Hastings, 1066: Contesting the Site of the Battle
Monday 17 February 2025, 6.00PM
Speaker(s): Professor Tom License (University of East Anglia)
Ideology, Society and Medieval Religion seminar series
1066 is the most famous date in English history, and the battle of Hastings the most famous battle. Until recently, everyone thought that it was fought where Battle abbey now stands, but Jim Bradbury, in his popular book The Battle of Hastings (1998), broke ranks with the experts. No remains from the battle have ever been found, he noted. Surely that was a problem? Nor was Battle Hill the only defensible summit. By inculcating doubt at a popular level, Bradbury gave grounds to enthusiasts to hunt for the battlefield elsewhere. The next two decades saw the rise of the battlefield detectives, whose sleuthing drew media attention and appealed to a public skeptical of experts. While historians, archaeologists and geographers devised ever more elaborate methodologies for tracing the elusive battlefield, enthusiasts demanded a platform for their theories, ranging from the man who believed he had found Norman helmets in a ditch at the bottom of his field, to the scholars whose arguments rest on turning an apple tree into an oak. Such are the challenges for experts in the twenty-first century. And who is right? Do the battlefield detectives bring something to the table, like Miss Marple out-sleuthing the plodding police, or is it still best to listen to the experts on where the bodies are buried?
Tom Licence is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He specialises in the politics, religion and literature of the eleventh century, with a focus on the Norman Conquest and the events before and after. With the benefit of a three-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, he is preparing the biography of Harold II for the series Yale English Monarchs.
This seminar will be held on Zoom. Please register via Ticketsource; a link to the stream will be emailed to you once you register. This event will not be recorded. Please contact Tess Wingard (wingardt@tcd.ie) or Emmie Price-Goodfellow (emmie.price-goodfellow@york.
Location: Online