News
HISTORY NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2026
Our Next Lecture
Our monthly lecture will be held on Thursday 19th February in the Wynne Room at Battle Memorial Hall and begin at 7.30pm. “Portrait of a Lady : The Duchess of Cleveland at Battle Abbey” will be delivered by Robert Catt and Fiona Stapley who are both volunteers at the Abbey. Their lecture will focus on one of the stories from Battle Abbey’s rich history beyond 1066 – the life and times of the Duchess of Cleveland, who lived there during the late Victorian period (1857-1901) and who literally dug into its history; landscaped its gardens and opened it to visitors.
Lecture Recordings
Whenever possible, a recording of our monthly lecture is made available for a week after the meeting on the Society’s private YouTube channel. A link to the recording, once available, is sent to all members who are asked to treat the link as personal to them and not to share it. These arrangements are part of the Society’s agreement with lecturers and should be respected.
While the Society will provide a recording whenever it can, there are occasions when it is not possible; some lecturers withhold permission for recording and technical issues can sometimes intervene.
Date for Your Diaries
The March lecture will be delivered by historian, broadcaster and author Professor Tracy Borman. The Society is delighted to welcome her back as part of its 75th anniversary celebrations. Her lecture, entitled “The Stolen Crown : Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty”, will reveal the shocking truth behind one of history’s best kept secrets – how James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I and how the Stuart dynasty rewrote history.
PLEASE NOTE that this lecture will be on Wednesday 11th March and not, as usually, on the third Thursday of the month. It will start at 7.30pm in the Main Hall at Battle Memorial Hall.
Full details of the 75th anniversary season’s programme are available here.
2025-26 Subscriptions
Any outstanding membership subscriptions for the new season are overdue now. The cost is the same as last year at £20 for a single member and £30 for two members at the same address. If you need to let the Society know of any changes in the details we hold for you, membership forms can be downloaded from the website or collected from the front desk at lectures. We strongly encourage payment by bank transfer but payments by cheque can be sent to the Membership Secretary or you can pay by card or cash at the front desk.
2024-25 Journal
Copies of the 2024-25 Journal are now available and can be collected from the front desk at any BDHS meeting. And if you haven’t already had one, then at the same time you can take away your free 75th anniversary commemorative bookmark.
Memorial Hall Energy Project Appeal
Last month’s Newsletter gave details of the Memorial Hall’s appeal to raise funds for the replacement of the 50-year old boiler that heats our regular meeting place. The boiler is no longer fit for purpose and the plan is to replace it with a renewable heating and cooling system, along with battery storage enabling the Hall to use clean energy generated by solar panels.
It is good to be able to report that the Hall Committee has been successful in securing a grant from Rother District Council, as well as receiving Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) funding from Battle Town Council so that combined with public donations, despite the abrupt ending of Aviva’s matched funding scheme, the money is in place for the Energy Project to go ahead.
Talk by Frank Langrish to the Friends of St. Mary’s Church, Udimore
You may be interested in a talk on “How farming created the local landscape” by Frank Langrish, a local livestock farmer who has broadcast on local and national TV and radio. The talk is being given at St Mary’s Community Hall, Udimore at 2pm on Saturday 21st February and entrance is £10. A “scrumptious tea” will follow the talk. More details, including how to book, can be found at:
https://www.stmarysudimore.org/post/friend-s-of-st-mary-s-talk
Battle Museum
Battle Museum of Local History is now closed until the beginning of April.
History in the News – a digest of recent reporting
If any member spots an interesting history article, just email its details, or scan of it, to webadmin@battlehistorysociety.com and we’ll feature an edited version of it in the next Newsletter.
Hedgehogs horrible history: Hedgehogs have been part of human culture for thousands of years. Across different societies, they’ve been symbols of fertility, protection and healing, as well as fear, superstition and suspicion.
In ancient Egypt, they were seen as guides and protectors, admired for their ability to survive winter through hibernation, a powerful symbol of rebirth. However, the Egyptians also hunted them for sport and used their spines in folk remedies, including those thought to cure baldness. Hedgehogs also historically took on more unsettling roles. In parts of China, early stories described hedgehog spirits that could shapeshift into human form and bring misfortune although later traditions recast them as sacred household protectors and healers.
In Britain, hedgehogs were viewed largely as negative until relatively recently. During the Middle Ages, they were closely associated with witchcraft. One widespread belief was that witches could transform into hedgehogs to cause harm and mischief. They were also thought to sneak into fields at night to steal milk directly from cows’ udders.
Hedgehogs were officially classed as “vermin” under the Preservation of Grain Act 1532, alongside a long list of other animals. Parishes were required to kill them, with bounties of three pence paid for each hedgehog, a significant sum at the time. It’s estimated that over the 140 years from 1660 to 1800, around half a million hedgehogs were destroyed in this way. Although this act was eventually repealed, the killing of hedgehogs continued well into the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly on shooting estates. Records suggest that tens of thousands were destroyed each year during this period, with the numbers killed declining between the 1960s and early 1980s.
While attitudes towards hedgehogs have improved dramatically in recent decades, this has not been enough to halt their decline, with the species recently reclassified as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list. The hedgehogs journey from feared pest to beloved garden icon shows how powerful human stories can be.
https://theconversation.com/why-hedgehogs-used-to-be-hated-272376
Rare Iron Age war trumpet found: As viewers of BBC2’s “Digging for Britain” will be aware, archaeologists have uncovered an incredibly rare 2,000-year-old artifact in England: a nearly intact bronze war trumpet, also known as a carnyx. Discovered last summer near the town of Thetford in Norfolk, the instrument was once sounded in battle by ancient Celts who hoped to motivate their warriors and frighten their enemies.
The artefact is only the third carnyx to be found in Britain, and it’s one of the most complete examples ever discovered in Europe. Experts have dated the horn to the early first century C.E., near the end of the Iron Age. According to a statement from Historic England, the trumpet was found among a hoard of other metal objects, including parts of another trumpet, a bronze boar’s head, an unidentified iron object and five shield bosses.
The trove is “a once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-career find,” said Mark Hinman, the CEO of Pre-Construct Archaeology. “I’ve been doing archaeology for over 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Celts made carnyces from the third century BCE. The instrument featured a long, thin tube of bronze bent sharply at both ends. At one end was a mouthpiece, and at the other was a bell—often fashioned to resemble a boar’s head. A Celtic warrior would raise the horn high above their troops and blow. The carnyx was a distant ancestor of modern brass instruments, but sufficiently different to give a sense of both familiarity and ‘otherness’. Immensely powerful when played at full volume, it was also possible to play whisperingly quietly.
Modern-day Thetford is in territory once inhabited by the Iceni. In 60 CE, the Iceni, led by their warrior queen Boudicca, rebelled against Roman rule. The Romans defeated the Iceni, and the tribe was reduced to a small community. “We are absolutely within the heartland of the Iceni—whether it was they who buried the hoard or not, we just don’t know,” Hinman said, “but almost certainly the items were buried in the first century CE, and that brings us closer to the Iceni and to Boudicca. They are of such quality that … any important people from the Iceni and other groups would have known these objects.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-unearth-ancient-war-trumpet-that-once-struck-fear-in-the-hearts-of-enemies-on-the-battlefield-180987975/
Archaeologists find medieval ‘super ship’: Archaeologists working off Copenhagen in Denmark have unearthed the largest-ever medieval “super ship” dating back to the fifteenth century. Built around 1410, the cargo ship, measuring 28m long, 9m wide and 6m high and capable of carrying about 300 tonnes, is the largest of its kind ever discovered.
Although no trace of its cargo has been found, researchers are certain it was a merchant ship. “There is no evidence pointing to war or conflict on this ship. None at all,” said excavation leader Otto Uldum, a maritime archaeologist at the Viking Ship Museum.
The ship was made using timber from two European regions – Pomerania in modern-day Poland and the Netherlands. Tree-ring patterns on the wood suggested the planks were made of Pomeranian oak, while the ship’s frames came from the Netherlands.
One of the distinct features of the find are the intact “high castles” – large, timber-built raised platforms on medieval merchant ships that provided elevated fighting positions and crew shelter. Although there are plenty of drawings of castles, they have never been found because usually only the bottom of the ship survives. This ship provides the physical proof and archaeologists hope to study the extensive timber remains to understand how the high castles were built and used.
Also found were rare traces of everyday life in the ship, including painted wooden dishes, shoes, combs, and rosary beads, as well as bronze cooking pots and ceramic bowls. “The sailor brought his comb to keep his hair neat and his rosary to say his prayers. We have the remains of the pots his food was cooked in and the bowls he ate from,” Mr Uldum said. “These personal objects show us that the crew brought everyday items with them. They transferred their life on land to life at sea.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/svaelget-2-medieval-ship-discovery-archeologists-denmark-b2899538.html
Germany returns stolen fragments of Bayeux Tapestry: With the Bayeux Tapestry very much a hot topic at the moment comes the news that Germany has returned two small fragments of the Tapestry stolen by a German scientist during the Nazi occupation of France in 1941.
The fragments, each only a few centimetres long, are thought to have been removed from the underside of the tapestry by German textile specialist Karl Schlabow when he was sent to Bayeux as part of a research team to study Germany’s “ancestral heritage” – a racist and antisemitic project run by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi SS. Schlabow died in 1984 but only when historians from the Schleswig-Holstein archive carried out an inventory of his collection in 2023 did they discover “a glass plate containing pieces of fabric”. Other documents were found alongside the collection and labelling on the glass plate made it possible to identify the fragments of fabric as those coming from the Bayeux Tapestry.
The head of the archive, Rainer Hering, presented the mayor of Bayeux with the pieces of linen, saying it was “obvious” they had to be returned to France.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8x95nrg882o
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