News
HISTORY NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2024
Next Lecture
Our AGM will be held in Battle Memorial Hall at 7pm on Thursday 21 November and will be followed by Dr Mary Hersov’s lecture ‘A History of the National Gallery: a personal perspective’. A video of the lecture will be circulated soon after on the Society’s private YouTube channel.
Date for the Diary : ‘The Frewen Family, Brickwall and a History of Dyslexia” by Jeremy Field at 7.30pm on Thursday 12 December, Battle Memorial Hall. Full details of this year’s programme are available here.
Membership Renewal
If you have not renewed your membership yet, just a reminder that subscriptions for 2024/25 are due from 1st September, apart from new members who joined since 1st June and who have already paid for next year. After very many years we have had to increase the subscription to £30 for two people from the same address, or £20 for single membership. This will enable us to maintain the high standard of our lecturers, at a cost of less than £2 per lecture. Additional donations are, as ever, very much appreciated.
Society Facebook Page
Don’t forget to check out the BDHS Facebook page. For those who are Facebook users, please find it at https://facebook.com/BattleHistorySociety or by searching for Battle and District Historical Society when logged into your Facebook account. Remember to like and follow the page to get notification of our posts.
Battle of Hastings Re-enactment
We had a very busy time at our stand at the Battle of Hastings Re-enactment in Battle Abbey over the weekend of 12-13 October. There were 6283 visitors over the two days. We had many interesting visitors and sold books written by our authors and published by ourselves. These can be bought in Rother Books or online here. Many thanks to the 9 BDHS members who volunteered to look after the stand over the two days. In addition, there were two stands from BDHS member, Tina Greene, exhibiting her Battle Tapestry replica and selling jigsaws based on scenes from the tapestry. She also exhibited a new addition to the family – The La Mora Tapestry, depicting boat building scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry which are currently being stitched using naturally dyed wool in Battle Library on Fridays (1-5.00 pm) and Saturdays (10-2.00 pm). Do come along! She had over 150 visitors adding their stitches over two days. A big thank you for all the support received from English Heritage in setting up the space and providing facilities on-site in the Abbey. Chas Jones also brought down the Fulford Battle Tapestry, which depicts the first battle of 1066 fought on 20 September.
A great (but exhausting) time again but a wonderful opportunity to promote the Society to a wider audience.
Battle Museum
The Museum is now closed for the winter but will be open for Late Night Shopping on Thursday 5 and Friday 6 December. Do pop in and say hello!
If you are interested in volunteering for next season, please contact the Museum via its website http://www.battlemuseum.com.
History in the News
Chew Valley Coin Hoard: : a hoard of 2,584 silver pennies dating from the Norman Conquest has been valued at £4.3 million, making it the highest-value treasure found in England. It was buried in the west of England during the early years of William the Conqueror’s reign and its contents are divided between coins minted under Harold II and the first issue of coinage under William. The coins of Harold were mainly minted in the South-East of England, perhaps suggesting financial preparations for the Norman invasion. The hoard has doubled the number of coins available to study for Harold and increased by five times those for William. The hoard will be exhibited at the British Museum from 26 November and will then be shown across the UK before finding a permanent home in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton.
Anglo-Saxon replica: a very unusual gold pendant made by an early Anglo-Saxon in imitation of a Roman coin has been discovered by a detectorist. The 5th to early 6th century replica is a copy of a solidus coin showing Emperor Honorius (AD393-423) on one side and a figure holding a banner with Christian symbols on the other, which is somewhat ironic as the Anglo-Saxons were pagans at the time. It is possible that they did not understand the imagery and mistakes in the lettering demonstrates that they were not literate. Although the Roman empire had collapsed, the Anglo-Saxons would have come across many impressive Roman buildings, as well as coins and artefacts, and that may be why they wanted to copy something so distinctly ‘Roman’. It is thought possible that the pendant could have been part of a burial, which has been lost after centuries of ploughing.
London’s lost gardens: the Garden Museum has an exhibition on London’s lost gardens. Thousands of gardens have disappeared across London over the past 500 years, from princely pleasure grounds to allotments and defunct squares. The exhibition explores this legacy and reveal tantalising glimpses of some of the rich and varied gardens that were once part of the city. Did you know that Southwark Gardens once had a zoo? That Britain’s first ecological park was built by Tower Bridge? And that one of the capital’s most celebrated botanical gardens now lies near Waterloo Station? The exhibition runs to the 2 March 2025 at the Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Road.
Other history articles in the press: If any member spots an interesting history article, just email a scan of it to bdhs66@yahoo.co.uk and we’ll feature an edited version of it in the next Newsletter.
The Arts Society Rother Valley (ASRV)
Lectures in the programme include Hollywood in the 1930s, From Negative to Positive: Photography’s long road to recognition as art, Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de St Georges: the African Mozart, 1850’s London, Elizabeth Vigee le Brun: trail blazer, and A piece of the Auction: Behind the scenes at an international auction house.
For further details, please check the ASRV website https://www.theartssocietyrothervalley.org.uk or contact Pat Arrowsmith, Membership Secretary, on 07838 214675.
Online Archive Update – September 2021
Exciting news! We now have a great new resource available online. The original Battle Town Index, identified by advisers from the National Archives as potentially the most important item in our archive, was recorded on a series of Index cards. Members of our Society started the Index with the aim of recording information on the use and occupants of all the buildings in the town centre. Information, gleaned mainly from trade and other directories, was recorded up to the early 1990s. The online version of the Index has been edited so that beyond 1940 only information on businesses and a few private individuals reasonably assumed now dead have been included in the online version. This complies with the recommendations of the National Archives on publication of material which is covered by the Data Protection Act. It still, however, provides a wealth of information and is found in our online archive as a series of searchable .pdf files. Go to our archive page The Battle & District Historical Society Archives http://bdhsarchives.com and search for Battle Town Index to see the available .pdf files. When you have downloaded the file you can find the search function by clicking on the magnifying glass symbol and entering your search term.
Website news
The British Library is going to archive our website in the UK Web Archive and to make it publicly available via that route. The UK Web Archive was established in 2004 to capture and archive websites from the UK domain and across the web, responding to the challenge of a digital black hole in the nations memory. It contains specially selected websites that represent different aspects of UK heritage on the web, as well as important global events. We work closely with leading international institutions to collect and permanently preserve the web, and the open UK Web Archive can be seen at http://www.webarchive.org.uk/.
Also an on-line version of the BDHS Journal for 2019 has been added – see Previous BDHS Journals
Meet our new President
Our new President, Professor David Bates, gave his inaugural lecture entitled ‘Writing a Biography of William the Conqueror’ at a very well attended meeting on 16 January. His presentation was well received and afterwards David had the opportunity to meet many members of the Society and be photographed with all members of the BDHS Committee. He also gave another lecture – by Zoom on 15th October. This was about ‘New thoughts on the Bayeux Tapestry’.
Meeting with the new Dean of Battle
The new Dean of Battle, the Very Reverend Lee Duckett, together with his wife Ange, has been presented with some books from BDHS members Keith Foord and Tina Greene, which are concerned with the Church and the Battle Tapestry, currently on display there. BDHS hopes to develop some mutually beneficial projects based on the church’s archives and the use of the church environmental space for exhibitions etc..
The Dark Ages’ greatest Christmas relics were at Battle Abbey
The Guardian and other media have reported that a medieval manuscript listing Battle Abbey’s relics has been analysed and transcribed for the first time by English Heritage historian Michael Carter. It reveals that the relics were the most prestigious given to any abbey, more significant even than those at Westminster Abbey.
A report on this can be found at https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/dec/18/a-bit-of-manger-st-nicholass-bone-the-dark-ages-greatest-christmas-relics.Michael Carter’s paper can also be found in full using this reference: Carter, M: The Relics of Battle Abbey: A Fifteenth-Century Inventory at The Huntington Library, San Marino The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 8 (2019)
Video: The Battle of Hastings. No – the Battle of Battle!!
BDHS Members Michael Hodge, Alan Judd and Peter Greene, working in close cooperation with Natasha Williams of English Heritage, have produced a video explaining where the Battle of Hastings actually took place and why we have a town called Battle. The video has been released by Mirador Television and can be found via Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDe8uyKXL9Y
Amazing find by BDHS
In the process of changing over BDHS archivists Gina Doherty and David Sawyer unexpectedly turned up an old small parchment that appeared to originate from Abbot Richard Tovey of Battle Abbey in 1493. Christopher Whittick of ESRO confirmed its authenticity This is a ‘pass’ entitling the carrier to travel freely in England and quoting the old charter rights of the abbey. Gina has produced an excellent summary of this find which can be read in Section A3.4 of Collectanea. BDHS has also given a facsimile copy to Battle Abbey for future display.
L-R: Neil Clephane-Cameron, Keith Foord, George Kiloh, Gina Doherty, Natasha Williams (English Heritage) handing the parchment to Christopher Whittick (Vice-President of BDHS). Picture Peter Greene