My thoughts on 1066 events

Present Day Contradictions about the Battle of Hastings Even taking present day thinking about the Battle of Hastings there are contradictions in the knowledge that is given out.  1. Caldbec Hill The first and foremost is the contradiction of what happened at Caldbec Hill. Many talk of the English scout peering out from between the trees as being on Caldbec Hill. And there are written reports that the English were seen camping on Caldbec Hill. How can we make sense of this? Since the scout is shielding his eyes perhaps we can assume that it is morning and the sun is shining and that the scout is looking south-ish. Nowhere on the Tapestry does it state that the place is  Caldbec Hill. Let us look at the terrain then.  From Caldbec Hill, the land falls away ( descends) from 103 metres above sea level (m asl) to about 53 metres before rising again to about 62. The land falls away again to 55 metres before rising to 108 metres, dropping to 100 metres bef...

Malfosse After many hours of thought, I came to the conclusion that the location of the Malfosse was unknowable. What everyone is faced with is a report from the Normans that while they were in hot pursuit of rapidly departing Saxons belonging to the Fyrd, they suffered an ambush where the ground disappeared from beneath their horse's feet and the riders were set upon by Saxon fighters. While the report might have been good enough for their commanders, it does not help us in the future to discover where the clash took place. The current thinking of English Heritage is, I'm led to believe, is that the battle took place in an area under the monastery and the area under the town with the Malfosse still in Oakwood Gill. John Grehan also puts the Malfosse incident in Oakwood Gill, explaining it was closer to his choice of battle site than English Heritage's. Unfortunately for him, Time Team put the battle site adjacent to English Heritage's official site because they...

Tying down the actual Battle site? It's been a long time since I posted anything new on this blog. Partly, this is due to my absolute fascination with the computer game "No Man's Sky" ( I'm more than half way through my third galaxy with over 100,000,000 units in hand) and partly me thinking there was nothing new to add to our understanding of the Battle. How wrong I was! Between my last post and this one I've been to Bayeux to look at the Tapestry first hand and to find out the received wisdom that was being promulgated. I wish I hadn't bothered. The Tapestry is hung in a very nice setting and one is given a commentary device which once started doesn't stop until you reach the end of the Tapestry - that gives you 20 mins to view the whole thing! One can go around again but if you listen to the commentary you have to move at the pace of the commentary and not at your own pace. The Bayeux Museum also represents a moment of revelation to me...