News
HISTORY NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2025
Next Lecture
The next talk is ‘Hancox Home for Male Inebriates’ by Jacob Smith at 7.30 pm on Thursday 20 February in the Wynne Room, Battle Memorial Hall. A video of the lecture will be circulated soon after on the Society’s private YouTube channel.
Date for the Diary : ‘Life and Legacy of the Sultan Saladin’ by Professor Jonathan Phillips at 7.30 pm on Thursday 20 March, Battle Memorial Hall. Full details of this year’s programme are available here.
Recently-Published 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
Lost House of King Harold: a team of archaeologists from Newcastle University
and the University of Exeter believe they have located a power centre belonging to
Harold Godwinson in Bosham. It has been suggested that a house in the village
stands on the site. A range of methods have been used to unpick the early history
of the property which have confirmed the existence of two previously unidentified
Medieval buildings: one integrated into the current house and another in the garden.
The crucial indications of an earlier building come from excavations in 2006, which
identified a latrine within a large timber building: in recent years, it has become
accepted that there was a trend, in the 10th century, in high-status houses to
integrate toilets. The discovery of the latrine therefore indicated to the team that the
timber building was almost certainly part of Harold’s residence illustrated in the
Bayeux Tapestry.
Bronze Age Woman: the skeleton of a Bronze Age woman found on a building site
in Kent is set to be archived in a museum after having been unearthed at a building
site in Kent. The well-preserved remains were discovered on a site near Ramsgate
in early 2021; also found were skull fragments belonging to another woman, animal
bones, pottery and evidence of a Roman road. The woman is estimated to have
been between 30-35 years old at the time of her death, the first female was found in
a crouch-burial, which occurs when the dead are interred on their sides with their
knees pulled up to their chest. The separate skull fragment is thought to be from an
adolescent or young adult woman dating from 500-400BC while the pit in which it
was unearthed also contained burnt flint, meaning rocks which were likely to have
been used as tools.
Sutton Hoo Ship: the team building a replica of the famous Anglo-Saxon burial ship
hope to eventually sail it down the Thames and across the English Channel. The
ships is about 50-60% complete and it is hoped that construction will be completed
next year but the team will need to learn how to handle tough currents, which is
expected to take a further two years. One suggestion is to sail it to Faversham
which has royal Anglo-Saxon links; other possibilities is to sail to Holland, maybe
down the rivers in Germany or across to Denmark, perhaps to have a drag race with
the Viking ships! 7th Century building techniques are being used: the trees are being
split where they are deliberately split along the grain, they are then planed down
using hand axed to achieve the one inch thick planks from which the ship is built.
The project is being captured by Time Team, with the first episodes of there parts
already available to watch.
DNA of language: a Caucasus Lower Volga people have been identified as the
originators of Proto-Indo-European, which was the precursor to the massive Indo
European family of over 400 languages. They lived about 6,500 years ago on the
borders of modern-day Russia and the research shows that they mixed with people
to the west to form the distinct genome of the Yamnaya people who went on to
spread Indo-European languages across the world. The homeland of the Yamnaya
people was where the worst of the fighting is happening in Ukraine. Their
descendants developed a radically new economy that allowed them to follow their
herds of cattle into previously inaccessible lands, which in turn led to a demographic
explosion: within a few hundred years, they numbered many tens of thousands and
were spread from Hungary to eastern China.
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