We wait a thousand years to find out where the Battle of Hastings took place, and it turns out it was down the road (literally) from where all the accounts tell us that it happened.
After over forty minutes of flannel last night on the Time Team Special, The Lost Battlefield of 1066, (Sunday 1 December) came the secret weapon that would reveal the topography of the land and establish, by a process of elimination, where the course of English history changed in a single day.
The framework for the programme is well established. We got the diggers and the ditch of course and Sir Tony Robinson being his enthusiastic informed self.
It was a Time Team Special, so we got two ditches for the price of one.
They dug at Battle Abbey. There was the astonishing revelation at the start of the programme that this had not been done before.
Of course English Heritage has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo about where the battle actually took place.
There are hardly likely to have instigated proceedings of this description.
If you had 100,000 people coming to visit an abbey every year to witness ‘history in the making’, you are hardly likely to encourage a view that the most famous battle in English History may actually have taken place miles away are you?
Having said that, the openness with which Roy Porter, on behalf of English Heritage, the custodians of our history, welcomed the team to the Abbey fields, did suggest that they were perfectly prepared to see their view challenged.
The basis on which he explained the nature of the abbey and its position was cogent. What he said made sense. An odd place to put an abbey. A simple explanation. It did indeed mark the spot where the battle took place.
But of course it still left the question of where was the evidence? None has ever been found.
Bring on the diggers, let’s see if under the detritus of pageants and day visitors, something could be unearthed.
Scrape off the first 10cms and we come to what they call sterile ground. Anything below that point is potentially older, possibly medieval. It was never explained to us why this had not been done before, but that is how these things go.
We do love Phil Harding and his shorts. One day he may eat them.
He was able to confirm for us exactly what had just been explained, so we got his version of events, this time though, with his trademark lilting Dorset accent for extra effect, ‘ if you scrape off the first 10cms, then we come to sterile ground. Anything below that point is potentially older, possibly medieval’. Presumably he had read the script.
The absence of Professor Mick Aston at this kind of point in the proceedings is always obvious now. He is sadly missed. In his woolly jumper he would always inject some archeological or historical insight of some value. Perhaps he was looking down from on high at the topography of the programme at this point and shaking his head.
They dug and, unsurprisingly they found nothing.
But of course Tony Robinson had a cunning plan.
They also dug at Caldbec Hill. A book by John Grehan in 2012 had suggested the possibility that this was the most likely site of the battle, because the ground at the abbey fields would have been too soft to support a battle of this description. Therefore it was impossible for it to have taken place where history says that it happened.
Again, nothing was found.
There was then a nod towards the conspiracy theories of Nick Austin, who for nearly thirty years has been sewing various accounts together of his own version of the 1066 story to come up with the notion that it all took place at Crowhurst (where, what a coincidence) he lives.
He was very gently brought back to earth.
An armories expert suggested that his one and only prize possession from what might have been the battlefield, was quite likely to be, not the remnants of a Norman or Ango-Saxon helmet but the rim of an old bucket.
With only 15 minutes left for the programme to run, the planning framework suggested that they must surely have something up their sleeve, and this did indeed prove to be the case.
A new process of mapping the topography of an area was introduced. It is a mix of radar and laser. A light aircraft plane took off, and the rest is history.
The new ‘laser radar approach’ mapped the area and they were able to strip away the last 1,000 years and show how it would have looked in 1066.
Genius, and a method no doubt that will be now utilised in many other explorations of the past.
There, by a process of deduction, was the site of the Battle of Hastings.
It took place very close to where we have always believed it took place, on higher, firmer ground.
There was simply nowhere else that it could have taken place, given the lie of the land a thousand years ago.
John Grehan sat smiling at a wooden picnic bench with Tony Robinson. His own deductions had been validated (up to a point).
He was right, the battle couldn’t have taken place in the abbey fields. The ground at the time would have been waterlogged. He was wrong, it couldn’t have been at Caldbec Hill either, because the ground at the time would have been indefensible by 7,000 men, but at least part of his theory had been proved right.
So where did the battle actually take place?
The topography revealed that it could only have taken place a short distance away from the abbey fields, where the ground would have been firm enough for a battle between two such big opposing forces.
Amazingly, after nearly 1,000 years, the mystery has been solved, or to be more precise, deduced.
At the end of the programme Tony Robinson found another bench. This time we were at a junction on the A2100, about 600ft to the east of Battle Abbey, on the way to Hastings.
Pointing up the road to a busy roundabout, he explained that this is where the battle actually took place.
There was an interesting coda. Various finds sent off for a new form of carbon dating in which the wood shearings around objects could be studied, discovered two things.
An object from the abbey fields turned out to be an electric flex.
More interestingly an object from Battle Museum, thought to have been part of an implement from a later period, was dated to ‘before 1600′. leaving the intriguing possibility that it did indeed bear some of the hallmarks of part of an Anglo-Saxon battle axe.
Legend has it that the find had been discovered just a short distance from Battle Abbey… so maybe history and the accounts were right (to a certain extent) all the time.
The actual battle didn’t take place at the Abbey fields, it took place a short distance away.
There is something very satisfying about the deductions involved.
The radar laser mapping of the possible locations of the battle and the stripping away of the layers of history to show how the ground would have looked in 1066 was a revelation.
Through this process of deduction, therefore, it does indeed appear that we now ‘know’ where the battle took place.
The evidence of the new ‘topographical map’ is incontrovertible. It could be said to be the missing link and it will inform any further discussions or debate about the matter.
Of course we cannot dig the area underneath the roundabout and the roads and the houses where the new information points to where the battle took place, but at least we can now see where the site would have been.
Other evidence also emerged which could form the basis of another programme. The Bayeux Tapestry, it was shown, for example, involved what could be called ‘doctoring’ at a later stage, with the ‘arrow in the eye of King Harold’ possibly representing a later interpretation of the story and the adding of dramatic effect.
Fascinating.
So where does that leave things?
No car park pitch marked with a letter R under which the remains of King Richard III were discovered.
King Harold, since all the accounts suggest that he was carried by a horse from the battlefield, dead, is unlikely to be under the road junction, with or without an arrow in his eye, but nonetheless, there was enough ‘proved’ in the programme to make us think again about the site of the battlefield.
If, as the Time Team Special suggested, the new ‘mapping of the area’ provides us with conclusive proof about how the terrain sat in 1066, then it does indeed, by a process of deduction, lead us to this junction as the ‘only place’ where the battle could have happened.
Has the site of the most important battlefield in English history been discovered at long last? The answer to the question would appear to be an incontrovertible, yes.
There is something amusing and somehow appropriate that it is a roundabout, traffic slows and then continuously flows in one direction around a central island.
It is not a particularly powerful metaphor for what the Normans did to this country and how they shaped a change in our history from which we are still learning today, but it will do.
A roundabout is a circle and will do as a reference point, at least we have a new marker of some description.
The only question for English Heritage left is where to put the new information centre and where to park the coaches for upwards of 100,000 people a year who will want to visit the spot, but that is another matter.
It is not really going to work is it? Perhaps somebody enterprising will set up a SatNav system and a voiceover to guide people to the actually location instead.
‘Follow the A2100 for about 600ft and when you see the roundabout, you have arrived’, doesn’t really do it.
But of course with Sir Tony Robinson doing the voiceover, being the guide and filling us in with the history along the way, and with a dedication to Professor Mick Aston on the sleeve notes in his woolly jumper, we could just have a hit.
The accounts and histories of this country are brimful of legend and real facts that surprise in the stories that they reveal.
There is nothing to say that a magic roundabout on the A2100 could not now find its natural place amongst these stories.
Simon Montgomery
editor, Bay Life
all rights reserved
