Sunday 1 December 2013

It's not Battle, or Caldbec Hill or Crowhurst . . . So where WAS the Battle of Hastings?

The Time Team special on 1066: The Lost Battlefield aired tonight.  What we now know is that the Battle of Hastings was not at Battle, nor at Caldbec Hill, nor at Crowhurst.  The best guess of the Time Team guys, based on some sketchy laser mapping of just the Battle town centre, was that it might be under a traffic circle on the edge of town.  Not exactly rigorous or convincing.

Of course, if you start by putting the Norman army and Harold's men in the wrong place at the start of their march that fateful day, you're not likely to find the right place for the battlefield.  If the Normans were not marching from the modern town of Hastings, but from the medieval port of Hastings at Winchelsea or their camp in the Brede Valley, then the battle happened somewhere else entirely.

I feel vindicated.  Hooray!  I'm not such a loonie!