News
HISTORY NEWSLETTER JULY 2026
Our Next Meeting
July’s lecture, to be given by Brigadier Hugh Willing, is entitled “Fernando Po – SOE’s Secret Operation Postmaster”. Please note that in order to align with the Battle Festival, this meeting will be held on Wednesday 22nd July not Wednesday 8th as previously advertised and will be in the Main Hall at Battle Memorial Hall.
Many daring raids and secret operations were carried out during WWII by British Commandos and Special Agents and became legendary tales, whilst others remained unsung. ‘Operation Postmaster’ was the clandestine seizure of Axis shipping by SOE operatives in Santa Isabel harbour on the Spanish Island of Fernando Po in the Gulf of Guinea off the West Coast of Africa on 14 January 1942. The operation was so politically sensitive that it could have been the catalyst to bring Spain into the war on the side of the Germans and went unreported until 50 years after the war’s end. Now the story can be told.
Hugh, of course, requires little introduction but he lectures on British Military and Colonial History. He has travelled widely in Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, Arabia and the Far East both in a military and private capacity. He was a professional soldier for 36 years before retiring in 2007: he served in the Royal Green Jackets and the 2nd KEO Gurkha Rifles in many parts of the world. His final posting was in Oman as the Defence Attache at the British Embassy for 4 years.
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, as was the case last month, and technical issues can sometimes intervene.
Date for Your Diaries
As usual, there is no BDHS meeting in August. The new season’s programme will begin on 17th September with a lecture entitled “Accidental Death in Tudor England” given by Professor Steven Gunn.
Westminster Abbey Visit
Details of this proposed visit have been circulated to all members asking for expressions of interest.
Two New Collectanea Articles
Marking the 75th anniversary of the Society’s founding, a new Collectanea article on Battle in the 1950s has been published on our website. It provides a look at life in our town as the country emerged from the Second World War and looked to re-group and to build a new, better, more equal society.
You can read the article here.
Also newly-published is an article on the tale of scientific serendipity which led to the discovery of gypsum at Mountfield and to the mines which have been a significant local industry for the last 150 years.
You can read the article here.
Battle Museum
Battle Museum of Local History is open for the 2026 season. The special exhibition this year focuses on gunpowder plot celebrations in the town and the role of the Battel Bonfire Boyes.
Bexhill Historical Society
Members may be interested in the talk being given for the Bexhill Historical Society by Hugh Sharp on “Operation Pedestal”. The talk is on Tuesday 21st July at 2.30pm (doors open at 2.15) in the Denis Rankin Room at St Augustine’s Church, St Augustine’s Close (off Cooden Drive), Bexhill TN39 3AZ.
“Operation Pedestal” was a British operation to carry supplies to the island of Malta in August 1942, during the Second World War.
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.
Roman board game: A Roman board game discovered at a former settlement has been revived through 3D printing.
Archaeologists at Vindolanda, in Northumberland, excavated a board for Ludus Latrunculorum, also known as the game of little brigands or soldiers, between a bathhouse drain and workshop wall in 2019. The stone board is currently on display in Toronto, but before the game was sent to Canada the Roman fort asked Newcastle University experts to help create a modern version of the game.
The game was discovered outside the fort and it had been reused as a flagstone. The original board was found in five separate stone pieces, which joined together to form the complete game. Each individual piece was scanned separately using the university’s handheld high resolution 3D scanner and the pieces were printed using polylatic acid plastic. Once the replica was produced, it was handed over to Vindolanda Charitable Trust to be used as part of a public engagement programme at The Roman Army Museum.
While the rules to the game have never been discovered, it is known as an ancient Roman strategy game for two players, similar to modern draughts. Evidence suggests players use their “soldiers” to trap enemy pieces, with the ultimate goal of immobilising their opponent or capturing their king piece. If you want to try it, a full suggested rule set can be found here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4dw9nd2llo
Robin Hood (and other outlaws): Two deaths related to Robin Hood have put the fictional medieval outlaw in the news recently. The release of The Death of Robin Hood featuring Hugh Jackman as the titular hero has coincided with the sad news of the death of the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, the tree that legend has it was one the outlaw’s hideouts. But why is Robin Hood a household name the world over when the names of other medieval outlaws remain largely unknown?
Robin Hood’s earliest literary death is a rather rushed affair at the end of the 15th-century story, A Gest of Robyn Hode, when the prioress of Kirklees kills him in a botched attempt at bloodletting.
Although early stories of Robin Hood do not connect the outlaw with the Major Oak of Sherwood specifically, they do portray the outlaw and his men repeatedly meeting under a “trystle”, or meeting tree. It is not difficult to imagine how such legends would coalesce around a distinctive Sherwood tree like the Major Oak.
Robin’s fellow medieval outlaws remain largely unknown today. How many know the exploits of Fulk FitzWarin, Hereward the Wake, Eustace the Monk, or Gamelyn? Robin has endured because he was all things to all men, appealing to a wide range of audiences in medieval society. The legend has always been mutable, even in its earliest iterations – and the hero has been reimagined with every retelling.
Yet there were other stories of legendary outlaws in medieval England. One such, Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough and William Cloudesley, tells the story of three outlaws of Inglewood Forest in the north-west of England. The three are outlawed for poaching, an act which would have elicited sympathy among many lower down the social order.
After being outlawed, William Cloudesley sneaks into Carlisle town to see his wife and three small children. Betrayed and besieged, Alice, his “true wedded wyfe”, takes up a poleaxe to defend the front door while William shoots at the sheriff’s men who have come to arrest him. The sheriff sets fire to their house and William holds off the sheriff’s men, allowing his family to escape from a window. After his bowstring lies in ruins because of the fire, William is captured and condemned to hang.
Enter the town swineherd, a young boy, who slips out of Carlisle to inform the other outlaws, Adam and Clim, of William’s capture. The pair mount a daring last-minute gallows rescue straight out of the film Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. They then kill 300 officials in their bid to escape. Seeking a royal pardon, William demonstrates his archery prowess by shooting an apple off his seven-year-old son’s head in a dramatic finale, akin to the legend of William Tell.
It is thus in William Cloudesley that we find the fullest articulation of pride in the archery skills of those from the “north countree”. And it is in the relationship between the three outlaws that we see heroic feats of daring camaraderie as when, beset on all sides by the officials of Carlisle, William declares to his brethren: “Thys daye let us togyder lyve and deye.” Such scenes have long since been incorporated into the Robin Hood tradition, and yet many did not begin there – they began with the largely unknown outlaws of Inglewood Forest.
https://theconversation.com/robin-hood-was-often-far-more-violent-than-modern-legend-but-he-wasnt-the-most-extreme-medieval-outlaw-286175
Alfriston obelisk: Mystery surrounds an obelisk in an East Sussex village car park – few know its true origins, but many have their guesses. From a shot tower to a kiln, and even a lock up for anyone behaving badly on a night out, there are plenty of theories around the purpose of the small flint structure in a car park near The Tye in Alfriston.
Despite its origins being a matter of debate, local historian Kevin Gordon has revealed the truth of the 150-year-old structure. “Old maps show there was a windmill in this area, but that was a few hundred metres south of here,” Kevin reports, “however, on one map from 1871, it shows a dovecote here, and that’s what the original building was.”
Despite the mystery of its origins being revealed by the maps, the building’s history still has some twists. By the 20th Century, the building had fallen into disrepair and become a wreck. At that point, the owner of a nearby house saw an opportunity, and for some years the dovecote was rebuilt into a playhouse for their children to enjoy.
Although it holds local significance, and is the cause of much debate, East Sussex County Council has previously confirmed that it is not listed, and therefore not subject to specific heritage protections. Any future changes to the car park or surrounding land would likely prompt renewed debate about whether the obelisk should be preserved, restored or formally documented.
Heritage groups say that small, enigmatic structures like the Alfriston obelisk often reveal unexpected insights into local social history, even when their original purpose cannot be fully established.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyez3jzx2mo
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