Going back to your roots: Battle, Sussex
some victorious French soldier, 1066
Back in 1066 the entire kingdom of England was under threat from murderous immigrants. If it wasn't Norwegians massing to attack across the North Sea it was Frenchmen intent on invading across the Channel, and poor King Harold spent most of the year trying to keep everyone at bay. He failed. You probably know the story of England's most important battle, especially if your history teachers did a good job. But you may not know that the battle actually took place at Senlac Hill, seven miles up the road from Hastings. Today there's a small medieval town on the site, a town with the appropriate but stunningly unoriginal name of Battle. Go back five generations and some of my ancestors came from here. But go back forty generations and, if you're of English descent, I bet some of your genes were fighting on this very hillside...
I was very impressed to discover that England's most important battlefield remains pretty much unspoilt to this day. Apart from the huge abbey and monastery on the hilltop that is, and these were built centuries ago well before the introduction of rigorous conservation legislation. The site is now owned by English Heritage, and they'll only charge you a fiver to enter through the Abbey gateway and step back into the 11th century. It was eerily quiet on this most famous hillside last Saturday afternoon, with just myself and a small party of Dutch tourists squelching round the battlefield in the unexpected sunshine. Instead of swords we held "audio wands", listening to well-written commentaries which brought the stories of the dead back to life. The guided walk took us from the abbey terrace where King Harold's shield wall stood firm, right down to the lake at the foot of the hill where the Norman knights gathered. Inbetween were the killing fields, now just grass and mud and trees and bracken. I was taken by how ordinary the place looked, but how special it felt.
On that distant Saturday back in 1066, the day-long battle could have gone either way. Harold's men were knackered after an unexpected trek up to Yorkshire and back, but they also had a superior tactical location on the top of the hill. Had they stayed in position, William's soldiers might never have been victorious. But the Normans were devious strategists and pretended to take flight, encouraging the English to break ranks and lose their advantage. In the ensuing skirmish a hail of arrows rained down behind the Saxon shield line and Harold was unexpectedly pierced. That one fatal eye-wound delivered victory to the French and changed the course of English history. The high altar of Battle Abbey was later built on the spot where Harold fell, and a stone tablet still marks the site today.
I left the battlefield with ancient mud caked to the bottom of my shoes. There were still monastery ruins to explore, a museum to wander round and a small gift shop to ignore. As I walked back out into the 21st century I was humbled by the events this site had witnessed. And I was reminded that, although I shall never be able to trace my earliest ancestors, I am in fact a genetic hotchpotch of hundreds of thousands of invaders and settlers, each with their own unique life story to tell. And some of them are even French.
Going back to your roots: Battle, Sussex
I left the battlefield with ancient mud caked to the bottom of my shoes. There were still monastery ruins to explore, a museum to wander round and a small gift shop to ignore. As I walked back out into the 21st century I was humbled by the events this site had witnessed. And I was reminded that, although I shall never be able to trace my earliest ancestors, I am in fact a genetic hotchpotch of hundreds of thousands of invaders and settlers, each with their own unique life story to tell. And some of them are even French.
