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00:00944 years ago, some local Saxons might have come to this very spot, the top of Beachy
00:18Head, and looked out there, across the English Channel.
00:22And if they'd have been standing up here on the 28th of September, they'd have seen a mighty
00:31invasion fleet out there.
00:35Ships crammed with thousands of warriors and horses, and among them, Duke William of Normandy,
00:41a man who within weeks would lead that army into battle at Hastings, and whose destiny
00:46it was to become King of England.
00:501066, the most famous date in British history.
00:56What actually happened between the Norman fleet appearing out there, and the Battle of Hastings,
01:00fought 16 miles that way?
01:03Well, that's what I'll be finding out today, as I walk in the footsteps of the Normans.
01:20In this series, I'll be looking at very specific moments of the Norman story, trying to find
01:25out what the great British landscape can tell us about what we know for sure, and what's
01:31just speculation.
01:32And the first story I'll be looking at was played out along this stretch of the South Coast.
01:37Today, I'll be armed with the most famous piece of Norman evidence of all.
01:43The Bayer Tapestry, a detailed illustration of events that took place along my walk.
01:49It stands alongside a handful of Saxon and Norman chronicles, as valuable accounts from soon after
01:53the year.
01:54The Bayer Tapestry, a detailed illustration of events that took place along my walk.
02:00It stands alongside a handful of Saxon and Norman chronicles, as valuable accounts from soon
02:19after the invasion, and they mean we can be fairly certain of a few key events.
02:25William and his Norman army hit the English coastline on the 28th of September.
02:29But it was mid-October before they squared up against the might of King Harold and the Saxons.
02:37My walk is going to lead me to the battlefield itself, but why did the armies clash here, and
02:42why not earlier?
02:44On my way to battle, I want to explore the town of Hastings, and understand the role of
02:49the Saxon manors that once littered the local countryside.
02:53But before that, there's the coastline itself, because first of all, the Normans needed somewhere
02:59to land.
03:00The Bayer Tapestry gives a beautiful depiction of what William's fleet must have looked like.
03:11Absolutely vast numbers of men and horses.
03:14And you can see even the decoration on the prow of the ships here.
03:18That also leaves us in no doubt as to where William actually landed on the coast.
03:23They said they arrived in Pevensey.
03:25And that's why I've come here to Pevensey Castle to begin my journey.
03:30But the first thing you notice about this ancient coastal defensive site is that it lies a good
03:37mile from the coast.
03:39The Romans had established a fort at Pevensey some eight centuries before the Norman invasion.
03:44At that time, the castle stood on a finger of firm ground, a projection between the marshy
03:49inlet of Pevensey Bay and the long beach that once ran beneath the castle walls.
03:55What role did this spot play for Duke William?
03:58I've arranged to meet David Carpenter, Professor of Medieval History, and someone who can answer
04:05a very obvious question.
04:06Well, why Pevensey?
04:07I mean, you could argue that it was just an accident, the wind blowing there, but I'm
04:11absolutely sure that wasn't it.
04:12I think it was very, very carefully calculated.
04:15And Pevensey's got two great advantages.
04:17The first is that this Roman fort.
04:19But also, if you look out there and look at all the marshland around, it's very difficult
04:23to approach.
04:25And so it's completely safe.
04:26But I don't think that was the main reason.
04:28I think it's not so much Pevensey as Pevensey Bay, because what you've got here is that
04:32great massive shingle beach where you can bring large numbers of ships up.
04:36You probably had well over a thousand ships.
04:38So you can't use a port.
04:40You've got to, like 1944, D-Day, you've got to run them up onto the beach.
04:45And that's just what the biotapestry shows, because it shows all the boats being drawn up
04:49onto the beach, and then the horses being unloaded.
04:52And that's what you could do at Pevensey.
04:53What about the biotapestry?
04:54Because it's such an important source, and yet historians like you are sort of questioning
04:58some of its veracity.
05:00There's a terrific debate about it.
05:02Everyone would agree that it's early, that it is probably very soon after 1066.
05:06But beyond that, there's a great debate.
05:08Because on the one hand, there's the view that it's simply the Norman story,
05:11Norman triumphalism.
05:12On the other hand, there's the view that it's got an English subtext,
05:15and that it, because it was certainly woven in England,
05:18and this idea that the English weavers, many of them women perhaps,
05:21were trying to sort of make the English case.
05:24They were trying to make Harold a great heroic figure.
05:28I mean, I personally think that's a load of nonsense.
05:30OK.
05:31And that the whole of the tapestry can be explained in terms of Norman triumphalism.
05:35So, I mean, why is Harold like that?
05:36It's just that it makes the victory all the greater.
05:39And, yeah, you do have to take some of it with care,
05:42because it's very much giving the Norman version.
05:44I mean, you've got a classic example of it there,
05:47which is Harold's oath.
05:48Here he is taking this oath to Duke William.
05:50And it's basically the oath.
05:52I mean, the tapestry begins with the whole story of Edward the Confessor
05:55sending Harold to Normandy in order to take this oath
05:59to give the throne to William.
06:02Now, that's in all the Norman sources.
06:04It's not in any of the English sources at all.
06:06It's not in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
06:08which is the main English source about events.
06:11And so, you know, historians have debated.
06:13Did this happen or not?
06:15Have we been fascinated by the relationship William had with England in this period?
06:20I mean, he's not going to an unknown foreign land when he arrives here, is he?
06:23The extraordinary thing about that is,
06:25which is very, very little commented on,
06:26is that Faicont Abbey, the great Ducal Abbey in Normandy,
06:30where the Dukes of Normandy are buried,
06:32it has properties here.
06:33Because Edward the Confessor had given Faicont,
06:36wind shall see and rye, further up the coast.
06:39Now, that must mean there was great connections all the time,
06:42nexus between Faicont and this area.
06:44People going backwards and forwards,
06:45bailiffs, money going backwards and forwards.
06:47So the Conqueror could have been, through Faicont, very genned up.
06:51Not merely could, he was,
06:53because he spent the Easter of 1066 at Faicont.
06:58And I'm absolutely sure that that's where he found out about the area.
07:02So, right, he's got a sort of protected site here,
07:05he's surrounded by marshy land,
07:06he's secured the beachhead, which is what he's going to do.
07:08What does he do next?
07:09Well, that's another extraordinary thing,
07:11because having got to Pevensey, he leaves it immediately.
07:14I think if you look out here,
07:16look at all the marshland around, you can see why.
07:19Because Pevensey is a jolly good place to land
07:21and a jolly bad place to stay.
07:23Just bog, basically bog, all around Pevensey.
07:26And the tapestry shows this,
07:28because the tapestry shows the knights going immediately from Pevensey.
07:31And what's the actual title there?
07:33They're going to seize food.
07:35So that's one thing, but they're also going to ravage.
07:41So, just like William and his men,
07:43I'm moving swiftly on from the isolation of Pevensey
07:46and heading east to start my walk.
07:49Ten miles along the coast
07:51is one of the ancient ports of south-east England,
07:54a commanding settlement with a history going back 2,000 years.
07:58In 1066, William chose to settle
08:01at the well-connected Saxon burr, or town, called Hastings.
08:06Hastings is the town that's given its name to the battle
08:11that marked one of the most important turning points in British history.
08:15That's slightly strange, because in fact the battle took place a few miles inland.
08:19But Hastings does have an important part to play in this story,
08:22because it may have been the site of William the Conqueror's first castle in England.
08:28But all that's left of that now is that mound over there.
08:35Hastings was to be the Normans' headquarters in the run-up to battle.
08:39And looking at the tapestry again,
08:41we can see a wooden fort being erected atop a patch of high ground.
08:46But the tapestry isn't precise about where this fort might have been.
08:52Today, we can only look for clues.
08:56This is the Mott of Hastings Castle,
08:59a man-made defensive earth mound
09:01that the Normans like to put at the heart of all their castles and fortifications.
09:06Now, in the 1960s it was partially excavated,
09:08and what the archaeologists discovered really surprised them.
09:12Because the Normans have a great reputation as castle builders,
09:15but this Mott is a bit unstable and far too sandy.
09:19It suggests that it was thrown together in quite a hurry.
09:23So it's likely, if not certain,
09:26that this humble mound was the focal point of events in early October 1066.
09:31The cliff overlooking Hastings would seem a sensible spot
09:35for William to first make his mark on English soil.
09:39And from here he unleashed a two-week reign of terror,
09:42designed to feed his troops, devastate the area,
09:46and incite his Saxon foe into battle.
09:50So if we assume that William's army did come here to Hastings,
09:53how did he get to the battlefield, which is actually some way inland?
09:57Well, armies need good, firm ground,
10:00and there's a ridge that runs right along here towards the battlefield itself.
10:04So we can assume he went up there.
10:06However, nowadays that's all main roads,
10:08so they don't make for very interesting walking.
10:10So what I'm going to do is go slightly along the coast,
10:12and then in here to find out what this landscape can tell us
10:16about these few days that had such a vast impact on English history.
10:20To get from Hastings to the battlefield, I'll walk west along the coast
10:27to find out why this town works so well as William's headquarters.
10:32Turning inland, the extent to which this coastline has changed
10:37becomes clear as I traverse the one-time tidal inlet known as Coombe Haven.
10:43All around here were the Saxon manors and settlements of the rolling Sussex countryside.
10:53In particular, I'll pass through Crowhurst, King Harold's own manor,
10:57deliberately targeted for destruction by the Normans.
11:01From here, I'll head towards the battlefield,
11:04joining the route taken by the Normans out of Hastings
11:07and through the spot where the opposing armies would have first spied each other.
11:12The final stretch of my walk follows events in the run-up to battle,
11:18leading me right onto the battlefield at Senlac Hill beneath the Great Abbey
11:23and the town that marked the place where a new era of history
11:26was forced upon our island nation.
11:32But back at Hastings, I already know that the ancient Saxon port
11:36has been long since eradicated, lost to the sea in the area around the Hastings Pier.
11:41But is it possible to imagine how Hastings might have worked for William?
11:47A question I put to the Sussex County archaeologist.
11:50Good to meet you. Thanks for talking to us. Pleasure.
11:52The coastline here is completely different now,
11:55mainly because of erosion along this part of the coast.
11:58Effectively, because of the geology, you've got hard rock pieces coming out here at White Rock,
12:06at West Hill where the castle is and at East Hill,
12:09and between them you've got a series of valleys.
12:11And the valleys have silted up and the headlands have eroded.
12:15So a thousand years ago the coastline would have been more complex than it is now.
12:19So why choose this stretch of the south coast of England to invade?
12:24Well, between the White Cliffs of Dover to the east
12:27and the White Cliffs at Beachy Head to the west,
12:31you've got two big areas of marshland, Pevensey Levels and the Romney Marsh,
12:36and in between those you've really got one significant area of high ground
12:39where the high-wield comes to the coast.
12:42And is Hastings a better place then for a move inland towards the heart of Saxon England?
12:48The high-wield is particularly good for its iron content.
12:52And the iron industry was established in the prehistoric period,
12:56but it was during the Roman period that it became very, very significant.
12:59And the Romans used a lot of the slag to create superb roads.
13:02You know, they've got metalling, slag metalling this thick,
13:05and they would have produced roads which would have lasted right through the Saxon period
13:09into the 11th century.
13:11So you've got this fantastic infrastructure of Roman roads,
13:15many of which come down to the coast around this sort of Hastings Peninsula.
13:20It's amazing. So we talk about William's great generalship,
13:23but so much of it actually just comes down to logistics, communications and geography.
13:33The changing face of this coastline is absolutely key to understanding
13:37why the Normans behaved as they did.
13:40What we now see as this would once have looked more like this.
13:44And when you remember the ridge of high ground and the Roman road stretching north,
13:49Hastings starts to look like a very logical place from which to organise an operation.
13:54Today this feels like such a straight, stable piece of seafront.
14:06But in fact that's only been achieved at the expense of thousands of hours of busy human activity,
14:12building these groins out here and desperately trying to hold the beach in place
14:16and stop the channel eroding the coast as it would have done for millennia.
14:22Just west of Hastings High Ridge, this is Bulverhithe.
14:27The name is Saxon meaning Harbour of the Borough.
14:31Over a thousand years ago it was a narrow gateway to an inlet that filled the boggy marsh now known as Coomhaven.
14:39The question is, what state would Coomhaven have been in, in 1066?
14:51This is very telling.
14:52There have been two weeks of fine dry weather,
14:55that even at the moment the ground here in Coomhaven is soaking wet.
15:00Completely waterlogged.
15:05Speculation has run to the idea that the Norman fleet itself could have sailed as far inland as here.
15:11But, perhaps more reliably, archaeological reports suggest
15:15humans have been digging drainage channels here since the Roman age.
15:19By the time the Normans got here, mankind was already trying to assume control.
15:24Even after all the drainage that's gone on here, all the land reclamation,
15:32it's amazing just how waterlogged Coomhaven still is.
15:36I've never been down here before and it's absolutely fascinating
15:39because it allows you to say with certainty that no medieval army could have passed through this march.
15:45So, there's Hastings over there on that high ground.
15:49William is protected on both sides by these marshy areas.
15:52But it does also mean that he has to stick to that high ground when he moves inland.
15:57And that's why I've come down here because you get a great view of William's route from the sea inland towards the battlefield.
16:04For two weeks in October 1066, the area between Hastings and the battlefield bore the brunt of the Norman army's occupation.
16:16These were productive, fertile lands and all around Coomhaven would have been Saxon settlements,
16:22ideally placed for feeding William's troops.
16:25Well, I've emerged from the marshes and what greets me but the site of a cricket square.
16:31That's very Sussex. I'm sure there's a vicar on a bicycle around here somewhere.
16:36But to quote from the Doomsday book, this same area was laid waste by the Normans.
16:4320 years after the invasion, Doomsday records that 2% of Sussex lands were still entirely unproductive,
16:50all of them lying in this area around Hastings.
16:53This is the rather picturesque village of Crowhurst.
16:58We know it's been here since the Saxon period.
17:00One of the reasons is because Hurst is a classic Saxon suffix, meaning clearing in the woods.
17:06But so are some of these other villages around here because they've all got Ham at the end,
17:10which is another Anglo-Saxon suffix.
17:13You've got Little Worsham Farm, Pebsham Wood, up here you've got Moncombe Wood.
17:17So this is an area that's absolutely dripping in Anglo-Saxon heritage.
17:21And it's not just any old village, this one, because this was actually part of the personal estates of King Harold.
17:30Even before he seized the throne in early 1066, Harold was the most powerful landowner in this part of England.
17:37And William knew that.
17:39The would-be conqueror made a beeline for the Manor of Crowhurst, inciting Harold with a direct assault on his local people.
17:47Right here next to the church is this incredible yew tree, which is at least a thousand years old, and quite possibly much older than that.
17:58And yew trees were always great meeting points for communities, and so what Christians tended to do was simply co-opt those pre-existing spiritual places,
18:06and just stick a Christian site next to it, so that seems to be what's happened here.
18:10Absolutely amazing to think that this yew tree was here when William landed on that shore.
18:17Whether William himself came here or not, we'll simply never know.
18:24But we can be sure that Harold certainly wasn't at home.
18:28He was engaged in Yorkshire, crushing the Viking invasion at Stamford Bridge, leaving Crowhurst to meet its fate.
18:35Romantics would have you believe that the tapestry displays this very moment,
18:42with the harrowing image of a fleeing woman being that of Harold's mistress, Edith Swanneck,
18:48who days later would have the job of identifying the king's mutilated body.
18:54This is a fantastic historical novel, published in 1948, called The Golden Warrior.
19:02One of the most dramatic scenes is when William comes here to Crowhurst,
19:08and it says that Harold's reeve had buried his lord's treasure under the great yew in the churchyard,
19:13and here his men were taken, and not a soul would tell Duke William where the spoil was hidden,
19:18and then the reeve was hanged from the yew tree, and the rest barred within the hall,
19:23and burnt.
19:25William and his captains watched the reeve die, and hearken to the cries of those burned.
19:29Some of the barons mocked, some of them yawned.
19:32The Duke kept silence, his face unchanged.
19:36Now that's pretty exciting stuff, although it has no basis in fact whatsoever.
19:41But that hasn't stopped people around here telling visitors that King Harold's reeve,
19:45his man of business, was actually hanged from a tree in this churchyard.
19:50For me, that just shows that even nearly a thousand years after the events of this bloody year,
19:55we're still mythologising it, and still retelling the story in our own way.
20:01But by walking this land, you can go some way towards stripping away the myths and legends
20:07from the likely truth of events.
20:10As I head up the gentle slope of Tellham Hill, I'm joining the route taken by the Normans
20:16as they left their camp and moved inland, attempting to grasp the upper hand
20:21as Harold completed his 250-mile journey from Yorkshire.
20:25Technically, I have left the footpath behind, which runs along that fence, but I hope the
20:31farm will forgive me.
20:32I'm looking for this absolutely classic view.
20:34The one view you don't get, though, is the one view I want, which is that way towards the
20:40battlefield, because the stockbroker belt's in the way.
20:43But I reckon if I get onto that road, try and peer through the hedge, I might get a better view.
20:48I think this guy here has basically got the view that I want, so let's go down the hill a bit
20:54and try and cut in front of him.
20:56Also get away from his aggressive dogs.
21:04I think this might be just perfect.
21:07Wow!
21:12That's a fantastic view.
21:14There's the battlefield there, where the ruins of that abbey are now.
21:19And then as you go up the ridge, you can see the windmill, which marks the site, it's said,
21:24where Harold and his army were gathering.
21:25So by the time William gets up here, he can actually see his enemy.
21:29He can almost smell them.
21:30They're so close now.
21:32They're like two juggernauts heading towards each other.
21:34Two nations in arms that are bent on the destruction of the other.
21:39Chroniclers of the Norman era paint a picture of William giving a Shakespearean speech as his army eyed the opposition.
21:49The very pro-Norman, William of Poitiers, even has William offering Harold the chance of a noble solo combat
21:56to settle the issue of the English throne, saving the bloodshed of thousands.
22:01Harold apparently rejected the offer, saying, our advance continues.
22:06We march to victory.
22:08For modern visitors, the area around the battlefield now plays host to a sizeable Sussex town.
22:15Well, after all that lovely tranquility, I've finally arrived at the bright lights of the town of Battle.
22:21But before I go and look at the battlefield itself, which is just there,
22:24I'm going to have a look at how the Saxons were doing at their camp over here.
22:28If the Vikings hadn't threatened in Yorkshire, Harold would have been ready in waiting in Sussex.
22:34The outcome of 1066 could have been very different.
22:37For good as William was, Harold too was a renowned commander.
22:41The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that Harold mustered his troops at the Hoare Appletree,
22:49believed to have stood up here by the windmill on Caldbeck Hill.
22:53And that's where I'm meeting a town resident who's written about the local landscape
22:58and how it influenced events around the battle.
23:01What a fantastic view from up here.
23:02It's gorgeous, isn't it?
23:03Yeah.
23:04Very commanding position, this.
23:05I mean, it's the first time I've been able to see a long way north.
23:08And what are the key features of that geography up there?
23:11Well, basically trees.
23:14It's the vastness of the Andredsweald, the Great Wilden Forest,
23:19which covered most of Kent, Sussex and into Hampshire.
23:23It stretched north to south from here almost to the Thames.
23:29And so an impenetrable barrier, really,
23:32and certainly not one that William would have relished marching through
23:37until he was certain of victory.
23:39So how do we know that Harold chose this spot as a rendezvous?
23:42Where we are now on Caldbeck Hill was the focal point of 300s,
23:48100 being the local administrative unit.
23:51And there are several examples of that, some 14 at least,
23:55where apple trees were planted at those points.
23:59So really this was the first piece of open country
24:02that he could assemble troops on.
24:05And so we can be pretty sure that this is the site of the Hoare apple tree
24:09of the rendezvous which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us of.
24:13So Harold's really blocking William in here.
24:15He's trying to stop him from getting further inland and causing more damage.
24:18That's right.
24:19Harold acts with great speed, doesn't he?
24:21Comes down here from London.
24:22Why rush?
24:23Why not wait to gather more men, you know,
24:26garner all the resources that his kingdom had on offer,
24:28to go and really crush this invader?
24:30He enjoyed very much the element of surprising his enemies.
24:35He'd used it only a few weeks previously,
24:38most successfully up at Stamford Bridge.
24:41So take the battle to the enemy.
24:45Don't wait for the enemy to come to you.
24:47Well, thanks so much.
24:48So Harold was supremely confident.
24:50And William didn't want to let his troops get stuck in a British winter.
24:56Battle was inevitable.
24:59On the morning of the 14th of October,
25:01it was the Saxons who would have filed along what is now Battle High Street,
25:05a town that owes its very existence to the victory of the Normans.
25:13The Saxons headed south to this point to assume a defensive position along the top of Senlac Hill,
25:20which, for me, marks the end of my walk.
25:29You'd certainly be forgiven for thinking that all the fighting at the Battle of Hastings
25:32took place in this one little confined field, but that's not the case at all.
25:36It spread a long way that way, inland and down there to that boggy area.
25:43Up there on that ridge is where the English army were,
25:46rooted to the spot in a thick shield wall, beating the swords on the back of their shields,
25:51shouting out, out, out.
25:53Well, down there in the valley, having made the march from this coast at Hastings,
25:58was the Norman army, archers, infantrymen and cavalry.
26:05Accounts from the time tell us that the Battle of Hastings raged for an entire day,
26:11a remarkable duration for a set-piece medieval clash.
26:17The sides must have been fairly evenly matched,
26:21but we have little idea about how many would have fought here.
26:24Perhaps it was 5,000 per side, but it could just as easily have been 10,000 or more.
26:35There have never been any archaeological finds in this field
26:38that prove that the battle was definitely fought here.
26:42The acidic soil has done away with what the scavengers left behind.
26:46But there is one piece of evidence which is fairly conclusive.
26:49The ruins of this abbey, built by William to commemorate his victory
26:55and to do penance for the blood that was shed here
26:58and his savagery in the weeks leading up to the battle.
27:01Here at the centre of the abbey is where the high altar would have been,
27:05erected on the very spot on which King Harold was killed.
27:09Amongst the eulogising of the Norman chroniclers, the expressive licence of the Bayer tapestry,
27:18and a sorry lack of archaeology, the abbey stands as a rare monument in the landscape,
27:25a surviving marker for the events of the Norman invasion.
27:29Even though I've learned a huge amount about the 1066 campaign by walking the ground,
27:42there's still a huge amount that feels very obscure, like the shape of the coastline
27:46or the numbers of people involved.
27:48I think that's because virtually before the fighting had even stopped,
27:51people were retelling the stories and mythologising these events,
27:54and every generation since has been following suit.
27:57But one thing we can say for certain is that in 1066, in this area of the country,
28:04a decisive battle took place.
28:07One that saw Duke William of Normandy become William I, King of England, the Conqueror.
28:14And it was the beginning of the Norman Age.
28:19Join me for my next walk on the Welsh borders,
28:22when I'll be finding out what the Normans did next.
28:24They'd won a battle, but could they consolidate their rule across a whole island?
28:29It's a whole island.
28:30It's a whole island.
28:31It's a whole island.
28:33CI.
28:343
28:392
28:424
28:436
28:485
28:528
28:546
28:588
28:59You