News
HISTORY NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2025
Wishing you all a Happy New Year
Next Lecture
The next talk is ‘Heritage Crime’ by Daryl Holter at 7.30 pm on Thursday 16 January, Battle Memorial Hall. A video of the lecture will be circulated soon after on the Society’s private YouTube channel.
Date for the Diary : ‘Hancox Home for Male Inebriates’ by Jacob Smith at 7.30 pm on Thursday 20 February, Battle Memorial Hall. Full details of this year’s programme are available here.
New Articles on Collectanea
Maria Soane School Certificate from Battle and Langton
3.1 School Certificate of Maria Soane
History of Battle Arts Festival
1.2 Battle Arts Festival
1911 and 1921 census
1.3 Comparison of 1921 and 1911 census data for Battle High Street
Table 1
Table 2
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 Museum
As usual, the Museum is closed for the season but if you are interested in volunteering with them for next season, please make contact via its website http://www.battlemuseum.com.
History in the News
Fossil find near Bexhill-on-Sea: a former quarryman has spent 30 years searching the clay pits of the Ashdown Brickworks near Bexhill. His most significant finds may be three knife-like teeth, identified in a new study as coming from a trio of carnivores. One tooth is serrated and is thought to be from an early tyrannosaur, estimated to have measured about 5m in length, about a third of the size of its famous cousin T.Rex, which appeared about 70 million years later – it is the first tyrannosaur from this period to be found in Britain. Another tooth is from a spinosaur, a larger hunter thought to have measured about 7-8 m. The final tooth is thought to have belonged to a predator known as a dromaeosaurid. Roughly a metre long, it was part of the same family as the velociraptor made famous by Jurassic Park. The fossils reveal that the diversity of meat-eaters in England during the cretaceous period was ‘vastly greater’ than previously realised. When the creatures live, Britain was much near the equator, roughly where north Africa is today, and much warmer. The clay pits where they were found were part of a river delta. The teeth have been donated to Bexhill Museum.
Viking DNA: a new DNA study, published in Nature, suggests that the origin of the Vikings may be closer to home than previously thought. Human remains from Scandinavia, from before the 8th century raids, show genetic links to Britain and Central Europe, suggesting that there had been a large migration northwards in the centuries before the Vikings had apparently set out: a number of the raiders could have been retracing the steps of their ancestors rather than invading unfamiliar territories. Biomolecular analysis of teeth of people buried on the island of Oland was found to contain ancestry from Central Europe and Britain; likewise, a ‘clear shift’ in genetic ancestry in 8th century Denmark in which Viking communities had genetic links to Iron Age groups found much further south. Three waves of migration have been identified: 1-500 AD Germanic expansions to Britain, Central and Southern Europe; by 800 AD, expansion into Scandinavia from Britain and Central Europe; post 800 AD, the Viking Age expanding to Britain, Central Europe, Greenland and beyond.
Battle of Roundway Down: this battle of the English Civil War, fought in the countryside overlooking Devizes, is considered as one of the most interesting and dramatic battles of the war. While the Parliamentarians outnumbered the Royalists, fighting saw them defeated: some estimated as many as 600 died. Satellite, aerial and LiDAR images have identified a very long line across a field which is thought to represent a trench. Four skeletons were found in the 1840 and older records have also mentioned two accidental findings of skeletons. There is no reference to clothing or items which would support the idea of death in battle as it was common to strip the bodies at that time. Dr Beale, a retired GP who undertook the research, is hoping that archaeologists will confirm his theory.
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