News
HISTORY NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2025
75th Anniversary Season
The next lecture is ’75 years – Britain then, Britain now’ by Charles Moore, at 7.30 pm on Wednesday 10 September in the Main Hall, Battle Memorial Hall.
Date for the diary: ‘The Lived Experience of Conquest’ by Professor David Bates at 7.30 pm on Thursday 16 October, at Battle Memorial Hall.
There is an exciting season of lectures planned including on how Britain has changed in 75 years, the Klein Hollandia (a shipwreck off Eastbourne), the La Mora Project, the Duchess of Cleveland and Battle Abbey, archaeology at Bodiam, treachery, deceit and death of the Tudor dynasty and diaries of a Battle doctor in the 1940s. Speakers include Charles Moore, Tracy Borman, Robert Catt and Fiona Stapley, Charlotte Moore and Tina Greene. Please note that in order to use the Main Hall, three lectures are scheduled on a different day to normal.
Full details of the new season’s programme are available here at the end of August.
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
Don’t forget that the Museum closes at the beginning of November so, if you have not already done so, why not pop in and see what is new? There are still vacancies for volunteers this season, so if you are interested, please make contact via the museum website http://www.battlemuseum.com.
La Mora Tapestry
Don’t miss your chance to be part of the La Mora Tapestry. Sessions are at Battle Library as follows:
1.00-5.00 pm Fridays
10.00-2.00 pm Saturdays
Christina Greene and her fellow stitchers have already finished the first section and the second section has begun already!
History in the News
Battle find: a resident in Battle High Street discovered a scrap of Lloyds Weekly, one of the most popular newspapers of the 19th century, in the walls of her flat: the paper cost one penny and reached a circulation of over a million. The scrap was dated 3 June 1900 and features articles on upcoming fashion trends and an excerpt of a dessert recipe (a full record of the page from the British Newspaper Archive shows the recipe was for Berlin pudding). Adverts on the paper include ‘medicinal cigarettes’ and a special offer on melodeons, a type of button accordion.
New find in Jerusalem: archaeologists believe that they have discovered a sacred spot where Jesus healed a blind man as related in the Bible. The wall (12m high. more than 8m wide and at least 21 long (was constructed nearly 3000 years ago and allowed the formation of the Pool of Siloam. The director of the excavation said that it provided a ‘tangilble’ link to the place described in the gospel of John. The engineering complex was likely built to save water in times of drought and curb flash flooding.
Ancient statues emerge: a trove of ancient statues, coins, pottery and pieces of a merchant ship has surfaced from the bottom of Abu Qir Bay, off the coast of Alexandria – the area may have been an extension of Canopus, an ancient city near Alexandria. The artefacts date to Egypts Ptolemaic dynasty (305-30 BC) and the Roman period which ended in 642 AD. It is thought that rising sea levels and earthquakes flooded Canopus about 1200 years ago and that the ruins have been submerged ever since. Finds include a granite likeness to an unknown Ptolemaic individual, a sphinx which features the cartouche of Ramses II and reservoirs which were used for storing water and raising fish. The merchant ship had been carrying almonds, walnuts and a copper measuring scale; stone anchors were found nearby.
Lost Druid stone circle: the so-called Goldstone in Hove Park has a very interesting history. In folklore, it is believed that the Devil (a mischievous impish figure rather than the character in the Bible) kicked the several-tonne boulder near its current location after stubbing his toe on it while digging through the South Downs to try and flood the area with sea water. Dr Geoffrey Mead of the University of Sussex, says that reality is rather different! The stone was discovered in the 19th century on land that would become the Goldstone Ground and people began visiting the stone believing it to be part of a sacred Druid stone circle – it was often assumed to have been a sacrificial altar where humans were sacrificed. It became a popular landmark drawing large crowds to the then farmland where it sat. The owner became fed up with the disruption and ordered it to be buried and so it remained until it was tracked down and moved to Hove Park to marks its grand opening in 1906. Whatever its origins, it still gets the imagination going because, like any stone circle, it raises questions about the intentions of the people behind it.
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.
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