Battle of Hastings
By Megan Claridge and Henry Scott – 30th June 2006
We met up outside the Battle Abbey. It was very, very tall.
We went into a shop to get to
the entrance and were given these walky talky things and pushed 1 and then play, and
heard a mans voice tell you where to go and what buttons to press. We followed the path to a small room with cardboard men, scary music and information. When we had finished reading, we followed the path, listening to more information on our headsets. This is what we found out:
The Battle of Hastings took place in October 1066. Edward the Confessor had promised William of Normandy (which is in France) the throne and supposedly sent Harold to tell William at the time. On his deathbed, he promised Harold the throne as he had no children of his own to succeed him. Harold was crowned the next day. The Anglo Saxons saw a comet in the sky and had never seen one before. They thought it meant danger. Harold went to the Isle of Wight in April and waited for an attack. By September there had been no attack and he had to go back to London to get more food and things. Meanwhile, Harold’s brother (Tostig) had joined forces with the King of Norway and Harold heard that they were near York. Harold and his army went quickly up England and caught them by surprise and defeated them at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Unfortunately, William landed at the South of England only 4 days after this and so Harold had to travel quickly down to Hastings where the next big battle took place.
Harold and this army had not had any rest which might have added to his defeat. He took his position on high ground (where the Abbey now is) and William was down below. There were women at the battle too. They helped the wounded and helped with food. Harold’s mistress, Edith Swan-Neck was there. William used horses in his attack, but the Anglo Saxons didn’t because they used horses on their farms and they were too precious to use. Harold might have won if he had attacked when he was ready. Instead he waited for the Normans to be ready and no-one knows why. Normans were trained to fight from an early age too.
William’s fighters were divided into 3 parts. In the middle were the Normans and on either side were the Bretons and the Flemish. Harold was winning, but William had a plan! He sent the Bretons up to attack to make the Anglo Saxons move forward. Then the Bretons pretended to move back (retreat) and that made the Anglo Saxons move further forward so that they weren’t safely all together. Another trick they used was to yell out that William had died. He hadn’t, but it made Harold’s troops believe they were winning and so they rushed forward and were slaughtered. On the evening of the 16th Harold was killed. Some people believe he died by an arrow in the eye. This is because it is shown on the Norman, “Bayeux Tapestry”, but we don’t know if that is really true. We do know that Harold was badly damaged because Edith could only identify him by marks on his body and not by his face. We saw where Harold was killed because it was marked. William (who became known as William the Conqueror) built the Abbey on the site to mark the defeat of the English. It was used by monks, but went became a malting kiln after Henry the VIII made an act called the “Dissolution of the Monastries” in the 1530s when he made England protestant (protest-ant!) rather than Roman Catholic.
We also found out during the day that the Anglo Saxons had long hair, moustaches and beards and wore very little armour in comparison to their attackers. The Normans wore armour and had short hair and no beards or moustaches. The Anglo Saxons used swords, shields and battle-axes. The Normans used more arrows and crossbows.
We didn’t enjoy the day as much as some other things we have done, but we would give it 10/10 for the amount we learned.