banks of the Brede estuary downstream from the tidal limit at modern Sedlescombe, meaning that Rameslie manor entirely lined both banks of the Brede estuary. We are inclined to think that Bretda was on both banks of the Brede, but Kathleen Tyson told us that she has evidence it was only on the north bank, so that is how we depicted it in Figure 9.

Bretda’s location would have made it prime real estate. It controlled the Rochester Roman road and the Sedlescombe river crossing, through which all land hauled imports and exports would have to pass. It contained a rich woodland that conveniently sloped down to the estuary banks for easy export of valuable timber. It is unclear how much iron was being produced in this vicinity in medieval times, but it contained the Chitcombe iron bloomeries, and controlled the output from the three other biggest Romano-British iron bloomeries, at Footlands, Oaklands and Beauport Park, once the third biggest source of iron in the Roman empire.

The Brede estuary was a medieval mini-Ruhr Valley, producing prodigious amounts of salt and timber, and probably some iron. Salt was crucial for preserving food, which is why there were herring salting plants at Old Winchelsea. There would have been wharfs and jetties all along the north bank, for shipping salt and timber. If iron was being produced, there would have been wharfs and jetties all along the south bank too. Kathleen Tyson has found evidence there was once a low-tide Romano-British canal from Sedlescombe to modern Winchelsea, which presumably took timber, salt and iron on barges to the docks at the place that became Old Winchelsea.

Jetties, wharfs, barges, warehouses, ferries, paved roads, canals, bridges, and a river crossing do not come cheap and there are no surviving Charters to make anyone responsible for maintaining them. It was a capital-intensive infrastructure business before there was an easy way to raise capital. The only people wealthy enough to operate these services were monasteries. In our opinion, the Abbey of Fécamp provided all these infrastructure services as part of what was effectively an entrepôt, probably paid for by a levy on the value of goods passing through the port.

Hechelande

CBA’s Hechelande is the only specific clue to Hæstingaport’s location, but it is not trustworthy. CBA has five references to Hechelande, variously spelled Hecilande and Hechilande. One explains that it is shy 1½ miles southeast of Battle Abbey, between Bodeherste and Croherste. This places it adjacent to the Hastings Ridge, near to Telham. Two more references are consistent with the first. A third says that it is the name of a wood. The other that it is a hill.

There are no conical hills northwest of Telham and the crest of the Hastings Ridge would probably have been unwooded. A spur is a type of hill. We interpret the clues to mean that CBA is describing a manor on a spur west of the Hastings Ridge that contained an eponymous wood. It would be on the land now occupied by Loose Farm. That land contains Bushy Wood. Professor Searle translates Hechelande as Hedgland. Might there be a link between Bushy and Hedgey?

CBA’s hill reference has the key Hæstingaport location clue. It refers to Hastingarum, a Latin declension of Hastinges, which CBA had previously said was a port ‘not far’ from where the Normans landed. Professor Searle translates CBA to be saying that Hechelande ‘lies towards Hastingarum’, Lower ‘in the direction of Hastingarum’. A line from Battle Abbey through Loose Farm intersects with the coast at Hastings Castle. It is as clear as any clue in the contemporary accounts, yet we think it is misleading.

For one thing, this part of CBA cannot be trusted. It was written to defend Battle Abbey’s wealth and independence, through what we think to be a spurious claim that the Abbey was built on the battlefield. If we are right, the locations of Hechelande and Herste were moved to support the deception, as we explain in the ‘Norman Battle Camp at Hechelande’ and ‘Herste’ sections of our Battle of Hastings at Sedlescombe book.

For another thing, we are unconvinced by the translations. CBA says that Hechelande was ‘a parte Hastingarum’. Lower and Searle’s translations are valid but uncommon. CBA has other passages that describe the ‘direction of a place’ and ‘towards a place’ that do not use ‘a parte’. On the other hand, it has 30 or more uses of ‘parte’ where it means ‘side’, as in the ‘south side’, the ‘opposite side’, the ‘side of the church’, and so on. We think the most natural translation of ‘a parte Hastingarum’ is ‘to the side of Hastingarum’. CBA’s Hastinges was a port, so if Hechelande was to its side, it could not be near Telham or anywhere else inland.

Even if CBA did mean that Hechelande was in the direction of Hastinges, it might be an anachronism. As we explain above, we think that the Normans referred to Hæstinga port as Hastinges at the time of the invasion but that they referred to Hastings Castle as Hastinges by the time CBA was written. CBA’s description of Hechelande’s location might therefore accurately refer to a newly created Hechelande at Loose Farm being in the direction of Hastings Castle, in which case it was elsewhere at the time of the invasion.

In our opinion, nothing can be assumed from CBA about Hechelande’s location at the time of the invasion, although it supports our argument if it is saying that Hechelande is to the side of Hæstingaport.  

Rye

Rye could jeopardise much of what we say above. Its name was originally spelled ‘Rie’ which looks like it might have been pronounced ‘Rea’. The implication, as we explain about ‘ea’ names above, is that it looks like Old English for ‘island’, and Rye might have been an island at high tide. Phillimore’s Domesday translation changes Rameslie manor’s name to Rye, as if Rye was its main settlement and mercantile centre. Most subsequent analyses take his lead. Rameslie manor dates to 1005 at the latest, when it was gifted to Eynesham Abbey under the name ‘Rameslege’ (S911). If Phillimore is right and if Rye was a Saxon era settlement and the manor’s mercantile centre before the Conquest, it is unlikely that Hæstingaceastre was at modern Winchelsea, so much of what we say above might be wrong. We think Phillimore is wrong and stand by what we say above.

Rye was a major port before 1227 when it was charged to provide five ships as its share of the Ship Service, as many as established ports like Romney and Hythe, half as many as Old Winchelsea, and five times more than any other port around the Hastings Peninsula. Working backwards, it is listed in half a dozen of Ballard’s 12th century charters together with Old Winchelsea as if it had become the port’s mercantile centre. According to De Viis Maris collated in the mid-12th century, it was the major port in the region to equip men for the second crusade and to transport them to France. It seems unlikely that it grew to half the size of Old Winchelsea in less than 100 years, so it was probably established in the 11th century, but that does not mean it existed at the time of the Conquest.

We guess that Rye was not Old English at all, but Norman. There are no 11th century references to Rye, and it has been subject to dozens of excavations without finding any evidence of Saxon era occupation. It was originally spelled ‘Rai’ or ‘Rie’ which, as far as we know, would be a unique structure for an Old English place name. It was usually referred to as ‘La Rie’ which implies the name was coined by Normans. It is listed as ‘Rai’ or ‘Rie’ in a dozen or so 11th century Norman writs. It was in the Abbey of Fécamp’s manor of Rameslie. We suspect they named it after Rai, a town in Normandy some 60 miles south of Fécamp.

Gillian Draper, in her 2009 book ‘Rye - A History of a Sussex Cinque Ports to 1660’, says that Rye was probably formed by the Abbey of Fécamp soon after the Conquest and that it was the place referred to in Domesday’s Rameslie entry as ‘novus burgus’. We think she is right. Domesday’s boroughs generally refer to somewhere that has liberties and/or rights to toll, typically a port or harbour which is also consistent with what is known about Rye and described by Gillian Draper. Therefore, Rye was probably established within 10 years of the Conquest and was already a substantial settlement by Domesday.

Why? We guess that the Abbey of Fécamp established Rye because Hæstingaceastre, Hæstingaport’s Saxon mercantile centre, was being turned into a Norman military garrison. By the early 12th century, it looks like Rye had become Hæstingaport’s main mercantile centre, as well as an important ship building hub.

Bibliography

Contemporary sources, in chronological order:

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (of which three versions covered the invasion, known as C, D and E); reasonably contemporary with events
Carmen Widonis (aka Carmen de Hastingae Proelio); Guy of Amiens; c1067
Gesta Normannorum Ducum; William of Jumieges; c1070
Gesta Guillelmi; William of Poitiers; c1072
Bayeux Tapestry; finished c1077
Domesday Book; finished 1086
Adelae Comitissae; Baudri of Bourgueil; c1100
Quedam Exceptiones de Historia Normannorum et Anglorum; Battle Abbey; c1107
Crowland Chronicle; Pseudo-Ingulf; allegedly before 1109, but perhaps forged later
Brevis Relatio de Guillelmo Nobilissimo Comite Normannorum; Battle Abbey; c1115
Chronicon ex Chronicis; John of Worcester; c1125
Historia Ecclesiastica; Orderic Vitalis; c1125
Historia Anglorum; Henry of Huntingdon; c1129
Gesta regum anglorum; William of Malmesbury; c1135
Roman de Rou; Master Wace; c1160
Draco Normannicus; Stephen of Rouen; c1167
Chronicle of Battle Abbey; Battle Abbey; c1170
Chronique des Ducs de Normandie; Benoît de Sainte-Maure; c1170
Historia Regum; based on Symeon of Durham; mid to late-12th century
Warenne Chronicle (aka) Chronicon monasterii de Hida iuxta Winton; Hyde Monastery; c1200
Monasticon Anglicanum; Volume IV; William Dugdale; 1690

Modern sources:

Nick Austin; The Secrets of the Norman Invasion; Ogmium Press; 2002
Dr Nicola R Bannister; Sussex Historic Landscape Categorisation; 2010
Thomas Birch; Living on the edge: making and moving iron from the ‘outside’ in Anglo-Saxon England; ResearchGate upload; 2011
John Blair; The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms; Leicester U.P.; 1990
Andrew Bridgeford; 1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry; Walker & Company; 2005
Robert J. S. Briggs; A reassessment of the occurrences of Old English -ingas and -ingaham in Surrey place-names; MA Dissertation; 2016
M. Burrows; The Cinque Ports; Longmans, Green & Co Third Edition; 1892
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William Durrant Cooper; The history of Wincheslea; John Russell Smith; 1850
B. Cunliffe; The Evolution of Romney Marsh; a preliminary statement; Archaeology and Coastal Change; 1980
Charles Dawson: The History of Hastings Castle; Constable & Co; 1909
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William Dugdale; Monasticon Anglicanum, Volume IV; 1690
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Mark Gardiner; Medieval Farming and Flooding in the Brede Valley; Romney Marsh Research Trust; 1995
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Historic England: Ancient Monument Grey Friars, Winchelsea; Ref: 1002301
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Roland B Harris; Rye – Sussex Extensive Urban Survey; 2009
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Bernard Leeman; The 1290 Masacre of Jews at Jury’s Gap Romney Marsh; 2015
Ivan Margary; Roman Roads in Britain; J. Baker; 1973
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Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas; The History of the Royal Navy I; Bentley; 1847
Monika Otter; Baudri of Bourgueil, “To Countess Adela”; The Journal of Medieval Latin 2001, Vol. 11, pp. 60-141
Andrew Pearson; The Roman Shore Forts; Tempus Publishing; 2002
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Catharine Pullein; Rotherfield: The Story of Some Wealden Manors; Courier Press; 1928
N.A.M. Roger; The Naval Service of the Cinque Ports; The English Historical Review, Vol 111; 1996
Louis Salzman; The Inning of Pevensey Levels; SAC 53; 1910
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Edwin Tetlow; The Enigma of Hastings; P. Owen; 1978
Augustin Thierry; ‘L’Histoire de la conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands’, 1825
David Gaska-Tusker; The hydrological functioning of the Pevensey Levels Wetland; PhD paper, 2005
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E J Upton; TURNPIKES: THE GATES AND TOLL HOUSES IN AND AROUND BATTLE; BDHS; 1971
Terence Wise; 1066: Year of Destiny; Philips; 1979
Peter Poyntz Wright: Hastings (Great Battles); Phoenix Publishing; 2006