SPOILER: Normans win
Friday was the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, which was actually in Battle. (Maybe. No artefacts have ever turned up in the field next to Battle Abbey, where It supposedly took place).
And what was Battle called before the Battle? Senlac. It was called the Battle of Senlac Hill for a while. True story.
Is it my imagination, or have the Saxons chubbed up a bit in the last 950 years? Eh.
There were, of course, all sorts of celebrations ’round our area, all of which we successfully avoided. Uncle B and I once went looking for fish and chips in Battle on October the 14th without remembering our history and wondered why the town was stuffed full of Normans and Saxons and whether we’d slipped through a time gate or some shit. Once is enough.
I noticed in some of the FaceBook pictures there were ladies in chain mail on the battle field. Weasel does not approve. This is the re-enactment equivalent of breaking the fourth wall.
First person who says Boadicea, I shall gut thee with mine trusty seax. She was a one-off and that was a thousand years earlier.
Yes, there was plenty of handwringing about whether the Conquest was a good thing. These people can sure hold a grudge. A good old Anglo-Saxon value, that.
Posted: October 17th, 2016 under britain, history, personal.
Comments: 18
Comments
Comment from Deborah HH
Time: October 18, 2016, 12:33 am
If NO artifacts have ever been found at Battle, wouldn’t that be a strong indicator that the battle was elsewhere? And I know this is not an original idea, but it seems like the average Englishman can pretty much scrape the ground with a hoe and find something of historical importance.
Comment from Ric Fan
Time: October 18, 2016, 12:34 am
I thought most of the real wealth of England still is owned by the descendants of Norman invaders. I’d be pissed off, too!
Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: October 18, 2016, 12:38 am
Maybe the whole Norman Conquest thing is a myth fabricated by Elizabeth and the Bushes to cover for the orbiting shape shifting reptilian overlords?
But then you’d have expected them to plant some artifacts at the purported site.
Comment from Mitchell
Time: October 18, 2016, 12:41 am
Everything started going down hill when the Normans showed up and started trashing the neighborhood.
Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: October 18, 2016, 12:42 am
Sweas, your remark about the chain mail clad women reminded me of this:
http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/many-civil-war-reenactments-sadly-are-still-not-ha-10865
Comment from Wolfus Aurelius
Time: October 18, 2016, 1:03 pm
Did the ancient Britons even have chain mail in Boadicea’s time? The Romans were still doing leather and metal armor in the early Empire, and I’m pretty sure the Britons couldn’t have ordered chain mail from Sears. (For one thing, as someone I knew in the Society for Creative Anachronism told me, Sears is always out of chain mail.)
Comment from Some Vegtable
Time: October 18, 2016, 1:20 pm
Ah, but when it was in stock, Sears put a lifetime(sic) warranty on their Craftsyeoman chain mail, just like the warranty on their their Craftsman tools. Bring in a bloody chain mail doublet with a hole in the chest, and they’d give the widow a new one – no questions asked!
Comment from Can’t Hark My Cry
Time: October 18, 2016, 4:00 pm
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Comment from Can’t Hark My Cry
Time: October 18, 2016, 4:06 pm
Sigh. I forgot about html markup, silly me!
That was “resists the urge to quote Kipling–too obvious”
Comment from Ric Fan
Time: October 18, 2016, 6:26 pm
If watching 20 years of Time Team makes you an expert, then I’m an expert.
There are very few artifacts after an ancient battle because every thing is gathered for reuse or just stolen. There were few artifacts from the Battle of Bosworth which they no longer believe happened in Bosworth but close by. They determined this by reexamining the terrain and then looking for certain types of artifacts of which there were very very few. They determined where different types of weapons wd have been placed and then looking for ammo from that weapon, i.e., cannonball, arrowheads, shot, etc., in those areas which they found.
And tho they found very few artifacts, the professional archaeologists and historians determined it was enough to change their view as to the location of the Battle of Bosworth.
ps: they did an episode on the Battle of Hastings but I missed it.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 18, 2016, 6:51 pm
The exact location of the Battle of Hastings is one of those nut-rich specialties that sell niche books. They’re getting might good with things like ground penetrating radar these days, though, so I’m sure some lucky nut will find the real thing eventually.
Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: October 18, 2016, 6:58 pm
Boadicea was not so much a one-off as a special case, being a regnant queen of an appropriate age.
There was a loosely similar case in the Norman age: Sichelgaita, second wife of Robert Guiscard, the Norman leader in southern Italy. She accompanied him in battle on several occasions, wearing armor. At the battle of Dyrrhachium in 1081, she is credited with rallying the Norman center when it was driven back by a charge of the Varangian Guards (who were, according to some accounts, mostly Saxon exiles).
Comment from Ric Fan
Time: October 18, 2016, 7:16 pm
Unless ground penetrating radar picks up a mass grave, what wd they find from the Battle of Hastings? Again, almost all artifacts were retrieved for re use. The Battle of Hastings being 400 years older, gave people that much more time to scavenge. You’re in the antiquity biz — shouldnt you know the answers to all these questions, my little Anglo-Saxon flower?
Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: October 18, 2016, 7:29 pm
Ric Fan @October 18, 2016, 12:34 am:
I thought most of the real wealth of England still is owned by the descendants of Norman invaders. I’d be pissed off, too!
By now, nearly all English people have some Norman ancestry.
That would include the Grosvenors, who in the 1700s bought a lot of what became central London, and are among the richest families in England, and the comparatively nouveau-riche de Havillands, whose patriarch started a successful aircraft company.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 18, 2016, 7:30 pm
I’m no expert on the BofH, but I know they’ve relocated the site of Agincourt based on contemporary descriptions of the battle matching up with observed features in today’s landscape (ditches, ridges, that sort of thing). Some of which had been superficially obscured. That’s the sort of thing drones and other new techniques are getting good at.
Comment from Ric Fan
Time: October 18, 2016, 10:46 pm
That’s what they did with Bosworth Field II — found a field about 1000 kilometers away that matched the landscape descriptions and then found the supporting artifacts. It was a pretty interesting episode of Time Team. I gave it Two Trowels up!
Comment from Subotai Bahadur
Time: October 18, 2016, 11:34 pm
That’s what they did with Bosworth Field II — found a field about 1000 kilometers away that matched the landscape descriptions and then found the supporting artifacts.
OK, I’m just an American who does not think in Metric, but 1000 Kilometers is well over 600 miles by my figuring. You can’t travel in a straight line in England for that distance, and still be in England.
I’m assuming a typo, but in that case where is the newly discovered battle site?
Comment from As If I Cared (Now With Caps!)
Time: October 19, 2016, 10:09 am
Chubby Saxons encased in suets of armor.
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