1066: The Lost Hastings BattlefieldDavid John BarnbyLabel: Pen & Sword MilitaryDescription: The year 1066 is a date in English history that changed the way people lived and were governed as well as transforming the language of the land. Astonishingly this book finds the traditional site attracting many thousands of visitors each year is not where the battle was actually fought.The death of King Edward the Confessor in January 1066 set off competing claims for the English throne by Norwegian King Harald Hardrada Duke William of Normandy and the English magnate Harold Godwinson; contentions finally settled at the epic Battle of Hastings later that year.This book tells the compelling story from the Norman duke's crossing with an army that included a large cavalry contingent in a fleet of Viking looking longboats from St Valery on the French coast to the final battle the Battle of Hastings on Blackhorse Hill on the high ridge some two miles east of the traditional site at Battle Abbey. It was there that King Harold met his end when surrounded and attacked by Norman knights in the closing stages of the battle. In addition the story from the Viking invasion of Lindisfarne until William's crossing of the Channel and events leading up to William's death have been included to provide context to our main story.The sequence of events told here relies upon the several historic accounts and the placing of events carefully matching them to the terrain described there with the topography of the area a painstaking process of trial and error to accurately place the battle site on Blackhorse Hill. The author has made use of satellite imagery not previously available to earlier authors on the battle to confirm the location of the old Cinque port of Hastings (first proposed by Nick Austin in his Secrets of the Norman Invasion) the site of Duke Williams's pre-battle camp. The author has analysed the relative distances from the old port to the Battle Abbey site and the Blackhorse Hill site to eliminate the former and confirm the latter.As far as is known no-one has ever considered the Blackhorse Hill site before and it is hoped that this will inspire researchers to expand upon these findings.
This product would be a great fit for history enthusiasts interested in discovering the truth behind the lost battlefield of Hastings and the subsequent Norman Conquest.
