Return 

Alternative Norman landing sites - Combe Haven and Cooden

By tradition, the Normans temporarily landed at modern Pevensey, then moved to modern Hastings. Our 2016 book 'The Battle of Hastings at Sedlescombe' provides some reasons to think this is implausible. We propose instead that they landed on the north bank of the Brede estuary, then moved to modern Winchelsea the south bank. There are two other non-orthodox Norman landing site theories. One, first proposed by Samuel Jeake in his 1678 analysis of Cinque Port charters, is they they landed at Bulverhythe in Combe Haven. The other, first proposed by Sir James Ramsay in his 1898 book 'Foundations of England', is that they landed on the east bank of Pevensey Lagoon at Cooden. In this paper, we will explain why we are convinced that neither of these landing site candidates is credible.

E S Creasy reiterated Bulverhythe as a landing site candidate in his 1851 book 'Fifteen Decisive Battles'. David Dennis reiterated Cooden as a landing site candidate in his 2025 paper 'The Battle of Hastings and Cooden Moat'. Nick Austin has a novel twist on Jeake's theory that the Normans landed in Combe Haven. He first recorded his thoughts in his 1994 book 'Secrets of the Norman Invasion' (SOTNI). He has been fleshing out his argument for the past thirty years. We will examine his theory in more detail towards the end of this paper.

Austin provides no less than fourteen clues to support his Combe Haven landing theory. None of the others provide any. Instead, they try to refute modern Pevensey and the Priory Valley below modern Hastings as viable landing sites, then say or imply that Combe Haven or Cooden are the most likely alternatives. Unfortunately, while we agree with Austin's approach, his evidence is faulty, as we will explain below. We will start from first principles.

The diagram above depicts our QGIS regression of 11th century Pevensey Lagoon. Note that the lagoon was retained by a shingle bar known as 'The Crumbles' that roughly corresponds with the current coastline. Streams drained through the shingle to divide the bar into a string of islands. West to east they were Langney (L), 'pefenes ea' (pe), Southeye (S) and Northeye (N). Modern Pevensey is labelled 'P'. It did not exist at the time, as we will explain below. The Peninsula upon which it is located was then home only to the Roman fortress of Anderitum, and its metalled Roman access road. Ramsay and Dennis propose that the Normans landed on the contiguous strand at Cooden (C) and south Hooe Haven (H). Note that Cooden was on a narrow-necked peninsula with an 800m wide isthmus at 'The Thorn' (T) in Anglo-Saxon times. We refer to it below as the 'Bexhill peninsula'. 

A comparison of Norman landing site evidence between Combe Haven, Cooden and the Brede estuary

✓ = Yes / Consistent;  ✖ = No / Inconsistent

 Brede
 		 Combe
Haven		 Cooden
 

Roman infrastructure
1. Roman iron production ('000 of tonnes)
 ✓ (80) ✓ (10) ✖
2. Evidence of a Roman port
 ✓ ✖ ✖
3. Evidence of Roman road infrastructure
 ✓ ✖ ✖
4. Evidence of a Roman castra
 ✓ ✖ ✖

Anglo-Saxon infrastructure
5. Evidence of salt production (Domesday salt-pans)
 ✓ (100) ✖ ✓ (34)
6. Evidence of timber production
 ✓ ✖ ✖
7. Evidence of pre-Conquest port
 ✓ ✖ ✖
8. Evidence of an Anglo-Saxon 'ceastre' burh
 ✓ ✖ ✖

Consistency with contemporary account clues
9. Length of contiguous strand (km)
 9 4 4
10. Overlooked by sea cliff
 ✓ ✖ ✖
11. Familiar to Norman monks of Fécamps Abbey
 ✓ ✖ ✖
12. Firm level plain adjacent to the landing strand
 ✓ ✖ ✓
13. Consistent with a landing at Penevesellum
 ✓ ✖ ✖
14. Near the Hastings Peninsula but not on it
 ✓ ✖ ✖

 

Roman infrastructure is relevant to the Norman landing site and the battle location. In the case of the landing, the contemporary accounts say that the Normans camped near where they landed, they camped at Hæstingaceastre, or a cognate of it, and places with 'ceastre' names were at pre-Anglo-Saxon fortifications, nearly always Roman. In the case of the battle, the English army would not have moved far from a Roman road, and the Normans must have advanced at least part of the way from their camp to the battlefield on a Roman road for the battle to have started at the third hour, as designated by several trustworthy accounts. 

  1. Roman iron production. Abundant natural resources give a reason for the Romans to build roads, ports and castras. According to Henry Cleere, the four biggest mines in the Brede basin produced 80000 tonnes of iron blooms, whereas the entire Combe Haven basin produced only 10000 tonnes, and the Bexhill peninsula produced none. If there was major Roman infrastructure in the theatre of war, it is likely to have been in the Brede basin. 
  2. Roman port. The Hastings Ridge forms the Brede basin's southern watershed. The land south of the Hastings Ridge is divided into the Combe Haven basin, the Hooe haven basin and Ash Bourne basin. There is no credible reason that bulky goods like iron blooms would be hauled over the Hastings Ridge, so the Brede basin's iron was probably exported from a port in the Brede, while  Crowhurst Park's iron was probably exported from a port in Combe Haven. Therefore, there was probably a major Roman port in the Brede estuary, and a minor Roman port in Combe Haven, the former being roughly eight times the size of the latter. There is no reason for Cooden to have had a Roman port.
  3. Roman transport infrastructure. No physical evidence of Roman transport infrastructure has been found in Combe Haven, although we expect there was a metalled mining track between Crowhurst Park's mines and a minor port in Combe Haven. No physical evidence of Roman infrastructure has been found at Cooden, and there is no reason for it to have had any. Contrastingly, the south Brede basin was covered in a network of proven metalled Roman roads. The Rochester Roman trunk road went from Bodiam to Sedlescombe. It crossed the Brede on a bridge at Sedlescombe then forked with one branch going to Beauport Park, while the main trunk road terminated at modern Winchelsea. It had metalled mining tracks to Footlands, Little Hides, Old Place Icklesham, and probably to all the other open cast mines in the Brede basin.
  4. Roman castra. Roman trunk roads were built by the Roman army for use by the Roman army. Each day that a road advanced, they would build a new castra at the new end. Consequently, there is a castra at the end of all Roman trunk roads and modern Winchelsea in the Brede basin was at the end of the only Roman trunk road on the Hastings Peninsula. There are two other reasons to think that there was a castra at modern Winchelsea. Firstly, Roman castra generally had a civilian vicus outside the main gate. When those vici were occupied in Anglo-Saxon times, they were named 'Wickham'. There is a manor named Wickham adjacent to modern Winchelsea in the Brede basin, whereas there is no evidence of a vicus in Combe Haven or the Bexhill peninsula. Secondly, coastal castras were located for good visibility and fast troop deployment. Modern Winchelsea in the Brede estuary had an uninterrupted 160° sea view south and east, whereas Cooden only had a 45° sea view southwest, and Redgeland in Combe Haven only had a narrow 15° sea view south. To summarise, no physical evidence of a Roman castra has been found on the Hastings Peninsula, but the only circumstantial evidence of where one might have been points to modern Winchelsea in the Brede basin. 

Most of the contemporary accounts say that the main Norman landing was at Hæstingaport or cognate and that they camp nearby at Hæstingaceastre or cognate. The Anglo-Saxon population of east Sussex was too low to draw significant imports or to produce enough grain to need an export port. Hæstingaport therefore must have exported natural resources. The Romans mined out the region's iron ore. Hæstingaport must have exported the region's other natural resources, salt, salted herrings and timber. 

  1. Salt production. Domesday lists salt-pans by manor. Rameslie manor which spanned the Brede had 100 salt-pans. Hooe manor had 34, the manors around Combe Haven had none.
  2. Timber production. All three of the Hæstingaport candidates would have been below heavily wooded slopes. However, moving logs over land in medieval times was incredibly difficult. Anywhere that produced a significant quantity of timber would have logflumed it to the nearest waterway and floated it to a port downstream. The only slopes in the region that are consistently steep enough to flume timber are those on the north bank of the Brede and medieval flumes are still there. No flumes have been found around Combe Haven or Cooden.
  3. Hæstingaport. There are references to a port at Old Winchelsea from the late 8th through to its destruction in the late 13th century, whereas the first references to a port in Combe Haven or near the Bexhill peninsula (Bulverhythe and Northeye respectively) are in the 13th century. 'De viis Maris' confirms this by saying that the only good port on the Hastings peninsula in the mid-late 11th century was at the mouth of the Brede. Pre-Conquest coins issued at Hæstingaceastre's mint are stamped with an abbreviation of Hæstingaceastre, or an abbreviation of Hæstingaport or an abbreviation of Winchelse (meaning Old Winchelsea), implying that they are cognates or adjacent. Domesday provides two more clues that Hæstingaceastre and Hæstingaport were in the Brede estuary. Domesday says that Hastinges in the Bredeside manor of Rameslie had four burgesses, nearly always an indication that the manor contained a port or trading centre, whereas the Combe Haven and Bexhill peninsula manors had none. Domesday lists Rameslie with a large population and little farmland, implying a large non-farming population, whereas the populations of the Combe Haven manors and Bexhill peninsula manors are consistent with them being populated only by farmers. It is true that Rameslie had many salt-pans, but the labouring work would have been done by farmhands during the summer months. 
  4. Hæstingaceastre. Hæstingaceastre was an Alfredian burh. Its name means that it was located at a former fortification, almost always a Roman castra. We explain in 4 above why the only likely place for a Roman castra on the Hastings Peninsula was at modern Winchelsea. Alfred's burhs were positioned to defend population centres and transport routes from Viking raids. There were no major Anglo-Saxon population centres in East Sussex, but there was an important transport route, namely the Rochester Roman road. A burh at modern Winchelsea would have controlled access to that road from Viking raiders. A burh in Combe Haven or the Bexhill peninsula would not control any transport route. Indeed, they were on the south side of the Hastings Ridge, unable to see Viking raiders entering the Brede estuary to plunder the Rochester Roman road's hinterland. 

There are other reasons to believe that the Normans landed and camped in the Brede estuary, or that they did not land or camp in Combe Haven or Cooden.

  1. William expected the landing site to be defended. He would have wanted to land on the longest contiguous stretch of firm strand, thereby stretching the defence as thin as possible, ideally so thin that it left gaps for some of his horses to land unopposed. The streams running off the Udimore Ridge were fluvial, too shallow and narrow to break the contiguous north Brede strand. The streams running off the Hastings Ridge were far more substantial. Powdermill Stream, Little Bog, Watermill Stream, Hooe Haven and Waller's Haven were all tidal and more than 200m wide in their lower reaches, and there were several others that would have been difficult to cross. These streams divided the north Combe Haven and east Pevensey Lagoon strands into sections that were less than 5km long, a tight fit for the Norman fleet, whereas the Brede's contiguous strand was over 9km. It is not even clear that there was enough contiguous strand in Combe Haven or east Pevensey Lagoon to land the entire Norman fleet. Wace (Taylor) says: “They arrived near Hastingues each ship ranged by the other’s side.” If, as we calculate, the ships had an average beam of 5m and were separated by 2m, they would have needed at least 5km of strand.
  2. Carmen and Wace say that the Norman landing was watched by an observer who stood at the base of a cliff. The Brede estuary was overlooked by Cadborough cliffs. Combe Haven and Cooden were not overlooked by cliffs.
  3. William was accompanied on the invasion by monks from the abbey of Fécamps who acted as translators and advisors. They had held the manor of Rameslie which spanned the Brede estuary since 1018. Jo Kirkham proposed back in the 1990s that William would have used their expert local knowledge to plan the invasion. If so, the Norman fleet landed in the Brede estuary.
  4. Wace (Taylor) says: “They [the knights] formed together on the shore, each armed upon his warhorse. All had their swords girded on, and passed into the plain with their lances raised.” He is saying that the Normans landed on a strand that was adjacent to a plain that was level enough to assemble a kit-fortress without first digging a motte, and firm enough underfoot to support mounted horses. This is consistent with the north bank of the Brede which, at that time of year, would have had a firm level plain of top sliced salt pans. The banks of Combe Haven and Cooden would have been a boggy quagmire at the end of September, and still are despite the effective 5m drop in sea level. 
  5. Poitiers, Jumièges and Orderic say that the Normans initially landed at Penevesellum. Note the 'n/v' switch, meaning this is not a Pevensey cognate. It is a Latin format name that was only used by Normans. The only likely reason that Normans might have had a Latin name for somewhere in Sussex is that it belonged to the Frankish Abbey of St Denys or the Norman Abbey of Fécamp. They owned Rameslie manor which lined the banks of the Brede estuary, but nothing in the Combe Haven basin or the Bexhill peninsula.
  6. Bayeux Tapestry scene 40 is captioned: “here the knights hurry to Hestinga to forage for food”. It is consistent with a north Brede estuary landing but not a Combe Haven or Bexhill peninsula landing. Most experts think that the Tapestry's 'Hestinga' referred to Hæstingaport, but there is no reason the Normans might think that there might be food for ten thousand men at a port. Moreover, almost everyone agrees that Hæstingaport was on the Hastings Peninsula. If the Normans landed at the orthodox modern Pevensey location, there is no reason they would forage twenty miles away on the Hastings Peninsula, when there was abundant farmland at Willingdon, just four miles away along the Lewes Roman road. If, on the other hand, they landed in Combe Haven or at Cooden, they were already at their Hestinga, so they would not have to ride there. We proposed that Hæstinga was the Anglo-Saxons term for the Hastings Peninsula, and that was its meaning in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Bayeux Tapestry. If so, the Tapestry is saying that the initial temporary Norman landing was near to the Hastings Peninsula but not on it, consistent with our proposed initial landing on the north bank of the Brede. 

Two other points might be relevant.

  1. William expected the landing site to be defended. His greatest advantage was his huge cavalry, but they would be impotent if defenders could prevent them landing. This militated towards two geographic features of the landing site. Firstly, it needed to be as long as possible, to stretch the defence as thin as possible, at least until it had weak points, ideally until it had holes where horses could be landed unopposed. Once some horses were landed and mounted, they could clear a path for the others. Secondly, the landing site should ideally have two banks. If the defenders were on one bank, they could land on the other. If the defenders were on both banks, the would land on the weaker of the two. At the very least, this would half the number of defenders, buying time to establish a beachhead before the defenders on the other bank could make their way around. Both these criteria favour the Brede. Its strand was 10km on both banks compared to 4km at Combe Haven and 5km at Cooden. The Brede north bank would have been easier for a landing because of its salt pans, but the Normans could have landed on the south bank. They could not have landed on the Combe Haven south bank because Bexhill was a narrow necked peninsula where the Normans would have been trapped if the English defended the isthmus in numbers. They could not have landed at Cooden on the Bexhill peninsula's west bank for the same reason. 
  2. Combe Haven's name implies it was a haven. The Anglo-Saxons differentiated 'havens' from 'harbours' and 'ports'. They are all Old English words, albeit that 'port' was inherited from Latin. So, a haven is a sheltered coastal inlet, a harbour is a haven with mooring facilities, a port is a harbour with quays and warehouses for handling freight. If Combe Haven's name derives from Anglo-Saxon times, and there is no reason to believe it does not, it was not a port. 

Against this, there is one clue that might imply the Norman landing was not in the Brede estuary:

  1. According to the 1987 HAARG Domesday project, a 1963 sales catalogue for Wilting Farm claimed: "In the heyday of Sussex iron workings, when the transport of iron to water borne transport was of the utmost importance, a road existed from the great blooomery at Beauport to a loading bay in the vicinity of the Coach Bridge [near the on the banks of Combe Haven]. The course of the highway can still be traced across the farm." If this were true, it might imply that Beauport Park's iron blooms were hauled over the Hastings Ridge to be exported from a port in Combe Haven. This would turn on their head some of the first six clues, meaning that the port in Combe Haven was by far the biggest in the region, that it was likely to have had the nearby castra, and so on.

In our opinion, clue 17 is a misunderstanding. We guess that its root was the Turner painting note we mention above. That note seems to be corroborated by a vestigial road from Crowhurst Park to the coast. However, the Turner note is baseless and Colonel Thomas Pelham, Crowhurst Park's owner in the 18th century, built a metalled road from his house in Crowhurst Park to Glyne Gap on the coast. This is the road that is still visible on the landscape, and it does look superficially like a Roman road, with raised carriageway, graded layers, and straight sections. It was only revealed to have been Georgian when it was excavated by HAARG in 1987.

Nick Austin's supporting evidence for a Combe Haven Norman landing

Austin has a novel and ingenious interpretation of the Norman landing. He notes that modern Pevensey is an especially inadequate landing site, and that there is no plausible reason for the Normans to land at modern Pevensey then, just a day or two later, move to somewhere on the Hastings Peninsula. He rightly says that they are far more likely to have landed near where they wanted to camp, meaning that the move only involved the men not the fleet, and they only moved from somewhere on the coast to a nearby hill.

They way he proposes to make this consistent with the contemporary landing accounts is to interpret their references to somewhere that sounds like Pevensey to mean the area defended by a garrison based in the Roman fortress of Anderitum at modern Pevensey. That area might encompass the entire Hastings Peninsula. Therefore, the contemporary landing accounts could be saying that the Normans landed at Hæstingaport on the Hastings Peninsula coast, then moved to a nearby hill, perhaps the hill that was occupied by the Alfredian burh of Hæstingaceastre.

This interpretation addresses some apparent inconsistencies in the orthodox landing narrative. They include a dozen or so reasons - listed later - why William would have avoided landing at modern Pevensey. They also explain the move. Most of the contemporary accounts make the move sound trivial, but the orthodox move from west of the Pevensey lagoon to anywhere on the Hastings Peninsula would have been arduous at best. It was a thirty mile ride, mostly through dense woodland on unpaved byways. The ships would need to be reloaded without piers or quays, then sail along a dangerous rocky lee shore. Austin's version allows the fleet to stay where they landed, just demanding that the men move 800m up a relatively shallow hill.

The diagram above depicts Austin's pre-battle narrative, superimposed on our QGIS regression of the 11th century coastline. It can be summarised as follows. The Normans landed at Redgeland Wood (R) and camped nearby in Monkham Wood (1). They soon moved 800m north onto the hill at Upper Wilting (2) where they camped for the next month. The English camped at Telham (T) on the night before battle. Austin reckons that the Normans could not adopt the obvious strategy, to attack downhill from Blackhorse Hill after marching to Beauport Park (B) along the route of the A2690, because the Ridge was covered in impenetrable woodland. Instead, he proposes that they returned to Redgeland Wood to dress for battle before marching through Green Street (G) to Crowhurst (C). The English moved onto the steepest part of the hill (E). Their flanks were supposedly protected by impenetrable woodland, forcing the Normans to attack up the steep south slope of Telham Hill (white arrow between C and E). 

Austion's evidence is listed below. Clues 1 through 7 come from the first edition of SOTNI. Clues 8 through 14 come from his later research. His Hæstingaport location evidence is divided between the Bulverhythe (B) and Redgeland (R). While the groups of clues seem to contradict each other, Bulverhythe and Redgeland are only 2km apart. To make the clues mutually consistent, it can be assumed that it might have been a composite entrepôt - like the one we propose at Old Winchelsea and Iham - with docks at Bulverhythe and a mercantile centre at Redgeland. 

  1. Austin: The Chronicles [i.e. Benoît de Sainte-Maure] state 'There right in front of the port' where William’s fleet 'landed stood a Castle handsome and strong'. The expression 'There right in front of the port' Hæstingaceastre can only make sense when applied to the Hastings port at Bulverhythe, since this is the only place where a castle could stand in a way that you would consider to be in front of the port.
  2. Austin: The great Council in the time of William Rufus was held in 1094 at Hastings Castle ... The register of Battle Abbey records “The Castle then stood below the cliff, on ground since overflowed by the sea”. This can likewise only refer to Bulverhythe as the erosion of the coastline, referred to by many writers, is only recorded to have occurred two centuries later in the late 13th century.
  3. Austin lists two early references to salt works at the port of Hastings: 1) Charter of Offa dated as early as AD.795 which says “..the ports of my possession which are in the same neighbourhood on the sea, Hastings and Pevensey, with their salt works”; 2) A complaint to King Aedelwulfus AD 857 in which it is stated: “that a monk of St.Denis had bitterly complained of the injuries which the kings men had miserably inflicted on the followers of the Saint in England, especially at Rotherfield, and in Hastings and Pevensey, at their salt works.” He notes that salt has never been worked on the coast near modern Hastings but it might have been worked on the banks of Combe Haven. For evidence, he quotes Dawson's statement: "That there were at Bulverhythe pertaining to the said barony at Hastings - 20 acres of salt pasture worth per annum 6s 8d".
  4. Samuel Jeake specifically says that the Normans landed at Bulverhythe. Austin: "Jeakes, in his annotations on the Cinque Ports Charters, speaking of the neighbouring spot called Bulverhythe, sets forth that it was not only the original haven of Hastings, but as such the then supposed place where William the Conqueror landed".
  5. Austin: Barry Funnell reporting for the Hastings Area Archaeological Research Group (HAARG) on the America Ground in 1989 states that 'the early chronicles describe Hastings as having the best natural seaport in South East England'. This is indeed only true of Bulverhythe, which was at that time a flooded inland harbour, second only to Poole as the largest natural harbour on the South Coast.
  6. Austin: A further study of other writings on this subject produce many examples of cross referenced support for Bulverhythe, as the original port of Hastings, at the time of the Norman Invasion. E.M. Ward in his detailed study 'The Evolution of the Hastings Coastline' states that “Bulverhythe, as a 13th century port was of some importance”. Straker and Lewis make the point that “the haven of Bulverhythe was possibly used as an iron port” for the Romans. Millward and Robinson confirm that “Bulverhythe was probably an important Saxon port and was later a member of the Cinque ports”. Lastly the Patent Rolls still mention the importance of Bulverhythe as a port as late as AD 150 [the reference is actually 1250].
  7. Austin: One final clue arises to confirm the fact that Hastings port pre 1066 was almost certainly situated on the Bulverhythe within the natural harbour area. This is that Hastings enjoyed a pre-eminent position in relation to the Cinque Ports. These five ports, Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich received special privileges most probably because they were the only source of ships in the absence of a navy. The first reference to the Cinque Ports is in a charter of Henry II according to the eminent historian, and ex curator of Hastings Museum, John Manwaring Baines. In his book 'Historic Hastings' Mr Manwaring Baines makes the point that whilst each of these ports enjoyed a special relationship with the crown Hastings appeared to enjoy special favours. He notes that “all freemen of the ports were called “Barons” and “although not en-nobled by that title, their representatives were recognised as being almost on the level with peerage barons”. They were exempt from taxation and trading dues and had the right to be tried by their own courts. These were extraordinary privileges. However Hastings appeared to enjoy a special privilege, which many attribute to it’s roll as head Cinque Port. This was the right to provide barons to carry the canopy of the King and Queen in procession at the coronation. Further at the banquet after the coronation they sat at the right hand side of the king, in the place of honour. It is my opinion that these honours were special and bestowed upon the people of Hastings because of their special relationship with the crown, dating back to the time of William. This explains why these privileges were granted, but also provides a logical explanation based upon the fact that the port of Hastings was the largest and most influential of all the ports in the South of England. The honours bestowed matched the status of the port and could only be located at Bulverhythe.
  8. The Chronicle of Battle Abbey: “specifically names the port at a place named Hedgeland [Hechelande]”. Austin explains that Hechelande would have been pronounced similarly to Redgeland in the local dialect of the day, so Hæstingaport referred to modern Redgeland which was on the banks of Combe Haven at the time of the Norman invasion.
  9. The first Norman Sheriffs, namely Reinbert and Ingelrann, were “installed at Wilting Manor”, the location he proposes for the second Norman camp. He says that this reflects Wilting’s “paramount importance”, implying it was the administrative centre for Hæstingaport.
  10. Domesday's list of manors that were 'wasted' (i.e., destroyed) during the Conquest are concentrated around Combe Haven. Rameslie manor around the Brede estuary suffered no damage at all. Austin argues that the manors most plundered, and therefore those that lost most value during the Conquest, would have been those closest to the Norman camp. Therefore, he argues that the second Norman camp and Hæstingaceastre and Hæstingaport must have been in Combe Haven.
  11. Field boundaries and a terrace near Upper Wilting indicate the route of a Roman road from Redgeland to Beauport Park which was used to transport iron blooms to a Roman port in Combe Haven. Every Roman trunk road ends at a castra, the survivors of which became Anglo-Saxon 'ceastres'. If there was a metalled Roman road that ended at Combe Haven, it is a good candidate to be Hæstingaceastre, and therefore a good candidate to have been the location of Hæstingaport and the Norman landing. 
  12. There are lumps in the ground at Redgeland that might be the remains of Roman piers from the Roman port. Roman ports were protected by legionaries that lived in a nearby castra. If the Roman piers are from a Roman port, it would have had a nearby castra and that castra would be a good candidate to have been Hæstingaceastre.
  13. LiDAR shows the outline of a rectangular enclosure near Redgeland. That enclosure is the right size to have been the Alfredian burh of Hæstingaceastre based on its description in the Burghal Hidage.
  14. Resistivity geophysics survey shows the outline of a Norman keep, perhaps surrounded by the faint outline of fortress walls, at Wilting. Austin notes that the Normans must have been based somewhere before the stone castle at modern Hastings was complete. Being Normans, they probably stayed in a motte and bailey wooden castle, which might have been the one in the geophysics. 

If these clues were valid, they seem to make a coherent case for a Norman landing in Combe Haven. Crowhurst Park produced 40000 tonnes of iron ore in Roman times, all processed at nearby bloomeries. The Weald's iron was made into weapons and armour in France. Iron blooms were heavy and awkward to transport over land. It seems likely that Crowhurst Park's blooms were moved onto sea-going ships as directly as possible, which would have entailed dropping them 1.4km downhill to a port in Combe Haven. If there was a Roman port on the banks of Combe Haven - and Clue 12 might be physical evidence of it - the rest of Austin's evidence could form a coherrent narrative as follows. 

Heavy freight like iron blooms was moved by ox-drawn cart on hardcore surfaces. This implies there was a metalled road or mining track between the Crowhurst Park bloomery and a Combe Haven port, and Clue 11 might be physical evidence of it. Roman ports, both commercial and military, were defended by Roman legionaries who lived in camps known as castras, and Clue 13 might be physical evidence of one. Former castras were referred to by Anglo-Saxons as 'ceastres'. Hæstingaceastre would therefore have been at the site of a former castra and Clue 13 might be physical evidence of it at Redgeland. This would be consistent with Clue 1 if the viewer was looking from the sea. Clue 8 purports to be direct evidence that If Hæstingaport was also at Redgeland. The Romans mined out all the ore in the entire region, so Hæstingaport did not ship iron blooms. Instead, it would have shipped the region's other main natural resources: salt, salted herrings, and timber. Clue 3 is an attempt to show that the Combe Haven basin was rich in these natural resources. Clues 6, 7, 9 and 10 try to show that Combe Haven had an important Anglo-Saxon port and a significant Anglo-Saxon settlement.

The only other landing site candidate that Austin considered was modern Hastings, the orthodox location of Hæstingaport, Hæstingaceastre and Hastinges. Clues 3, 6, 7 and 9 try to show that modern Hastings did not have an Anglo-Saxon port. Austin rejected the Brede estuary as a landing site candidate, as explained in Clue 10 below, so he also rejected Old Winchelsea as a Hæstingaport candidate. He therefore concludes that Combe Haven is the only Norman landing site candidate and that is consistent with the evidence. 

Some flaws in Austin's evidence

Clue 1 is based on Dawson's faulty translation of a passage from Benoît's Chronique des ducs de Normandie, and it is taken out of context. Benoît says "Iloc sampres desus the port, ferment unchastel bel e fort", meaning 'There above the port, they built [or fortified] a fortress beautiful and strong'. Ian Short's translation is more accurate: "[The Normans] Arrived at Pevenesel, at a port [or harbour] beneath a fortress handsome and strong", but he ignores the verb 'ferment', usually meaning 'built', presumably because he thinks that the Normans did not have time to build a fortress at their temporary camp. ferment has a niche meaning 'fortified', which is plausible. They might, for example, have done nothing more than to dig a ditch at the entrance to a fortress that was already there. However, we think Benoît got confused. The next sentence starts:  'Apres, ce conte li escriz' meaning 'Afterwards, as the story goes', implying that the narrative is based on hearsay that he does not trust. 'Chronique des ducs de Normandie' was written in the 1170s, more than a hundred years after the Conquest. It was a synthesis of earlier manuscripts. In our opinion, he: 1) Read the many descriptions of the Normans assembling a kit fortress at the landing site, and Carmen's description of the Normans strengthening a fortress that was already at the landing site, and conflated the two; 2) Read the various reports of the Normans arriving at Pevenesel or cognate, and those of the Normans landing at Penevesellum or cognate, and spuriously conflateed the two; 3) Noted that the resulting narrative seems implausible. 

Clue 2 is based on an unreliable note on the back of a JMW Turner painting. There is nothing to substantiate the note's claim and it looks spurious. As far as we know, the origin of the words has never been found. No books or manuscripts are known as the 'Register of Battle Abbey'. It is often assumed that it referred to the 'Chartulary of Battle Abbey' because that book has been hidden away in a private American library for over a century, but we have read it from cover to cover without finding the reference. The author was probably an art auctioneer rather than a historian. It seems likely to us that he invented the story to inflate the painting's value.

Clue 3 is mostly misleading. Austin was trying to say that salt has never been farmed at modern Hastings, which  is true, whereas it might has been farmed around Combe Haven, which is unsubstantiated speculation. His evidence that salt was farmed around Combe Haven is an early 14th century reference to salt-marsh around Bulverhythe, not evidence of salt farming and two hundred and fifty years too late to be relevent anyway. On the contrary, there is no evidence that salt was farmed around Combe Haven in Anglo-Saxon times and Domesday does not list it with any salt-pans. Austin's supporting evidence that salt was intensively farmed in Ramleslie manor is also irrelevant because the salt-pans were on the banks of the Brede estuary, and its salt would have been used in or exported from the Brede estuary.

Clue 4 does accurately reflect Jeake's opinion that the Normans landed at Bulverhythe, but he provided no evidence and he was clearly mistaken. Bulverhythe was an island at the time of the Norman invasion. There is no possibility that the Normans landed on an island because they needed fresh water and forage for their horses, they needed to ride to mainland farms to rustle food, and they needed to return livestock to their camp, as depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. It seems likely to us that Jeake did not know that Bulverhythe was an island at the time of the Norman invasion, so spuriously reasoned that the closest place to modern Hastings with a strand long enough to accommodate the Norman fleet was the beach between Bulverhythe and Bexhill Pavilion. 

Clue 5 is inaccurate. As Funnell implies, medieval sources do say that a port on the Hastings Peninsula was one of the two busiest in southeast England, the other being Dover, but there is no reason to equate that - as Austin does in Clue 5 - with it having the largest natural harbour. Port shipping volume is a function of hinterland natural resources, population and transport infrastructure, of which Combe Haven had close to zero in Anglo-Saxon times. 

Clue 6 is not evidence that there was an Anglo-Saxon port at Bulverhythe at the time of the Norman invasion. It is evidence that there was a port at Bulverhythe in the mid-13th century. It was Norman, and probably developed to service the Norman castle and settlement at modern Hastings. There is no evidence of an Anglo-Saxon port in Combe Haven and no reason for it to have had one. Indeed, the mid-11th century crusader's guidebook 'De viis Maris' says that there was no port in Combe Haven.

Clue 7 is a misunderstanding. The five 'Cinque Ports' are Hastings, Dover, Romney, Hythe and Sandwich. They were obliged to provide 57 ships to the king, allocated in proportion to the value of their tax breaks. The breakdown across the five Cinque Ports was 21, 21, 5, 5 and 5 ships respectively. The name implies that the Cinque Ports were ports, but Hastings and Dover were 'Head Ports'. It meant that the earls of Hastings and Dover each had to raise their 21 ships across the ports in their earldom, which did not necessarily include a port at their administrative centre. It clearly did not in the case of Hastings because the same charter defines its port breakdown and none of them was at modern Hastings. Rather, the allocation was 10 from Old Winchelsea, 5 from Rye, and 6 between Seaford, Old Pevensey, Hydney, Northeye, Bulverhythe, Iham (modern Winchelsea), Beaksborne, and Grench. Bulverhythe was one of eight ports that had to raise a combined six ships, meaning that it probably raised less than one. The Brede basin had to raise more than fifteen. This shows that the Norman port at Bulverhythe in Combe Haven was minuscule compared to those at the mouth of the Brede estuary, and that was after 100 years of development at modern Hastings. 

Clue 8 is ambiguous, and probably duplicitous. The Chronicle of Battle Abbey says that Hecheland is 'a parte' the port. Searle translates this instance of 'a parte' to mean 'in the direction of', Lower as 'towards'. They are just about viable translations but very rare. Latin 'a parte' means 'to the side of', and the many other uses of the term in CBA have this meaning. Austin interprets this to mean that the port is adjacent to Hecheland. It is a more viable interpretation, but not a common one. The term has no implication of closeness and Latin has other common words for closeness (proximus and adiacens to name two). 'a parte' is typically used in a more general way, such as 'western side' or 'river side', which would be inconsistent with Austin's interpretation. Regardless, CBA has four other references to Hecheland all of which say it was inland, near modern Telham on the Hastings Ridge. If it is being consistent, it could not be referring to a port. In our opinion, it is not being consistent. Indeed, we believe that the CBA is deliberately trying to confuse their readers about the location of Hecheland at the time of the battle, for reasons we explain in our book. This clue is unhelpful as it stands. 

Clue 9 is misleading. Sheriffs Reinbert and Ingelrann were only subtenants of Wilting Manor, a role they shared with three others. Reinbert was sole subtenant of 15 other Sussex manors, including valuable Udimore and Whatlington, plus joint subtenant of eight more. Ingelrann was subtenant of two big Sussex manors, Hooe and Filsham, and referred to himself as Ingelran of Hooe. It seems to us that their involvement with Wilting was incidental, and their bases were elsewhere.

Clue 10 is the most crucial aspect of Austin's evidence because it is his only argument that the Normans did not land in the Brede estuary. However, Rameslie manor which encompassed the Brede estuary was held by the Norman Abbey of Fécamp before and after the invasion. William was the abbey's patron. In effect, the Brede basin and the port of Old Winchelsea belonged to William and the Roman Church. William would not have plundered himself or his most important sponsor, the Pope, so Rameslie manor would have escaped unharmed wherever the Normans camped. Conversely, Harold's ancestral manors were adjacent to Combe Haven, and they had the richest farmland in the region. They would have been plundered and razed wherever the Normans camped. Therefore, Austin should not use this as evidence to discount a Brede estuary.

Clues 11, 12, 13 and 14 are unsubstantiated speculation. Extensive excavations were made around Wilting before work began on the Bexhill Bypass. They found evidence of 14 Roman bloomeries, but no evidence of enclosures, metalled roads, piers or quays. This does not mean they were not there, but there is no evidence they were.

In summary, Austin's evidence for a Combe Haven landing is all faulty, flawed or misleading. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The Normans might still have landed in Combe Haven, or for that matter at Cooden on the eastern banks of Pevensey Lagoon. In the next section, we will compare the three landing site candidates against what we believe to be the landing site clues.

Summary

In summary, the first six clues are consistent with both a Combe Haven landing and a Brede estuary landing, but all favour the Brede. The next eight clues are consistent with a Brede estuary landing, uniquely so for the first five, but inconsistent with a Combe Haven or Cooden landing. The last clue might be inconsistent with a Brede estuary landing, but we think it is faulty.