Another alternative site for Hastings

[Erpingham]

A recent article in the International Journal of Military History and Historiography suggests a completely new site for Hastings, even further from the town.  This seems to be primarily based on 18th and 19th century sources.  Perhaps more interesting is that the new site does come with the presence of a "hoar apple tree" recorded in medieval sources.

The article does, I think, say some interesting things about what we do or don't know about the battle site.  I think I have two main issues about the new theory.  Firstly, would the monks of Battle Abbey have shifted the battle site many miles and still claimed their church was built on the very place Harald fell? Especially as the site chosen was a very awkward one, which needed major landscape works to make suitable?  Secondly, the 18th and 19th century sources quoted do not seem to be independent but borrow from each other.  Several of them seem to mix up the allegedly "folk tradition" site with the accepted site.  Saying they were influenced by previous writers while assuming a "true" tradition appearing as late as the 18th century seems a bit shaky scholarship to me.  The hoar apple tree is interesting.  The AS Chronicle doesn't say the battle was fought there, just that it was the assembly point.  Could Harald have assembled his army further away and then advanced to meet William?

Anyway, worth a read, even if you don't come away convinced.

[Imperial Dave]

nice find, thanks 

[Nick Harbud]

I'm disappointed.  So far, no one has suggested that the Battle of Hastings took place anywhere near Glamorgan.

    

[Duncan Head]

I'm disappointed.  So far, no one has suggested that the Battle of Hastings took place anywhere near Glamorgan.

Not even with an author called Welshman!

[Imperial Dave]

Hwrrwldd was a Welshmun

[Nick Harbud]

Godwinsons certainly owned large tracts of Glamorgan at the time of the invasion, having liberated it from sundry petty-lordships in Wales.

[Imperial Dave]

Portskewett was allegedly one of his hunting lodges....until the local Welsh burned it down 

[Erpingham]

If I were William, I think I would have chosen the short invasion crossing to Pevensey rather than sail down the Channel, round Cornwall and across to Wales. 

[Imperial Dave]

Mere details...