The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Hastings: let the battle commence
Chris Leadbeater visits a new exhibition marking the 950th anniversary of William the Conqueror’s famous victory
Harold Godwinson probably did not see himself as a man caught in a moment that would endure for the best part of a millennium. There he was, trying to shore up his right to the English crown, certain that he was the successor to Edward the Confessor, despite claims to the contrary from over the Channel. It is doubtful whether, in a violent era, he looked beyond the end of any week. But there he is all the same, immortalised in the propaganda stitches of the Bayeux Tapestry, arrow ever in eye, an eternal exam question – victim and loser on a seismic day when the British Isles’ relationship with Europe zoomed into focus. The tale was one of plots and schemes – a Saxon earl with designs on a soon-to-be-vacant throne; a warrior duke from Normandy with the same ambition; broken vows; resolution through heat and anger.
Is there something pertinent about the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings falling at a time when this country and the Continent are again debating how they coexist? The result in 1066 went the other way, of course – the British land mass drawn into Europe by the fire and strength of men from Caen and Cherbourg. But the equation was the same. Aloof from the rest of the continent, or part of it? A satellite, or a state tied to the centre ground?
This is an issue you can mull over this summer in East Sussex, on the gentle slope of Senlac Hill, where Battle Abbey (the Benedictine institution founded in penance by the victorious William the Conqueror in 1070, on the site where blood was shed) is marking the latest anniversary.
Finding a way to repackage such familiar events has required imagination. Which is why I find myself on top of the abbey’s 14thcentury gatehouse, where Roy Porter – a senior curator for English Heritage – is pointing out the quality of the restoration work on the 66-step staircase that spirals to this lofty level. This is just one element of a £1.8 million investment in the battlefield to hew it into shape for its big birthday – visitors did not previously have access to the roof.
“People tend to see the battlefield as the open land beyond the abbey,” Porter says, gesturing south towards the grass whose gradient proved so crucial in 1066. “But the fighting encompassed the whole hill. This is why the abbey was built here. We are trying to emphasise that the hilltop was also part of the narrative.”
Directly below, two gatehouse rooms have been refitted to hold a small exhibition. Here are clever touches: a recreation of the throne of the heirless Edward the Confessor, as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, in which you can sit; a replica of the golden reliquary on which Harold was supposed to have sworn allegiance to William in 1064, agreeing to the Norman’s right of accession in England. Elsewhere, chronicle accounts reveal the price Godwinson paid for his apparent abandoning of his word. Hacked down by his enemies, his death – according to one source – “drenched the earth with a gushing torrent of blood”. Around you, a roar of conflict pours from speakers. There are other, softer revolutions. A children’s play area has been slotted into its surroundings by making its components recall the site’s old monastic life – a slide disguised as a hay cart, a nest of barrels doubling as a climbing frame. The battlefield, too, has fresh residents. Life-size figures, cut from English oak, depict the fight’s progress in the relevant places – Norman archers, English swordsmen.
The visitor centre is not a 2016 innovation, but it does an excellent job of chopping the complicated causes of the battle into digestible chunks – animated caricatures of the two protagonists, bellowing their claims with a lack of finesse that seems horribly familiar in the wake of recent developments. “Crook! Liar! Oathbreaker!” shouts William. “I should be king, because I’m Anglo-Saxon,” Harold responds, matter-of-factly.
Harold is still here, in effect. Tradition has it that the abbey’s high altar – and with it the arrangement of the whole church – was deliberately pinned to the spot where he was killed. He has, however, moved as part of the 2016 commemorations: archaeological re-analysis of the structure has seen the stone that salutes the leader of 1066’s “Out” brigade shifted 20ft or so to the east. “We are happy this is now the right location,” Porter nods.
The abbey, of course, is a shell. It owes its condition, as do all remnants of England’s former Benedictine houses, to Henry VIII’s decision to pull the country away from the Continent – or, at least, its religious hub – in 1532, then plunder the monasteries for their wealth. A taking-back of sovereignty or a road to ruins? By the time we reach the 1,000th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 2066, Britain’s dealings with Europe may need a new tapestry.