944 years ago, some local Saxons might have come to this very spot,
the top of Beachy Head,
and looked out there, across the English Channel.
And if they'd have been standing up here on the 28th September,
they'd have seen a mighty invasion fleet, out there,
ships crammed with thousands of warriors and horses, and among them, Duke William of Normandy,
a man who within weeks would lead that army into battle at Hastings,
and whose destiny it was to become king of England.
1066, the most famous date in British history.
What actually happened between the Norman fleet appearing out there
and the Battle of Hastings fought 16 miles that way?
Well, that's what I'll be finding out today as I walk in the footsteps of the Normans.
In this series, I'll be looking at very specific moments of the Norman story,
trying to find out what the great British landscape can tell us
about what we know for sure, and what's just speculation.
And the first story I'll be looking at
was played out along this stretch of the south coast.
Today, I'll be armed with the most famous Norman evidence of all,
the Bayeux Tapestry,
a detailed illustration of events that took place along my walk.
It stands alongside a handful of Saxon and Norman chronicles
as valuable accounts from soon after the invasion,
and they mean we can be fairly certain of a few key events.
William and his Norman army hit the English coastline on the 28th September.
But it was mid-October before they squared up
against the might of King Harold and the Saxons.
My walk is going to lead me to the battlefield itself.
But why did the armies clash here?
And why not earlier?
On my way to Battle, I want to explore the town of Hastings,
and understand the role of the Saxon manors
that once littered the local countryside.
But before that, there's the coastline itself,
because first of all, the Normans needed somewhere to land.
The Bayeux Tapestry gives a beautiful depiction
of what William's fleet must have looked like.
Absolutely vast numbers of men and horses.
And you can see the decoration on the prow of the ships here.
It also leaves us in no doubt as to where William actually landed on the coast.
It says they arrived in Pevensey.
And that's why I've come here to Pevensey Castle to begin my journey.
But the first thing you notice about this ancient coastal defensive site
is that it lies a good mile from the coast.
The Romans had established a fort at Pevensey some eight centuries before the Norman invasion.
At that time, the castle stood on a finger of firm ground,
a projection between the marshy inlet of Pevensey Bay
and the long beach that once ran beneath the castle walls.
But what role did this spot play for Duke William?
I've arranged to meet David Carpenter, professor of medieval history,
and someone who can answer a very obvious question.
Why Pevensey? You could argue that it was just an accident,
the wind blowing there, but I'm actually sure that wasn't it.
I think it was very, very carefully calculated.
And Pevensey's got two great advantages.
The first is this Roman fort. Also, if you look out there,
at the marshland around, it's very difficult to approach. So it's completely safe.
But I don't think that was the main reason.
I think it's not so much Pevensey as Pevensey Bay,
because what you've got here is that great mass of shingle beach where you can bring large numbers of ships up.
He probably had well over 1,000 ships, so you can't use a port.
You've got to - like 1944, D-Day - you've got to run them up onto the beach.
That's just what the Bayeux tapestry shows - all the boats being drawn up onto the beach,
then the horses being unloaded. And that's what you could do at Pevensey.
What about the Bayeux tapestry? It's such an important source
yet historians like you are questioning some of its veracity.
There's a terrific debate about it.
Everyone would agree that its early, that it's probably very soon after 1066.
But beyond that, there's a great debate.
On one hand, there's the view that it's simply the Norman story, Norman triumphalism.
On the other hand, there's the view that it's got an English subtext
because it was certainly woven in England.
There's an idea that the English weavers, many of them women perhaps,
were trying to sort of make the English case.
They were trying to make Harold a great heroic figure.
I personally think that's a load of nonsense... OK.
.. and that the whole tapestry can be explained in terms of Norman triumphalism.
So why is Harold like that?
Because it makes the victory all the greater.
And yeah, you do have to take some of it with care, because it's very much giving the Norman version.
I mean, you've got a classic example of it there, which is Harold's oath.
Here he is, taking this oath to Duke William.
And it's basically the oath, I mean, the tapestry begins with whole story of Edward the Confessor
sending Harold to Normandy in order to take this oath to give the throne to William.
Now, that's in all the Norman sources.
It's not in any English sources at all.
It's not in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is the main English source about events.
And so, you know, historians have debated, did this happen or not?
I've always been fascinated by the relationship William had with England.
He's not going to an unknown foreign land when he arrives here, is he?
The extraordinary thing about that, little commented on,
is that Fecamp Abbey, the great ducal abbey in Normandy,
where the Dukes of Normandy are buried,
it has properties here, because Edward the Confessor had given Fecamp
Winchelsea and Rye further up the coast.
That must mean there was great connections all the time between Fecamp and this area,
people going backwards and forwards, bailiffs, money going backwards and forward.
So the Conqueror could have been, through Fecamp, very genned up.
Not merely could, he WAS, because he spent the Easter of 1066 at Fecamp.
And I'm absolutely sure that that's where he found out about the area.
So he's got a protected site here, he's surrounded by marshy land,
he's secured the beachhead, which is what you've got to do. What does he do next?
That's another extraordinary thing, because having got to Pevensey, he leaves it immediately.
I think if you look out here, look at all the marshland around, you can see why.
Because Pevensey is a jolly good place to land and a jolly bad place to stay.
It's just bog, basically, bog all around Pevensey.
And the tapestry shows this.
It shows the knights going immediately from Pevensey.
What's the actual title there? They're going to "seize food".
So that's one thing, but they're also going to ravage.
So, just like William and his men, I'm moving swiftly on
from the isolation of Pevensey and heading east to start my walk.
10 miles along the coast is one of the ancient ports of south-east England,
a commanding settlement with a history going back 2,000 years.
In 1066, William chose to settle at the well-connected Saxon burgh, or town, called Hastings.
Hastings is the town that's given its name to the battle
that marked one of the most important turning points in British history.
That's slightly strange because the battle took place a few miles inland.
But Hastings does have an important part to play in this story,
because it MAY have been the site of William the Conqueror's first castle in England.
But all that's left of that now is that mound over there.
Hastings was to be the Normans' headquarters in the run-up to battle.
And looking at the tapestry again, we can see a wooden fort being erected atop a patch of high ground.
But the tapestry isn't precise about where this fort might have been.
Today, we can only look for clues.
This is the motte of Hastings Castle,
a man-made defensive earth mound that the Normans liked to put
at the heart of all their castles and fortifications.
In the 1960s, it was partially excavated
and what the archaeologists discovered really surprised them
because the Normans have a great reputation as castle builders
but this motte is unstable and far too sandy.
It suggests that it was thrown together in quite a hurry.
So it's likely, if not certain, that this humble mound was
the focal point of events in early October 1066.
The cliff overlooking Hastings would seem a sensible spot
for William to first make his mark on English soil.
And from here, he unleashed a two-week reign of terror,
designed to feed his troops, devastate the area
and incite his Saxon foe into battle.
So if we assume that William's army did come here to Hastings,
how did he get to the battlefield, which is actually some way inland?
Well, armies need good firm ground and there's a ridge that runs
right along here towards the battlefield itself,
so we can assume he went up there.
However, nowadays that's all main road.
They don't make for very interesting walking, so I'm going to go slightly along the coast and then in here
to find out what this landscape can tell us
about these few days that had such a vast impact on English history.
To get from Hastings to the battlefield,
I'll walk west along the coast to find out why this town worked so well as William's headquarters.
Turning inland, the extent to which this coastline has changed becomes clear,
as I traverse the one-time tidal inlet known as Combe Haven.
All around here were the Saxon manors and settlements of the rolling Sussex countryside.
In particular, I'll pass through Crowhurst, King Harold's own manor,
deliberately targeted for destruction by the Normans.
From here, I'll head towards the battlefield,
joining the route taken by the Normans out of Hastings
and through the spot where the opposing armies
would have first spied each other.
The final stretch of my walk follows events in the run-up to battle,
Leading me right onto the battlefield at Senlac Hill, beneath the great abbey
and the town that marked the place where a new era of history was forced upon our island nation.
But back at Hastings, I already know
that the ancient Saxon port has been long since eradicated,
Lost to the sea in the area around the Hastings pier.
But is it possible to imagine how Hastings might have worked for William?
A question I put to the Sussex County Archaeologist.
Thanks for talking to us. Pleasure.
The coastline here is completely different now,
mainly because of erosion along this part of the coast.
Effectively, because of the geology, you've got hard rock...
pieces coming out here at White Rock, at West Hill, where the castle is, and at East Hill.
Between them are a series of valleys.
And the valleys have silted up and the headlands have eroded,
so 1,000 years ago, the coastline would have been more complex than it is now.
So why choose this stretch of the south coast of England to invade?
Well, between the white cliffs of Dover to the east
and the white cliffs at Beachy Head to the west,
you've got two big areas of marshland - Pevensey Levels and the Romney Marsh -
and in between, one significant area of high ground
where the High Weald comes to the coast.
And is Hastings better placed then for a move inland towards the heart of Saxon England?
The High Weald is particularly good for its iron content,
and the iron industry was established in the prehistoric period
but it was during the Roman period that it became very, very significant.
The Romans used a lot of the slag to create superb roads.
You know, they've got slag metalling this thick.
And they would have produced roads which would have lasted
right through the Saxon period into the 11th century.
So you've got this fantastic infrastructure of Roman roads,
many of which come down to the coast around this Hastings peninsula.
It's amazing, we talk about William's greats generalship,
but so much of it actually does comes down to logistics, communications and geography.
The changing face of this coastline is absolutely key
to understanding why the Normans behaved as they did.
What we now see as this...
would have once looked more like this.
And when you remember the ridge of high ground
and the Roman road stretching north,
Hastings starts to look like a very logical place
from which to organise an operation.
Today this feels like such a straight, stable piece of seafront,
but in fact, that's only been achieved at the expense of thousands of hours of busy human activity,
building these groynes out here
and desperately trying to hold the beach in place
and stop the Channel eroding the coast as it would have done for millennia.
Just west of Hastings' high ridge, this is Bulverhythe.
The name is Saxon, meaning Harbour of the Borough.
Over a thousand years ago, it was a narrow gateway to an inlet
that filled the boggy marsh now known as Combe Haven.
The question is, what state would Combe Haven have been in, in 1066?
This is very telling, there's been two weeks of fine, dry weather,
but even at the moment, the ground here at Combe Haven is soaking wet.
Completely waterlogged.
Speculation has run to the idea that the Norman fleet itself could have sailed as far inland as here.
But, perhaps more reliably, archaeological reports suggest
humans have been digging drainage channels here since the Roman age.
By the time the Normans got here, mankind was already trying to assume control.
Even after all the drainage that's gone on here, all the land reclamation,
it's amazing just how waterlogged Combe Haven still is.
I've never been here before and it's fascinating,
because it allows you to say with certainty
that no medieval army could have passed through this marsh.
There's Hastings over there on that high ground.
William is protected on both sides by these marshy areas.
But it also means he has to stick to that high ground when he moves inland.
And that's why I've come down here cos you get a great view
of William's route from the sea inland towards the battlefield.
For two weeks in October 1066,
the area between Hastings and the battlefield bore the brunt of the Norman army's occupation.
These were productive, fertile lands,
and all around Combe Haven would have been Saxon settlements,
ideally placed for feeding William's troops.
Well, I've emerged from the marshes and what greets me but the sight of a cricket square.
That's very Sussex. I'm sure there's a vicar on a bicycle round here somewhere.
But to quote from the Domesday Book, this same area was "laid waste" by the Normans.
20 years after the invasion, Domesday records that 2% of Sussex lands were still
entirely unproductive, all of them lying in this area around Hastings.
This is the rather picturesque village of Crowhurst.
We know it's been here since the Saxon period.
One of the reasons is because "hurst" is a classic Saxon suffix,
meaning "clearing in the woods".
But so are some other villages round here
because they all have "ham" at the end, another Anglo-Saxon suffix.
You've got Little Worsham Farm, Pebsham Wood,
up here you've got Monkham Wood.
So this area is absolutely dripping in Anglo-Saxon heritage.
And it's not just any old village because this was actually
part of the personal estates of King Harold.
Even before he seized the throne in early 1066,
Harold was the most powerful landowner in this part of England.
And William knew that.
The would-be Conqueror made a beeline for the manor of Crowhurst,
inciting Harold with a direct assault on his local people.
Right here next to the church is this incredible yew tree
which is at least 1,000 years old,
and quite possibly much older than that.
And yew trees were always great meeting points for communities,
so Christians tended to simply co-opt those pre-existing spiritual places
and just stick a Christian site next to it, so that's what seems to have happened here.
Absolutely amazing to think that this yew tree was here when William landed on that shore.
Whether William himself came here or not, we'll simply never know,
but we can be sure that Harold certainly wasn't at home.
He was engaged in Yorkshire, crushing the Viking invasion
at Stamford Bridge, leaving Crowhurst to meet its fate.
Romantics would have you believe that the tapestry displays this very moment,
with the harrowing image of a fleeing woman being that of Harold's mistress, Edith "Swan-Neck",
who days later would have the job of identifying the king's mutilated body.
This is a fantastic historic novel published in 1948 called The Golden Warrior.
One of the most dramatic scenes is when William comes here to Crowhurst.
And it says that "Harold's reeve had buried his lord's treasures under the great Yew in the churchyard,
"And he and his men were taken and not a sole would tell Duke William where the spoil was hidden.
"And then the reeve was hanged from the yew tree, and the rest barred within the hall and burnt.
"William and his captains watched the reeve die and harkened to the cries of those burned.
"Some of the barons mocked, some of them yawned.
"The Duke kept silence, his face unchanged. "
That's pretty exciting stuff, although it has no basis in fact whatsoever.
But that hasn't stopped people round here telling visitors
that King Harold's reeve, his man of business, was actually hanged from a tree in this churchyard.
For me, that just shows that even nearly 1,000 years after the events of this bloody year,
we're still mythologising it and still retelling the story in our own way.
But by walking this land, you can go someway towards
stripping away the myths and legends from the likely truth of events.
As I head up the gentle slope of Telham Hill,
I'm joining the route taken by the Normans as they left their camp
and moved inland, attempting to grasp the upper hand
as Harold completed his 250-mile journey from Yorkshire.
Now, technically I have left the footpath, which runs along that fence
but I hope the farmer will forgive me.
I'm looking for this absolutely classic view.
The one view you don't get is the one I want - that way towards the battlefield,
because the stockbroker belt's in the way.
But if I get onto that road, try and peer through the hedge, I might get a better view.
I think this guy here has got the view that I want,
so let's go down the hill a bit and cut in front of him.
DOG BARKS Also get away from his aggressive dogs.
I think this might be...
just perfect. Wow!
That's a fantastic view.
There's the battlefield there,
where the ruins of that abbey are now.
As you go up the ridge, you can see the windmill
which marks the site, it's said, where Harold and his army were gathering.
So by the time William gets up here, he can actually see his enemy, he can almost smell them.
They're so close now, they're like two juggernauts heading towards each other, two nations in arms
that are bent on the destruction on the other.
Chroniclers of the Norman era paint a picture of William
giving a Shakespearean speech as his army eyed the opposition.
The pro-Norman William of Poitiers even has William offering Harold the chance of a noble solo combat
to settle the issue of the English throne,
saving the bloodshed of thousands.
Harold apparently rejected the offer, saying,
"Our advance continues. We march to victory! "
For modern visitors, the area around the battlefield now plays host to a sizeable Sussex town.
After all that lovely tranquillity, I've finally arrived at the bright lights of the town of Battle,
but before I look at the battlefield itself, just there,
I'm going to look at how the Saxons were doing at their camp over here.
If the Vikings hadn't threatened in Yorkshire, Harold would have been ready and waiting in Sussex.
The outcome of 1066 could have been very different,
for good as William was, Harold too was a renowned commander.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that Harold mustered his troops at the hoar apple tree,
believed to have stood up here by the windmill on Caldbeck Hill.
And that's where I'm meeting a town resident
who's written about the local landscape and how it influenced events around the battle.
What a fantastic view from up here. Gorgeous, isn't it? Yeah.
Very commanding position. It's the first time I've been able see a long way north.
What are the key features of that geography up there?
Well, basically, trees.
It's the vastness of the great Wealden Forest
which covered most of Kent, Sussex and into Hampshire.
It stretched north to south from here, almost to the Thames.
And so, an impenetrable barrier, really,
and certainly not one that William would have relished marching through
until he was certain of victory.
How do we know Harold chose this spot as a rendezvous?
Where we are now on Caldbeck Hill was the focal point of three hundreds,
a hundred being the local administrative unit.
And there are several examples of that, some 14 at least,
where apple trees were planted at those points.
So really, this was the first piece of open country that he could assemble troops on.
So we can be pretty sure that this is the site of the hoar apple tree
of the rendezvous which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us of.
So Harold's blocking William in here, trying to stop him
getting further inland and causing more damage?
That's right. Harold acts with great speed, doesn't he? He comes down here from London. Why rush?
Why not wait to gather more men, garner all the resources
that his kingdom had on offer to go and really crush this invader?
He enjoyed very much the element of surprising his enemies.
He'd used it only a few weeks previously most successfully up at Stamford Bridge.
So take the battle to the enemy,
don't wait for the enemy to come to you.
So Harold was supremely confident,
and William didn't want to let his troops get stuck in a British winter.
Battle was inevitable.
On the morning of 14th October, it was the Saxons who would have filed
along what is now Battle High St, a town that owes its very existence
to the victory of the Normans.
The Saxons headed south to this point
to assume a defensive position along the top of Senlac Hill,
which for me marks the end of my walk.
You'd be forgiven for thinking all the fighting at the battle of Hastings took place
in this one little field, but that's not the case at all.
It spread a long way that way, inland,
and down there to that boggy area.
Up there, on that ridge, is where the English army were,
rooted to the spot in a thick shield wall,
beating their swords on the back of their shields, shouting, "Out, out, out! "
while down there in the valley,
having made the march from the coast at Hastings,
was the Norman army - archers, infantrymen and cavalry.
Accounts from the time tell us the Battle of Hastings raged for an entire day,
a remarkable duration for a set-piece medieval clash.
The sides must have been fairly evenly matched,
but we have little idea about how many would have fought here.
Perhaps it was 5,000 per side.
But it could just as easily have been 10,000 or more.
There have never been any archaeological finds in this field
that prove that the battle was definitely fought here.
The acidic soil has done away with what the scavengers left behind.
But there is one piece of evidence which is fairly conclusive -
the ruins of this abbey.
Built by William to commemorate his victory and to do penance for the blood that was shed here
and his savagery in the weeks leading up to the battle.
Here at the centre of the abbey is where the high altar would have been,
erected on the very spot on which King Harold was killed.
Amongst the eulogising of the Norman chroniclers,
the expressive licence of the Bayeux Tapestry,
and a sorry lack of archaeology,
the abbey stands as a rare monument in the landscape.
A surviving marker for the events of the Norman invasion.
Even though I've learnt a huge amount about the 1066 campaign by walking the ground,
there's still a huge amount that feels very obscure,
like the shape of the coastline or the numbers of people involved.
That's because virtually before the fighting had even stopped,
people were retelling the stories and mythologising these events.
And every generation since has been following suit.
But one thing we can say for certain is that in 1066,
in this area of the country, a decisive battle took place.
One that saw Duke William of Normandy become William I, King of England, the Conqueror.
And it was the beginning of the Norman Age.
Join me for my next walk on the Welsh borders,
where I'll be finding out what the Normans did next.
They'd won a battle, but could they consolidate their rule across a whole island?
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