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Battle of Hastings Place Names

Introduction

Nothing, in our opinion, has caused so much confusion about the prelude to the Battle of Hastings than the translation of place names from the contemporary accounts. They all refer to a Norman landing and/or camp near ‘Hæstingaport’ or ‘Hastingas’ or similar.1 These place names are invariably translated as ‘Hastings’. Some of the earliest and most trusted accounts say that the Normans first landed at ‘Peneuesellum’ or ‘Pefenesea’ or similar.2 These names are invariably translated as ‘Pevensey’. Almost everyone interprets these translations to mean modern Hastings and modern Pevensey. Both translations are faulty and misleading.

1Hæstingas, Hastingas, Hastinges, Heastinga, Heastingum, Hestingan, Hestinga, Hestenga, Hastingae, Hastingum, Hastingis, Hastingues
2Pevenesæ, Pefenesea, Pefnesea, pefnes ea, pefenes ea, Peneuessellum, Peneuesellum, Pevenessellum, Peuenesea, Peuenesel, Peuenisel, Penevesel, Penress

Below is a summary of what we think the contemporary account place names probably mean. We will explain later why we think Hastingas is cognate of all its spelling variants. The alleged Pevensey cognates can be divided into two. Latin u and v were effectively interchangeable. They were the closest Latin sound to Old English f. The traditional Pevensey cognates can therefore be split into two groups: One group has the n before the u/v/f, the other with the u/v/f before the n. We think they refer to two different places, the first group being cognates of Penevesel, whose Latin declensions include Penevesellum, while the second group are cognates of Pefenesea.

  1. Hæstinga[s] was the Old English name for the Hastings Peninsula. This is its meaning in Saxon Charters, the ASC, the Tapestry and some Anglo-Norman accounts.
  2. Hastinges had three different meanings. It was:
    • The pre-Conquest and early post-Conquest name used by Normans in Normandy for Hæstingaport
    • The early post-Conquest name used by Normans in England for Hæstingaceastre
    • The 12th century name for the settlement that grew up around the Norman castle at modern Hastings.
  3. To prevent confusion between the Hastinges meanings, the Norman castle at modern Hastings was initially known as Noue Hastinges. As it gradually dropped the Noue part of its name during the 12th century: Hæstingaport was increasingly referred to as Port de Hastinges (Latinised to Portus Hastingas or Hastinges Portus) by Normans in Normandy; Hæstingaport was increasingly referred to as Wincenesel by Normans in England; Hæstingaceastre was absorbed into Iham and Wincenesel.
  4. Hastingas the root of much confusion, was the Latin translation of Old English Hæstinga and all meanings of Norman Hastinges.
  5. Hæstingaport was the Old English name for the international port on the Hastings Peninsula. It had three centres:
    • Hæstingaport’s docks and warehouses were at Old Winchelsea, on a shingle bar at the mouth of the Brede. It was known to Saxons as Winchelse and to Normans in England as Wincenesel.
    • Hæstingaport’s dry docks, ship builders, chandlers and artisans were at Iham in the northern part of modern Winchelsea.
    • Hæstingaport’s mint, ship owners and businessmen were at Hæstingaceastre in the centre of modern Winchelsea.
  6. Hæstingaceastre was the Old English name for a Roman fortification and Alfredian burh located on the summit of modern Winchelsea. It was known to Normans in England as Hastinges until the 12th century.
  7. Penevesellum was near where the Normans first landed and camped for their first night in England. It was on the north bank of the Brede estuary, perhaps at modern Cadborough.
  8. pefenes ea was an island harbour some 2km southeast of modern Pevensey. The Norman fleet moored nearby while they waited for sunlight and the flood tide. pefenes ea was destroyed by storms in the early 13th century.
  9. Pefenesea was the contraction of pefenes ea.
  10. Modern Pevensey was the otherwise unoccupied location of a Roman fortress before the Norman invasion. It is where the population of pefenes ea moved when it was destroyed, taking the name of their settlement with them. This is analogous to what happened at Winchelsea and Romney.
  11. Pevensey Castle was known as Anderitum by the Romans, Andradesceaster by the Saxons, and Castrum Pevenesel by the Normans.
  12. Pevenesel was the Frankish translation and transliteration of pefenes ea (i.e., the contraction of peuenes îles) used by Franks and Normans to refer to the island of pefenes ea, then to the settlement that transferred from pefenes ea to modern Pevensey.
  13. Rap de Pevenesel was the post-Conquest Norman name for the area surrounding pefenes ea, including the refurbished castle at Pevensey.
  14. Rameslie was a manor that lined both banks of the Brede estuary. It did not, as tradition dictates, extend south of the River Pannel. It belonged to the Norman Abbey of Fécamps before and after the invasion but had been sequestrated at the time of the invasion.

Primary source abbreviations

In the remainder of this document, we will sometimes use these abbreviations for contemporary accounts:

ASC = Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (reasonably contemporary with events)
ASC-C, ASC-D, ASC-E = ASC recensions
Tapestry = Bayeux Tapestry; finished c1077
Benoît = Chronique des Ducs de Normandie; Benoît de St-Maure; c1170
Carmen = Carmen de Hastingae Proelio; c1067
CBA = Chronicle of Battle Abbey; c1170
Chronicon = Chronicon ex Chronicis; John of Worcester; c1125
CKE = Gesta Regum Anglorum; William of Malmesbury; c1135
Domesday = Domesday Book; 1086
Huntingdon = Historia Anglorum; Henry of Huntingdon; c1129
Orderic = Historia Ecclesiastica; Orderic Vitalis; c1125
Wace = Roman de Rou; Master Wace; c1160
WJ or Jumieges = Gesta Normannorum Ducum; William of Jumieges; c1070
WP or Poitiers = Gesta Guillelmi; William of Poitiers; c1072

Landing place orthodoxy

The conventional wisdom that Hastingas and cognates referred to modern Hastings is based, as far as we know, on just two clues. One is etymological: Hastings is the only surviving place on the Hastings Peninsula with a name that might have derived from Hastingas, and this name evolution is not uncommon. Kemble lists more than 100 analogous examples, including Readingas which became Reading and Wellingas which became Welling. The other clue is a passage in the Chronicle of Battle Abbey. Lower translates it as: “Hechelande, situated in the direction of Hastinges”, the context implying the direction is from Battle Abbey. CBA had previously said that Hastinges was a port and that Hechelande was adjacent to Telham. Turning the words around, Hastinges was on a line from Battle Abbey through Telham. That line extrapolates to the coast at modern Hastings.

Hastingas and cognates are linked to Hæstingaport and Hæstingaceastre. ASC-D says that the Normans “built a fortress at Hæstingaport”. Jumieges says that William: hurried to Hastingas where he built another fortress”. CBA says that the Normans constructed a fortress at a port named Hastinges”. Brevis Relatio says that William: “arrived with his whole army at another port nearby named Hastingas”. Poitiers says that the Normans: occupied Peneuessellum with their first fortification, and Hastingas with their second”. John of Worcester says that Harold: “Gave them battle nine miles from Heastinga, where they had built a fortress”. Earlier, he had referred to Hæstingaceastre as Heastinga, so it sounds like they were cognate or coterminous. Coins from the Hæstingaceastre mint are variously stamped ‘Hestin’, ‘Hestinga’ and ‘Hestingapor’, which also makes it sound like they were cognate or coterminous. It is not without reason, then, that historians assume all these names refer to modern Hastings.

Modern Hastings is at the tip of a long narrow steep-sided bluff, perhaps the best defensive location on the Hastings Peninsula. The topography that made modern Hastings good for the Norman castle, would have been good for a Roman fortress and for an Alfredian burh, making it a reasonable location for Hæstingaceastre which was both.

Hæstingaport was clearly not on top of a steep sided bluff, nor is it likely that William would build his fortress at sea level on the coast. Historians assume that the contemporary accounts are trying to say that Hæstingaport was part of the settlement of Hæstinga, like the Port of Dover is part of Dover, so the fortress was on the clifftop at modern Hastings, the port in the Priory Valley below. Therefore, they reason that the main Norman landing was in the Priory Valley.

The conventional wisdom that the initial Norman landing was at modern Pevensey is just as ingrained. Etymology again provides the main clue. Two early and trusted accounts, the Bayeux Tapestry and ASC-D, are thought to be saying that the Normans landed at Pefenesea. Pevensey is the only surviving place in the region with a name that might have derived from Pefenesea. Three accounts of Odo’s rebellion - ASC, Chronicon and Symeon - refer to Pevensey Castle as the fortress of Pefenesea while a fourth, CKE, refers to it as the fortress of Pevenesel. Pevenesel is therefore probably a cognate of Pefenesea.

Three other early and trusted contemporary accounts – Poitiers, Jumieges and Orderic - specifically say that the Normans landed at Penevesellum which sounds like a Latinised corruption of Pefenesea. And the names are linked through Gesta Stephani which has two references to Penevesel that unambiguously refer to ‘Castrum Pevenesel’, Pevensey Castle’s Norman name after the Conquest. Thus, there is good reason to believe that Penevesel and therefore Penevesellum were cognates of Pefenesea and Pevenesel.

If Pefenesea, Peuenesel, Peneuesel, and variations were cognates, all the contemporary accounts that mention a temporary initial landing might have been trying to say that it was at modern Pevensey.

Errors in the landing place orthodoxy

A Norman landing at modern Pevensey is militarily and logistically implausible. It held the only major Saxon garrison between Lympne and Portchester. Surely William would not aim to land at the one place on the coast opposite Normandy that was liable to be well defended. It was in a saltmarsh. Surely William would not land where his cavalry would be impotent, and his horses might get injured. It was at the end of a narrow-necked peninsula that had no running fresh water and no wells. Surely William would not land where a few hundred determined English defenders could have blockaded the Norman army until they starved. It was on the western side of a huge tidal lagoon, with no road route to William’s destination on the Hastings Peninsula. Surely, William would not aim to land 30 miles from his destination (by land), only accessible through treacherous marshland and the hostile Andredsweald forest.

No surprise then that the Normans could not possibly have landed at modern Pevensey because it was only founded in 1207. Its founding charter explains that it was established between ‘pefenes ea’ and ‘Langeney’. Thus, pre-13th century references to Pefenesea and pefenes ea – the former is a simple name contraction of the latter – both meant this pefenes ea. It was a harbour, so must have been on the 11th century coast immediately east of Langney, and therefore some 2km southeast of modern Pevensey. ‘ea’ means island. If it was an island, the Normans did not land there either because the Norman knights are supposed to have ridden to Hastingas.

Examining the original texts more closely, none of them actually say that the Normans did land at Pefenesea. The Tapestry says that they: “came to Pevenesæ”. ASC-D says that: “Earl William came from Normandy to pefnes ea”. Benoît says the Normans: Arrived at Pevenesel”. Brevis Relatio is usually translated to say that the Normans “landed at Pevenesel” but it uses the Latin verb ‘appello’ which can mean ‘landed’ or ‘arrived’. If the Normans arrived but did not land, they must have moored in the offshore shallows, which is exactly what Poitiers says: having reached shallow water off the English coast, William drops anchor to wait for the rest of the fleet to catch up”. Carmen confirms that they moored offshore: On the open sea you moor offshore”. Chronicon ties all these accounts together, saying that William: moored his fleet at a place named Pefnesea”.

Carmen explains that the Normans waited for dawn and the tide, then landed somewhere three hours away. Poitiers says that they were “bourn by a favourable breeze to Peneuesellum”, which implies it was some distance away. We have no reason to doubt Poitiers, Jumieges and Orderic, three of the earliest and most trusted Norman accounts, which specifically say that the Normans landed at Penevesellum. Three other Norman accounts say that the landing was near Hastingas (and therefore Hæstingaport), eliminating Pefenesea which was at least twelve miles away by sea and twenty miles away by land. We therefore think that the Normans landed at Penevesellum which was somewhere near Hæstingaport. We will explain where in the section about Hæstingaport below.

If Penevesellum was a different place than Pefenesea, Orderic’s Odo obituary and Gesta Stephani’s references to Penevesel are wrong. Perhaps the authors were unfamiliar with the geography, or perhaps they accidentally switched the n and u in the Norman name Pevenesel.

The conventional wisdom that Hastingas, Hæstingaceastre, Hæstingaport and the Norman sea camp were at modern Hastings is also unsound. Dozens of excavations at and below modern Hastings have failed to unearth an iota of evidence for pre-Conquest occupation. The Priory valley strand was not long enough to accommodate even half the Norman fleet. The bluff on which modern Hastings developed was barren, lacked running water, had no wells, and was too small to hold the Norman army. The traditional fortress location is at the wrong end of the bluff: In the unlikely event that William considered a camp near modern Hastings, he would have assembled his fortress at West Hill where the English would attack, not uselessly at the tip of the bluff. Finally, the steep cliffs would have left the Normans trapped in the valley bottom if, as William expected, an English garrison was defending the landing area.

There is an accepted excuse for the lack of archaeology. The supposed clifftop Saxon burh of Hæstingaceastre was made of wood, so rotted away. The supposed port was destroyed by storms and sea erosion. Bluster. Hæstingaceastre was a substantial settlement by Saxon standards with a hundred or more families. Its name implies it was formerly a Roman stronghold. The sea cliffs at modern Hastings have receded by 300m or more, but the Priory valley was sheltered. There should be archaeological evidence of Roman walls, a stone tower or stone lighthouse, Saxon era occupation, pre-Conquest quays, jetties and access roads. There is nothing.

The conventional wisdom gets the cart before the horse by assuming that the port grew up near the settlement. It cannot have done. Hæstingaport vied with Dover and Southampton as the biggest port on the south coast. According to Domesday there were only a few hundred families on the entire Hastings Peninsula, nowhere near enough import goods that might need a port the size of Hæstingaport. It must have been an export hub, shipping natural resources. Not modern Hastings then, which had no salt, no timber, no roads and, by Saxon times, no iron. A hundred years after the battle, De Viis Maris specifically says that modern Hastings did not have a port. A hundred years later still, after huge Norman population expansion around Hastings Castle, the main port in the Hastings region was still exporting more than ten times the volume of its imports, and it was still not at modern Hastings. Hæstingaport and Hastingas were elsewhere, at the mouth of a river basin that was rich in natural resources.

The traditional etymological arguments for Hastingas at modern Hastings and Pefenesea at modern Pevensey are also faulty. The coastal geography has changed out of all recognition. In the 11th century, the Rother/Brede basin and Pevensey Lagoon were separated from the sea by shingle bars which were gradually drowned by storms in the 13th century. Ports and harbours on those shingle bars, including Romney and Winchelsea, moved inland. We think this happened to part of Hastingas and Pefenesea. Historians are associating the names Hastingas and Pefenesea with their post-relocation meaning instead of their contemporary meaning.

In summary, the conventional wisdom that the Norman landing was at modern Pevensey and/or modern Hastings, and that the Normans camped at modern Hastings, is based on faulty evidence. The real evidence suggests that the Norman fleet moored at sea near modern Pevensey but did not land, then waited for daylight and the tide before landing at Penevesellum near Hæstingaport which was at the mouth of a resource rich basin roughly three hours sailing away.

Possible source of translation errors

Nothing we have deduced about these place names is difficult. Historians could easily have worked it out for themselves. Moreover, every historian we have spoken to thinks we are wrong, albeit without finding any errors in our analysis. It is interesting then to look at how the traditional narrative became so entrenched.

None of the 30 or more primary account references to Hastingas or Hæstingaport, CBA aside, give a trustworthy clue about where they were, beyond that they were in Sussex, on the coast opposite Normandy. Yet, right from the very start historians seem to have assumed that the Normans landed at modern Pevensey and camped at modern Hastings. We think that French historian Augustin Thierry, author of the first Battle of Hastings analysis in 1825, is largely culpable.

Thierry wrote: “The troops of William thus landed without resistance at Pevensey near Hastings”, then: “the army took the road to Hastings, and near that place marked out a camp, and raised two of the wooden castles as receptacles for provisions”. He clearly refers to modern Hastings and modern Pevensey. Every subsequent Battle of Hastings historian and translator, bar Creasey and Ramsey, repeats the same core narrative, influenced, we think, by his reputation and based on similar reasoning.

Creasey and Ramsay do not diverge much from the conventional wisdom but both deduced that the Normans could not have landed at modern Pevensey. They suggest Bulverhythe and Hooe respectively. Both still believe that the Normans moved to modern Hastings and both still translate Pefenesea and Pevenesellum to mean modern Pevensey. They just make excuses for why the contemporary accounts say that the Normans landed at modern Pevensey when they actually landed somewhere else.

We suspect that Thierry was led astray by early English history reference books. The earliest attempt to match Norman Conquest events to late medieval place names, albeit modestly in this respect, was the Prose Brut Chronicle which first appeared in 1272. It says that a messenger tells Harold “William Bastard, Duc de Normandie fust arriuee en Engleterre oue graunt hoste & qil auoit pris tut la terre entour Hastyng”, meaning “William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy had arrived in England with a great army and that he had taken all the land around Hastyng”. Subsequent references to ‘Hastyng’ in later editions unambiguously refer to modern Hastings. 1272 was 15 years before the great storms that reconfigured the East Sussex coastline. At the time it was written, modern Hastings was on a narrow-necked peninsula, so “all the land around Hastyng” probably meant ‘the entire Hastings Peninsula’. This meaning would have been lost a century later when modern Hastings was no longer on a recognisable peninsula.

In 1480, William Caxton published ‘Chronycles of Englond’, an English vernacular translation of the Middle-English version of the Brut Chronicle. As the first printed vernacular English history and relatively affordable, it became the standard English history reference for the next 100 years. Caxton’s messenger tells Harold: “that william bastard duk of normandy was arryued in englond with a grete hoost, had taken al the lande aboute hastynge and also myned the castell”. Nearly 200 years since the coastline changed, these same words would be interpreted to mean that William took the vicinity of modern Hastings – implying perhaps within a mile or so - and built a castle there.

Raphael Holinshed wrote an up-to-date English history reference, ‘Chronicles of England’, published in 1577. It became the standard English history reference for the next 175 years. His Battle of Hastings narrative is based on Poitiers: “Duke William at his first landing at Peuensey or Pemsey (whether you will) fortified a peece of ground with strong trenches, and leauing therein a competent number of men of warre to keepe the same, he sped him toward Hastings, and comming thither, he built an other fortresse there with ail spe'ed possible”. He locates Hastingas at modern Hastings and, for the first time as far as we know, Pefenesea at modern Pevensey. He does not explain his reasoning, so we guess it is based on faulty etymology.  

Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote the next standard English history reference, ‘History of England’, published in 1754. It says: “The Norman armament proceding in great order, arrived without any material loss, at Pevensey, in Sussex, and the army quietly disembarked”, then that Harold: “resolved to give battle in person ; and for that purpose he drew near to the Normans who had moved their camp and fleet to Hastings, where they fixed their quarters.” Hume too locates Pefenesea at modern Pevensey and the Norman camp at modern Hastings.

By the time Edgar Taylor translated Roman de Rou in 1837, standard English history references had been teaching an initial Norman landing at modern Pevensey and a secondary landing and camp at modern Hastings for over 350 years. They had passed into English conventional wisdom, effectively being treated as fact. We doubt that Taylor, et al, even questioned it. No contradictions could come from archaeologists or geomorphologists in Victorian times because those disciplines had yet to be invented. Even those experts that realised a Pevensey landing or a Hastings camp were militarily implausible found excuses for why their alternative did not contradict the conventional wisdom.

Thierry should have been unaffected by English conventional wisdom, and he had the wits to debunk it. If he had written objectively, his reputation might have led English historians to rethink the traditional narrative. Unfortunately, he was not a stickler for detail and his eyesight was failing. Indeed, he was completely blind by the time he finished writing about the Norman Conquest. He could not leave France, so he too had to rely in part on standard English history references. His reputation reinforced the conventional wisdom instead of refuting it.

Holinshed and Hume cannot be blamed. Their histories each covered a thousand years or more, leaving just a few paragraphs for the Norman Conquest. They could not possibly research every event they covered, nor investigate the etymology of every place name. Indeed, it is known that each of these writers used his predecessor as a source: Hume’s core Norman Conquest narrative was taken mainly from Holinshed who took his mainly from Caxton who took his entirely from the Brut Chronicle.

Victorian gentlemanliness probably did not help. Thierry’s account of the Norman Conquest was rapturously received and revered by his peers. Fifty years on, Augustus Freeman was heavily influenced by him when writing his monumental work ‘The History of the Norman Conquest, which became the standard Battle of Hastings reference. It would have been difficult for anyone to contradict Thierry or Freeman without firm evidence, and that evidence was absent in the 19th century.

Twentieth century historians have no such excuses. The archaeology clearly indicates that there was no Saxon era civilian occupation at modern Pevensey and no occupation at all at modern Hastings. Geography and geomorphology explain that modern Hastings and modern Pevensey are not at the location of pefenes ea and Hæstingaport at the time of the invasion.

We suspect his historians have succumbed to what Kevin Halloran refers to as ‘academic gravitational accretion’. In other words, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, it is polite, safe and respectful for academics to support their predecessors’ theories. After all, speculating on a new theory, in effect, is criticising everyone that supports the current consensus theory. Once a theory has become conventional wisdom, it is impossible for reputable historians to naysay without seeming to be a conspiracy theorist. Only, as in this case, sometimes the conventional wisdom is faulty.

Norman conquest place names

Hastinges / Hastingas

Most of the contemporary accounts name somewhere that sounds like Hastingas as the Norman landing site and/or camp. A few say that it was in Sussex. CBA alone hints at where in Sussex, but it is untrustworthy on this subject. Hæstinga[s] also appears in some ASC entries and in several Saxon Charters without adding any details beyond that it was on the coast. Occam’s Razor fans, including us, would love Hastingas to have a simple single meaning common to all the contemporary accounts. We fear that it is rather more complicated.

Hæstingas in the English accounts

If it were not for the Norman invasion accounts, there would be little doubt that Hastingas referred to a substantial area on the south coast of England. Symeon of Durham describes Offa’s defeat of the ‘Hestingorum gentem’ [the Hæstingas nation] in 771, which only makes sense if they occupied a substantial area. Saxon Charter S318, dated 857, refers to a gift of coastal land in Hastingas; Charter S686, dated 960, refers to farmland in Hastengas. Both only make sense if it is a substantial area. Malmesbury says that William’s other monastery was in Hastingas (‘Hastingis’), which can only refer to an area. Huntingdon refers to ‘planis Hastinges’ (the plains of Hastinges), which only makes sense if it is an extensive area. Tapestry panel 40 (Figure 1) is captioned: ET HIC MILITES FESTINAVERUNT HESTINGA UT CIBUM RAPERENTUR”; [here the knights have hurried to Hestinga to seize food], meaning livestock, which only makes sense if Hestinga encompassed hundreds of acres of pastural farmland. Writ 206 dated 1085 records the gift of the Manor of Bury to the Abbey of Fécamps as compensation for “property which they had in Hastinges in king Edward’s time”, which only makes sense if Hastinges was a significant area.

Two related places are mentioned in the ASC before the invasion: ‘Hæstingaport’ and ‘Hæstingaceastre’. ‘ceastre’ was the Old English term for a Roman fortification, so these places sound like the major port and the major Roman fortification in the region of Hæstingas. Hæstingaceastre is listed as one of Alfred’s burhs. These were the forerunners of modern boroughs. There were no organisational units between a borough and a county. If Hæstingaceastre was a ceastre inside Hæstingas, it also suggests that Hæstingas was a substantial area.

The ASC entry for year 1011 gives a good clue for Hæstingas meaning. It says that Vikings overran the land south of the Thames, which it defines as Kent, Hæstingas, Sussex, Hampshire and Surrey, which implies that Hæstingas was a county-sized area between Sussex and Kent, which therefore incorporated the Hastings Peninsula.

Tapestry Panel 40 provides the only other specific clue for Hæstingas’ meaning. William landed on or near the Hastings Peninsula and needed to feed perhaps 10000 men. His knights would not have wasted their time chasing a few goats and hens around a port or any other settlement. They needed to secure a month’s worth of food on the first day because, given half a chance, the locals would have driven away their livestock and burned their grain stores. They must have raided the biggest grain stores and the richest pastural farmland, the location of which can be found in Domesday.

Figure 1 : Bayeux Tapestry Panel 40

Domesday lists ten manors between the Brede and the Rother with 35 acres of meadowland between them; barely enough to sustain the Norman army for a week. It lists four manors between the Hastings Ridge and the Brede estuary with only 6 acres of meadowland between them. The Norman knights must therefore have headed for Hooe, Filsham and Crowhurst, which had 116 acres of meadowland between them; enough livestock for a month. Therefore, the Tapestry’s Hestinga referred to the Hastings Peninsula or, less likely, just the part south and west of the Hastings Ridge.

Yet Hastingas is not listed as a county in Domesday, so what was it?

Briggs explains that the Old English suffixes -ing and -ingas mean ‘followers of’ or ‘dwellers in’, depending on whether the stem is a person’s name or a landscape feature. Thus, Hæstingas is thought to mean a place inhabited by followers of Hæsta. There are many places in East Sussex with -ing suffixes that might previously have had -ingas names, including Guestling and Wilting on the Hastings Peninsula. They were no bigger than a hundred. Hæstingas seems to have been far more substantial.

There are other substantial -ingas places, perhaps most notably Iclingas and Wuffingas, the founding territories of Mercia and East Anglia. John Blair thinks they were once statelets or sub-kingdoms which he referred to as ‘regio’. He studied two more, Woccingas’ and Godhelmingas’. Both left a vestigial geographic meaning for their homeland, eventually evolving into modern Woking and Godalming. We think something similar is going on with Hæstingas.

The early Anglo-Saxon Dænningas and Tendringas tribes left a vestigial geographic meaning for their homelands, namely the Dengie Peninsula and Tendring Peninsula in Essex. Likewise, the Wihtwara left a vestigial geographic meaning for their homeland, the Isle of Wight. They had a lot in common: physically isolated, big enough to protect themselves, yet small enough and passive enough to stay under the radar. Their occupants were among the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlers, which perhaps helped them retain racial integrity. The same applies to the Hæstingas tribe. We think they left a vestigial geographic meaning for their homeland, the Hastings Peninsula.

Hastingas in the Norman accounts

Most of the contemporary invasion accounts tell a different story. WP, WJ Huntingdon and Benoît say that the Normans built a fortress at Hastingas, as if it were a settlement. CBA says that the Normans constructed a fortress at a port named Hastinges”. Brevis Relatio says that William: “arrived with his whole army at another port nearby named Hastingas”. CKE says that William: “built another monastery near Hastingis, dedicated to St. Martin”. That monastery was Battle Abbey, so it only makes sense if Hastingis was a settlement. Benoît says that after the battle: “William placed his best knights to guard the fortress at Hastinges”, which only makes sense if Hastinges was a settlement. Chronicon says that Harold: “… gave them battle at a place nine miles from Heastingam”, which can only refer to a settlement. They all suggest or say that Hastingas was a particular settlement or port, which means that it was probably a port to fit both.

We note all the accounts that suggest Hastingas was a substantial area were created in England by Englishmen, whereas those that suggest it was a settlement or port were written by Normans or Anglo-Normans or in Norman monasteries. Thus, we think that Saxons used the term Hæstinga[s] to mean the Hastings Peninsula whereas Normans, at least until the mid-12th century, used the term Hastinges – often Latinised as Hastingas - to mean a particular port.

Poitiers, Jumieges, Huntingdon, and Benoît say that the Normans built a fortress at Hastingas. CBA says that they built a fortress at a port named Hastinges. ASC says that they built a fortress at Hæstingaport. They are all telling the same narrative, so Norman Hastingas referred to Hæstingaport.

Our interpretation is simple: Foreigners tend to think in terms of their own experience. So, most foreign businessmen refer to Heathrow as ‘London Airport’ because they do not use Gatwick, Luton of any of the other holiday airports. Most Europeans refer to Manhattan as ‘New York’ because they never go anywhere else in New York. Pre-Conquest Normans traded with Hæstingaport. There was nothing else on the Hastings Peninsula that they would know or care about. It makes sense that they would drop the ‘port’ part of its name. It is the same as their use of the name Douvres’ to mean the ‘port of Dover’, and indeed, ours of Rotterdam to mean the ‘port of Rotterdam’.

Hastingas exceptions, anomalies and alternative theories

Domesday is an exception. It lists a place named Hastinges within the manor of Rameslie. If it is consistent with the other Norman accounts, this Hastinges should refer to Hæstingaport, and several Saxon era charters confirm that there was a port in Rameslie. But it is listed with only 4 burgesses and 14 bordarers, too small to be the port, and there is no obvious reason the port would be broken out from the rest of Rameslie. Indeed, the port was one of Rameslie’s main attractions and an important reason the Abbey of Fécamp coveted it. We think it was broken out because it was an area within Rameslie manor for which the Abbey of Fécamp was not taxed. The most obvious reasons are that it was a military garrison and/or administrative centre before the completion of the castle. We will return to this in the section about Hæstingaceastre.

There are a couple of other anomalies. Some later Norman accounts refer to ‘portus Hastingas’ and ‘Hastinges portus’, which would be tautologies if Hastingas or Hastinges referred to Hæstingaport. The cause was William’s castle at modern Hastings. According to the 1182 Pipe Rolls, it was initially known as “castelli Noue Hastinges”. The settlement around the castle was therefore known as ‘Noue Hastinges’, ‘Nove’ presumably because Normans in England still referred to Domesday’s Hastinges. During the late 12th and early 13th centuries, Normans in England gradually dropped the ‘Nove’, so something had to be done to prevent confusion with Domesday’s Hastinges. We think they adopted the Old English name ‘Iham’ for modern Winchelsea and the Frankish name Wincenesel’ for Old Winchelsea. Meanwhile, Normans in Normandy increasingly referred to Hastings Castle as Hastinges. This would have led to confusion with pre-Conquest Norman Hastinges meaning Hæstingaport, so they increasingly referred to the port as ‘Hastinges portus’, Latinised to ‘portus Hastingas’.

If we are right about this name evolution, Hastingas in the 11th century Norman accounts - Poitiers, Jumieges and Carmen - meant Hæstingaport. Hastinges was increasingly likely to have meant Hastings Castle through the 12th century. We think it did not affect even the latest contemporary accounts. CBA follows the Norman convention, explicitly saying that Hastinges was a port. Wace, a Channel Islander, is pedantic about ports, using the term port de Lune’ for Bordeaux, port de Saint-Morin’ for Morin, port de Hantone’’ for Southampton, etc. He does not refer to ‘port de Hastingues’, which hints that he was referring to an area, but his references to Hastingues are in verbal quotes, so we think they refer to the port.

There are two other complications. One is that four of the contemporary accounts - John of Worcester, Orderic, Malmesbury and Huntingdon - were written by Anglo-Normans who had English mothers. They might have been raised to use the Old English meaning of Hæstingas. The other is that some of the references to Hastingas are in verbal quotes. These quotes might have been reported verbatim, so Hastingas meant what it did at the time of the quote, or they might have been edited for the meaning at the time of writing. We think they all use the Norman convention, Hastingas referring to Hæstingaport. John of Worcester says that Hastingas was a coastal settlement. Orderic says that Hastingas was a seaport. Malmesbury’s first two references to Hastingas could refer to a settlement or area, his third refers to a settlement. Huntingdon says that the Normans built a fort at Hastingas, which implies it was a settlement.

Figure 2: Hastings and surrounding peninsulas in 1066

In principle, the Anglo-Saxon region of Hæstingas might include land beyond the Hastings Peninsula. It cannot have extended west of Pevensey Levels because Pevensey was in Sussex. It cannot have extended east of the Rother, which was in Kent. The most likely extensions are the adjacent peninsulas of Wartling to the west and Udimore to the north (Figure 2). Doubtless members of the Hæstingas tribe spread from the Hastings Peninsula and established communities outside. Perhaps the Hæstingas statelet included these extensions. But, by the time it only had a geographic meaning, we think Hæstingas was bounded by the Ash Bourne and Pevensey Lagoon to the west, and by the Brede estuary and the Andredsweald to the north.

Kathleen Tyson has a different theory about Hastingas. She thinks that it was the Frankish name for the Brede basin, which was bounded by the Udimore and Hastings ridges. She reports it as fact, but then contradicts herself by saying that Hastingas was the cape between Winchelsea, Icklesham and Fairlight. We could not find her evidence for either argument. Both seem unlikely. The Brede basin and the Hastings Cape are too small to be the county-like place mentioned in ASC 1011 and too big to be a settlement or the port. We think our theory is more credible.

Hæstingaport

Locating Hæstingaport is important. One primary source says it was where the Normans landed, three more say they landed and/or camped at a port named Hastingas. Five more say that they landed and/or camped at Hastingas which we believe to be the Norman name for Hæstingaport.

Hæstingaport’s traditional location in the Priory valley below modern Hastings is based on etymology and one interpretation of one statement in CBA. As we explain earlier, the former is an anachronism, the latter is unreliable and ambiguous. Conversely, there are a bunch of reasons to think that there was no significant port in the Priory valley, some of which we mention above:

  • Dozens of excavations have failed to uncover any evidence of Saxon era occupation in the Priory valley or at modern Hastings.
  • There cannot have been a major port below modern Hastings because there was no road to the Hastings ridgeway, and therefore no way to distribute freight.
  • There cannot have been a major port below modern Hastings because it had no nearby natural resources to export and few, if any, local inhabitants to draw imports.
  • The Norman fleet would not have been able to land in the Priory valley because its strand was nowhere near long enough.
  • The Priory valley would be a militarily and logistically terrible place to land because it was so small, barren and siege prone.
  • Access and egress to the Priory valley was through a treacherous narrow gap in sea cliffs which would have been risky for normal port traffic and potentially disastrous for the Norman fleet.
  • In those days the sea cliffs were 300m or more out to sea, creating a long narrow access gorge which would be difficult and dangerous to navigate, and which could be easily blocked by shoving boulders off the cliff tops.
  • Henry III’s 1247 Charter to acquire Rameslie manor’s towns of Old Winchelsea and Rye and their ports does not mention modern Hastings or its port, implying that Hastings was not in Rameslie manor and/or that it did not have a port, meaning in either case that it was not Hæstingaport
  • De Viis Maris specifically says that modern Hastings did not have a port.

Modern Hastings can be excluded, leaving three Hæstingaport candidates, namely Bulverhythe at the mouth of Combe Haven, Northeye at the mouth of Hooe Haven and the Ash Bourne, and Old Winchelsea (known to Saxons as ‘Winchelse’) at the mouth of the Brede estuary.

De Viis Maris lists the ports, even the bad ones, from which crusaders might leave for the Continent in the 12th century. Between Folkstone and Beachy Head it has entries for Lympne, Romney, Hythe, Winchelse, Peneness (pefenes ea) and La Crumbie (probably Hydney, now in Eastbourne). One of these was surely Hæstingaport in Saxon times, the only known international port between Dover and Southampton. No ports are listed between Winchelse and pefenes ea. This gap includes Bulverhythe and Northeye, implying they did not have international ports in the 12th century. They cannot have silted up during the intervening 130 years because they were active ports in the 13th century. De Viis Maris therefore implies that Hæstingaport was at Winchelse (Old Winchelsea).

Chronicon says that Harold: “… gave them battle at a place nine miles from Heastingam, where they had built a fortress”. Heastingam is a Hastingas cognate. It is using the Norman convention, so it is saying that the Normans built their fortress and made their camp at Hæstingaport. It cannot have been at Bulverhythe or Northeye because nine Roman miles from either of them would take the battle out into the Andredsweald. The only port that plausibly fits the description is Old Winchelsea.

The Hastings Peninsula and its surrounds were too small, too sparsely populated and too short of a hinterland to have had more than one major international port, and the only known major international port in the region was Hæstingaport.  That port must have shipped the huge majority of the region’s natural resources. This suggests two more methods to work out Hæstingaport’s location: 1) From references to the region’s major port; and 2) From proximity to the major natural resource production centres.

Domesday says that Rameslie manor in the Brede basin had 100 saltpans; the greatest concentration in the south of England. The rest of the Hastings Peninsula combined had 35. Bulk salt would not have been hauled up and over the Hastings ridge to a port at Bulverhythe or Northeye. The Brede’s salt must have been shipped from, or used at, Old Winchelsea.

S982 authorises the Abbey of Fécamp to take two-thirds of the tolls from Wincenesel (the Norman name for Old Winchelsea). There would be no point in making this provision if the tolls were not substantial. Yet the Abbey of Fécamp would not be taxing their own salt. Something valuable other than salt must have been shipped out of Winchelse. There were not enough people to make anything valuable. It must have been some sort of natural resource other than raw salt.

Fish were perhaps the most valuable natural resource in the region. There were fish all year around and huge herring shoals at certain times of year. Some fish were gutted, salted and packed at sea, some were brought ashore to be gutted, salted and packed. In the first case, barrels of salted fish would be unloaded for distribution, then salt and empty barrels would be loaded for the next trip. In both cases, the catch would be brought to a source of salt. On this part of the south coast, the only candidate is Old Winchelsea.

Timber was another rich natural resource. The south coast of England and most of its estuaries were lined by woodland in Saxon times. Uncut timber would have been almost impossible to move on the gloopy rutted tracks that were typical at the time. Daniel Defoe, the novelist, says that it took 22 oxen to pull a cart with one log, and progress was so slow that it sometimes took two years to drag a log to Chatham. The ground would have been just as gloopy and rutted in the 11th century. The Brede estuary, uniquely for the region, was lined by steep slopes on both banks. Timber would have been slid down to the Brede on log chutes. Local historian Mark Freeman has found what looks like a medieval log chute in Steephill Wood. Nearly all timber exports from this region would have been floated down the Brede to be shipped from Old Winchelsea.

In Roman times, the region’s most valuable resource was iron. Cleere reckons that the Brede basin bloomeries at Beauport Park, Chitcombe, Footlands and Oaklands accounted for 80% of the region’s iron output. He says that there is no evidence of Wealden iron smelting during Saxon times. Robert Turgoose of the Wealden Iron Research Group agrees. But there is hardly any evidence of Saxon era iron production anywhere in Britain, even though there was huge demand. Thomas Birch notes that some finished iron products were imported, and some iron was recycled. The rest must have come from domestic iron ore deposits. Turgoose told us that this is an inexact science because evidence of bloomery usage dates is indirect, through pottery or coins found in slag heaps. There could have been some iron production in the 11th century that left no evidence, albeit relatively small scale compared to Roman times. The iron production there was would have been in the Brede basin with shipment though Old Winchelsea.

In summary, the Brede basin produced 70% of the region’s salt, 100% of the region’s timber, probably 70% or more of the region’s salted fish, and 100% of any iron. All of it would have been shipped from Old Winchelsea. Natural resource production in the Combe Haven basin and the Pevensey Levels basin was relatively negligible, making Old Winchelsea by far the most likely Hæstingaport candidate.

The only other unambiguous evidence is that Domesday shows Rameslie manor – which included Old Winchelsea - was far more populous than the manors containing the other Hæstingaport candidates: 189 households compared to 14 at Wilting and 73 at Hooe, at least half would have been occupied on its huge farmland.

Based on natural resource production and Domesday’s population figures, a port at Old Winchelsea should have been at least an order of magnitude bigger than any other port in the region. The Pipe Rolls of 1204 records that Winchelse (Old Winchelsea) was the biggest port between London and Southampton, and the third biggest on the south coast. The other Hæstingaport candidates at Bulverhythe and Northeye were negligible.

The relative importance of Old Winchelsea can be corroborated from ‘Ship Service’ records. They are an interminable source of confusion, so we will try to explain. Ship Service refers to a deal whereby the King could requisition ships and crews from local fleets in exchange for liberties; the more valuable the liberties, the more ships. It was established by Edward the Confessor and reinstated by the Plantagenets. A 1227 Charter reproduced by Jeake defines Hastyng, Doverr, Romone, Hethe and Sandwich – Hastings, Dover, Romney, Hithe and Sandwich, the original Cinque Ports - as ‘Head Ports’, charged with getting their apportionment of ships from ‘member’ towns in their vicinity. They were not chosen because of the size of their port but because they were the administrative hub for their section of the coast. The Ship Service is really saying that the Count de Hastinges, for instance, has responsibility to supply ships from the manors around him. It does not necessarily mean that Hastings provided any ships or, indeed, that it had a port.

Jeake’s Charter demands 57 ships, listed as 21 from Hastings, 10 from Winchelse, 5 from Rye, 5 from Romney, 5 from Hithe, 21 from Dover, 5 from Sandwich. Lots of historians have looked at these figures and inferred that the port of Hastings was more than double the size of Winchelse and, crucially, that it was somewhere other than at Winchelse. They are not mathematicians. These apportionments add up to 72.

Jeake explains that the sums only work if the ‘Ancient Towns’ - i.e. Winchelse and Rye - are included in Hasting’s 21, and they are described as ‘members’ rather than Head Ports. The 57 then, are 21 from Dover, 21 from Hastings, 5 from Romney, 5 from Hythe and 5 from Sandwich. Within Hastings’s 21, there were 10 from Winchelse, 5 from Rye and 6 from the other ports which are listed as Seaford, Pevensey, Hydney, Northeye, Bulverhythe, Iham, Beaksborne, Grench and, perhaps, Hastings. Iham was the old name for part of modern Winchelsea, so the Brede estuary (Winchelse, Rye and Iham) provided more than 15 ships. On average, each of the other Hæstingaport candidates provided less than one. Exactly as expected, the combined ports at the mouth of the Brede were more than ten times bigger than any other Hæstingaport candidate.

It does not necessarily follow that because Old Winchelsea was the major port in the region a hundred years after the battle that it was the region’s major port at the time of the battle, but nothing significant had changed. Doubtless England’s new masters required enormously more wine and oil imports, but Old Winchelsea was an export hub. Sylvester reports that at the turn of the 14th century modern Winchelsea exported 15 times as much as it imported, and that is after the huge increase in Norman wine and oil imports. Iron, fishing, salt and timber production techniques did not change significantly through the dark ages so there is no likelihood of exponential (or even significant) growth in any of those exports.

If Old Winchelsea was the region’s dominant port when Domesday was collated and at the second crusade, and in 1204 and 1227 and later, we are convinced it would have been the region’s dominant port at the time of the invasion, and therefore the most likely place to have been Hæstingaport.

There is an obvious problem. If Hæstingaport was at Winchelse why do they have different names? We think they were not the same. There are only two references to Hæstingaport. One is the ASC annal explaining it is where the Normans landed, the other is stamped on the reverse of some coins produced at the Hæstingaceastre mint. It could be a range of things. We think that Hæstingaport referred to the physical port – quays, piers, mooring poles, dock cranes, warehouses - whereas Winchelse referred to the nearest settlement to the port.

Winchelse would have been far from ideal for some port functions. It was on a shingle spit that would have had no running water apart from rain, limited choice of fresh food, no fuel, no road access and, just a metre or so above high tide, it would have been flood prone during storms. We guess that professionals and artisans – port administrators, mint moneyers, tax collectors, shipwrights, sail makers, rope makers, ship chandlers, etc - were somewhere more comfortable, probably at modern Winchelsea.

Even though De Viis Maris says that modern Hastings had no port and there is no mention of one in the Pipe Rolls or Ship Service, Hastings did have a port a hundred years after the Conquest. It is listed in some Norman Charters as Portus de Hasting. It has to be at modern Hastings because the same Charters mention Winchelse, Rye, Bulverhythe and all the other known ports in the region. Presumably, it was in the Priory valley, as it is often depicted, beside the priory. There is no evidence it existed before the invasion, and it never amounted to much. Even when it was servicing Hastings Castle in the 14th century, Sylvester reckons that Portus de Hasting only had 15 ships, compared to modern Winchelsea’s 115.

Hæstingaceastre

‘ceastre’ is the Old English name fortified Roman settlement or fortress. The earliest reference to Hæstingaceastre is as one of Alfred’s 33 ‘burhs’, which were fortresses to give early warning of Viking raids. Alfred liked to build them at former Roman fortifications. The next Hæstingaceastre reference is to license a mint in 928. It would make sense to place the mint, toll house and defensive garrison inside the walls of Hæstingaceastre. The ASC annal for 1050 says that boats and boatmen from Hæstingaceastre defeated two of Sweyn’s ships on behalf of the King. The last probable reference is on Panel 40 of the Bayeux Tapestry, which is captioned: “He orders his men to dig fortifications at Hestenga (Ceastra), with the ‘CEASTRE’ embroidered inside the palisades of a hilltop fortress.

Chronicon repeats ASC entries about Hæstingaceastre and Hæstingaport, in which it refers to both as Heastinga. Coins from the Hæstingaceastre mint were stamped ‘Hæstinga’ or ‘Hestingpor’ or an abbreviation of one or the other. This suggests to us that Hæstingaceastre and Hæstingaport were either adjacent or encompassing. Presumably, the mint melted and restamped foreign coin and bullion taken as payment from Hæstingaport customers.

As we conclude above, Hæstingaport comprised docks and warehouses at Old Winchelsea and an administrative centre at modern Winchelsea. Alfred would not have built his burh at sea level, so we think Hæstingaceastre was in modern Winchelsea, probably on the summit where St Thomas’ is today. Its wall, calculated from the Burghal Hidage, would have been some 760m long, spreading 190m north and west from the junction of Back Lane and St Thomas Street.

Modern Winchelsea would have been a typical location for a Roman fortress, on the only promontory that overlooked and protected the Brede basin’s port and natural resources. It would have been a typical location for an Alfredrian burh too, on the only defensively sound bluff at the only place on the Hastings Peninsula that had an uninterrupted view of Old Romney which was a previous Viking incursion point. It was also the only place north of the Hastings Ridge that had a view of the Fire Hills, which was presumably the location of a Saxon era messaging beacon.

This central location in modern Winchelsea might explain several longstanding conundrums. The field in the northwest corner of Winchelsea has always been known as ‘Castle field’ when it is not near any known castle. We guess it was named after the castle like burh of Hæstingaceastre. Modern Winchelsea’s first church, St Leonards, was built in the northwest corner of Winchelsea instead of the natural prominent location in the middle. We guess that it could not be built where St Thomas’ now stands because it was inside the burh walls and it was a military garrison.

There are other theories about Hæstingaceastre’s location. One is in Martin White’s submission to the Bexhill Bypass commission suggesting that Hæstingaceastre was at Wilting in Combe Haven. This is the site proposed by Nick Austin for the second Norman camp. White uses much the same Hæstingaport juxtaposition arguments as us, only with Hæstingaport being in Combe Haven rather than the Brede estuary. He has three additional items of evidence. One is the impression of a Roman enclosure he has found on a LiDAR scan of Wilting which seems to conform with Hæstingaceastre’s listing in the Burghal Hidage. Second, he believes that nearby Silverhill might have taken its name from the Hæstingaceastre mint. Third, he has found a nearby area of land named ‘Burghs’ in the 1847 Hollington tithe maps, which might have taken its name from Hæstingaceastre burh.

We are unimpressed. There are no known references to Silver Hill before the 18th century, and it is named then as Salver Hill (to save) on the Yeakell & Gardiner map. We suspect its name was changed by an enterprising Georgian estate agent. It is only to be expected that the Romans would build an enclosure to protect their port at Monkham Wood. They did the same for most of their ports. And most medieval ports were ‘burghs’, of a sort. The term typically means that they have royal liberties. This would probably have applied to both Bulverhythe and Filsham after the Conquest, not least because they serviced the new Norman castle at modern Hastings. Their market would naturally have been on the high ground at the top of Gillmans Hill, on the land known in the 19th century as the Burghs. But this does not mean it was a Saxon burh beforehand and it is 1500m from White’s proposed Hæstingaceastre burh location. White’s evidence, in our opinion, is weak.

Keith Foord thinks that Hæstingaceastre was adjacent to Hæstingaport on the Camber shingle bar. This would have been the best place to defend the port, but it seems implausible. We cannot believe that the Romans would fortify anywhere on a shifting shingle bank. If they did, it is unlikely to have survived 500 years until Alfred needed somewhere for his burh. Even if it survived, Alfred would not have built his burh at sea level because it was supposed to be a lookout. And Tapestry Panel 45 shows William’s camp at ‘Hestenga ceastra’ at a hill, so it could not have been on a shingle spit.

Kathleen Tyson thinks that Hæstingaceastre was at Icklesham, a few miles upstream from modern Winchelsea. She notes that it had a Roman bloomery, so the Romans were there. She has a reasonable argument, but we think that there is a better argument for modern Winchelsea, which was closer to the sea and with a wider field of vision that included the Fire Hills messaging beacon and the Old Romney incursion point.

Winchelse (aka Old Winchelsea)

Winchelsea’s founding Charter and De Viis Maris and S982 say that Old Winchelsea was a port on the Camber shingle bar. It was inundated by the sea following a series of violent storms in the late 13th century, as explained by Cooper in the 1850s and more recently by Thomas Dhoop. No trace of it has ever been found, but Cooper lists some reasonably specific coordinates. He says that it was roughly 6 miles NE of Fairlight Cliff, 3 miles ESE of modern Winchelsea, 2 miles SSE from Rye and 7 miles SW of Old Romney. Jeake says that it was more than a mile east of modern Winchelsea (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Cooper’s coordinates for Winchelse

Whole number of miles and 1/16th compass points leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Dugdale reckons Old Winchelsea was somewhere under Rye Harbour Nature Reserve; Cooper reckons to the east side of the east pier head, which would put it under Rye Golf Course. The distances intersect near Rye harbour; the directions intersect 2km southwest near Watch House. At least one of the directions or distances is rogue. The only way to fix a location to within 11° and 0.5 miles of all Cooper’s clues with one change is to revise the distance from Winchelsea to 2 miles. This would place Old Winchelsea at 50.92112, 0.74778, roughly 1.75 miles east of St Thomas’s, Winchelsea.

Old Winchelsea was a thriving place with 300 homes - and its own hospital, two churches and a friary - when it succumbed to the sea in the 13th century. It was not that big in 1086 when the whole of Rameslie had 189 households. Allowing for the farm and salt workers, we guess it had somewhere between 80 and 120 households before the invasion. That is still an enormous number of people to be living on a flood prone shingle bar. But Old Winchelsea was not a normal port.

Pearson hints at Old Winchelsea’s secret in Figure 5, where he marks ‘Possible tidal inlets’ on the Camber bar. Leeman too in Figure 4. The bar extended 20 miles northeast from Pett (Figure 5) in medieval times. It would have looked rather like the bar part of Pagham Rife, just along the coast.

Figure 4: Romney Marsh in medieval times; after Bernard Leeman

Figure 5: Romney Marsh in medieval times; after Andrew Pearson

Cunliffe and Green analysed the flow of the Brede and Rother from Roman times. One of their investigations is why the Brede had the greatest concentration of saltpans in southern England while the Tillingham and Rother further north had none. It is odd because the main sea water access was through a breach at Old Romney which was north of all of them. Sea water from Old Romney would have had to pass through Guldeford and Walland marshes to get to the Brede, but neither show signs of marine encroachment. Their conclusion is that there must have been at least one other breach in the Camber near the mouth of the Brede. It would be around what is now Rye Golf Course, which is where Cooper suggests Winchelse was located.

De Viis Maris, written in the late 12th century, is more explicit. It says: “and further up the Winchelse inlet is a good town called Rie”. It is saying that there was an inlet through the Camber at Winchelse which led to Rye.

This breach would explain Old Winchelsea’s success. Presumably, the settlement grew up to service ships and barges passing through the Camber. Why else would anyone build a settlement on a shingle bar with no road access, little food, no running fresh water, that was prone to flooding and too unstable for building foundations? Cooper reports that Old Winchelsea had bridges. There is no reason for bridges on a shingle bar, other than to cross a channel or canal. Note that if Old Winchelsea was at this breach, Pearson is right to suggest that there was a third breach towards Pett because Winchelse has the ‘ea’ sounding suffix associated with islands in this region. Jeake and Cooper both reckon it was an island.

Green thinks that the Camber breach was narrow and perhaps blocked at low tide. If he is right, ships must have docked on both sides, either to be loaded/unloaded or to wait for the tide before making the Camber crossing. This was doubtless profitable for pubs – of which there were apparently 11 - and brothels, but they cannot account for more than a fifth of the people that lived there.

Even though a channel or canal would be a lot faster than the route via Old Romney, it would still be inefficient, requiring a high tide to get in and another to get out. From the number and type of people that are named in the 1288 Charter, we think the Romans developed a better logistics system that was still in use at the time of the invasion, and which employed the balance of Old Winchelsea’s population.

Winchelse seems to have been a rudimentary transhipment hub. The commercially sensible process would be for inshore barges to take salt, timber and, probably, iron from jetties on the banks of the Brede to Winchelse where they would wait for the tidal current to whisk them across the Camber bar. On the seaward side, the barges could be unloaded directly into sea-going vessels or into warehouses. If the channel was temporarily blocked by storms or longshore drift, perhaps cargo was carried across the Camber in carts.

Some natural resources would have been exported to the Continent. Rather than return empty, presumably the freight vessels returned wine, oil, fruit and cloth, most of which would have been destined for London or Winchester on tidal drifters, or to Canterbury and the hinterland on the Rochester Roman road. This would explain how Norman navigators got to know the treacherous cliffs and ever-changing offshore sand banks around East Sussex.

Cunliffe explains that the most likely reason for the Camber breach at Old Winchelsea to remain open was if freshwater channels were feeding through from the Brede and Tillingham. He still seems a little perplexed that eastward shingle drift did not block the breach or create its own spit. We have a simple explanation: We think it was dredged and had been since Roman times.

Wealden iron ore was a major reason for the Roman invasion of Britain. We think that the Romans, who hated bendy transport systems, cut the Camber breach to accelerate exports of iron and salt, then established the docks to facilitate loading. Those docks would be within two miles of the location described by Ptolemy – i.e. mid-longitude between what is now Cannon Street in London and South Foreland in Kent – for ‘Portus Novus’. If we are right, Winchelse was the major port in East Sussex from Roman times right through to the 13th century.

Pefenesea, Pevenesel and Old Pevensey

Pefenesea is universally understood to have been the Old English name for the place that eventually became modern Pevensey. As we will explain later, Pevenesel is the Norman name for Pefenesea. Historians interpret the ASC, the Tapestry, Chronicon, Brevis Relatio and Benoît to be saying that the Normans landed at one or the other. We think that both notions are wrong.

Some of our reasons are laid out in the section above about ‘The Traditional Norman landing’. Perhaps the most significant is that landing at modern Pevensey made no military or logistical sense. In the unlikely event that the Normans entered Pevensey Lagoon, as Ramsay pointed out 100 years ago, they would have avoided all the hazards by landing on the east bank at Hooe rather than the west bank at modern Pevensey.

It should come as no surprise then that none of the contemporary accounts say that the Normans did land at Pefenesea or any of its cognates (note that Penevesellum is not a cognate). Instead, they say that the Normans ‘arrived near’ or ‘came to’ or ‘moored in the shallows near’ Pefenesea. Therefore, in our opinion, Pefenesea played no role in the Norman Conquest. We could leave it there, but it might help future researchers if we explain why we think Pefenesea was not modern Pevensey.

There is copious evidence in the Conquest accounts that the Roman fortress at modern Pevensey was known as “castele a Pefenesea” in Old English, “Castelli Pevenesel” in Old French and Castrum Pevenesel” in Latin. There is copious evidence in Charters and Pipe Rolls that modern Pevensey was known as Pevenesel after the 12th century. The evidence for what Pefenesea meant at the time of the Conquest is far more limited.

As far as we know, there is only one locational reference to pre-Conquest Pefenesea. It is in Saxon Charter S527, dated 963, which gifts a saltearn opposite pefenes ea’ and land at hanecan’ (later named hacanan hamme’) near a place named glindlea’. Glindley and Hankham survive, not far from modern Pevensey. This implies that pefenes ea was in the vicinity of modern Pevensey, but it does not say or imply that it was at modern Pevensey.

Indeed, we can be certain that pre-Conquest Pefenesea was not at modern Pevensey from its founding Charter, issued in 1207: … we have granted to the barons of Peuensel and confirmed by this our present charter that they may build a town on the headland between the port/harbour of Pevenesel and Langeney, which lies within the liberties of the Cinque Ports, to keep and maintain according by which our subjects of the Cinque Ports possess.”

In other words, Pevenesel, the Norman name for Pefenesea – see below - was analogous to Winchelsea and Romney: a coastal harbour that was threatened and eventually destroyed by storms. And, like Winchelsea and Romney, its population moved inland taking the name with them. We will therefore refer to it in this document as Old Pevensey, analogous with Old Winchelsea and Old Romney. We can work out where it was.

Figure 6: Pevensey lagoon in medieval times, based on map by Tom Chivers

Tom Chivers’ map (Figure 6) hints at what is going on. It shows Pevensey Lagoon in the 11th century, dotted with Old English place names ending ‘ea’, ‘ey’ or ‘eye’. In this area, as local name expert Simon Mansfield once told us, they all mean ‘island’. They are surviving places that were inhabited islands during Saxon times.

Figure 7: Pevensey Lagoon with the location of pefenes ea

Figure 7 shows Old Pevensey some 2km southeast of modern Pevensey. It was an island, thereby justifying the ‘ea’ part of its name. If it was an island, the Normans could not have landed there because the Tapestry and others reckon that the Norman knights rode to Hastingas.

Modern Pevensey’s founding charter says that its 11th century predecessor, Pevenesel, was east of Langeney, implying it was not as far east as Southeye. This means it can be exactly located to the south side of Pevensey Haven, which separated it from Southeye. Pevensey Haven had a confluence with Waller’s Haven just to the east of modern Pevensey. It drained most of the Pevensey Lagoon basin. It is likely then to have created a spit tail, which presumably formed the safe harbour for which pre-Conquest Pefenesea was famous.

There is a dependency. The location description in modern Pevensey’s founding Charter is for Pevenesel. It only applies to Pefenesea if they referred to the same place. We are confident they do. The Bi-Lingual F recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translates Pefenesea to Pevenesel in the same pre-Conquest annals that the C, D and E recensions refer to Pefenesæ, Pefenesea and Peuenesea respectively. The Norman Conquest accounts, and two of the three Anglo-Norman Conquest accounts, refer to William’s arrival off the Sussex coast as being near Pevenesel, the English accounts and John of Worcester say that it was near Pefenesea.

R G Roberts has a plausible explanation for why the Norman referred to Pefenesea and Pevenesel in his 1914 book ‘The Place-Names of Sussex’. In this vicinity, Old English ‘ea’ means island. Roberts thinks that the ‘el’ at the end of Pevenesel is the Frankish root for the modern French word île meaning ‘island’. The only other known Saxon, Latin or Norman place name ending ‘el’ (apart from places ending ‘dell’ which would not apply here) is ‘Wincenesel’, the Frankish and/or Norman name for Winchelse. The most plausible explanation is that Pefenesea and Winchelse were part of Bertoald’s 8th century gift (attested in Charter S133 and S318) to the Frankish Abbey of St Denys. If they owned Pefenesea, it makes perfect sense that they would transliterate Pefenes to Peuenes, and translate ‘ea’ to ‘el’, to make the name Peuenes el’ The Normans presumably adopted the name.

To summarise, there was an island harbour named ‘pefenes ea’ between Langney and Southeye until the early 13th century. This name is usually contracted to Pefenesea. Normans referred to it as Pevenesel. It was gradually destroyed by storms. Its population moved 2km northwest to the peninsula upon which the Roman fortress of Anderida stood, taking the name Pefenesea with them. From 1207, Pefenesea and Pevenesel referred to modern Pevensey, beforehand they referred to pefenes ea island. An identical fate befell Winchelsea and Romney. Their original locations are referred to as Old Winchelsea and Old Romney. We will adopt the same convention in this document by referring to pefenes ea as Old Pevensey.

This name schema is consistent with all contemporary account references to Pefenesea and cognates, unlike modern Pevensey. The Old English suffix ‘ea’ (‘eg’) always means ‘island’ in this vicinity. Domesday lists the manor of Pevenesel as a ‘borough’ which implies liberties which implies a coastal location. Old Pevensey was an island harbour on the coast. Modern Pevensey was an inland peninsula. The only pre-invasion Saxon reference that almost certainly refers to modern Pevensey names it Andredesceaster. There is no reason why it would also be known as Pefenesea. Domesday lists the manor of Pevenesel with 110 burgesses and a mill in 1086. This sounds about right for the coastal harbour of Pefenesea, but not for modern Pevensey which proved to have no civilian population at the time of the Conquest during extensive excavations by Dully in the 1960s.

Old Pevensey is also consistent with De Viis Maris, a mid-12th century guide. It lists ports where soldiers might get a ship to Normandy on their way to the Crusades. Penress/Peneness, presumably Old Pevensey, is said to be eight miles west of ‘Hastinges castellum’ and two leagues east of the unreliable port of La Crumbie. La Crumbie is lost but must have been near Eastbourne. Distances are rough and ready in De Viis Maris, but this points to a place consistent with our proposed location for Old Pevensey.

Benoît says that the Normans: “Arrived at Pevenesel, at a harbour beneath a fortress handsome and strong”. There were a few former Roman fortresses dotted around the East Sussex, but the only one that might warrant the description ‘handsome and strong’ is Anderitum at Pevensey. Old Pevensey was a harbour beneath Anderitum, modern Pevensey was not.

Pevensey Castle is a source of some confusion. Three accounts of Odo’s rebellion, during which he holed-up in Pevensey Castle, refer to it as the fortress of Pefenesea, a fourth account as the fortress of Pevenesel. Pipe Rolls entries in the 12th and 13th century refer to Pevensey Castle as Castrum Pevenesel or Castelli Pevenesel, and separately refer to modern Pevensey as Pevenesel. A post-Conquest entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to Pevensey Castle as ‘castele a Pefenesea’. It looks like the name refers to a castle at Pefenesea, implying that Pefenesea referred to modern Pevensey, but we think it referred to the nearest settlement to the castle that had a recognised name. That would make it analogous to Castelli Windelesores, which took its name from its nearest named settlement Windelesores (Old Windsor), four miles away. And, also like Windsor, the settlement eventually moved to the castle, taking its name with them.

Kathleen Tyson has come up with two more clues. She resolves the name Pefenesea to mean ‘near-the-ness island’. At least two of the references to Pefenesea in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle say it was used as a maritime refuge or harbour. Kathleen interprets one of them to mean that it was at a sea ford. She deduces that Pefenesea was somewhere on the Camber shingle bar near Lydd. It is plausible but would contradict some of the other clues, including the specific clue in De Viis Maris that Old Pevensey was eight Roman miles west of Hastings Castle. It would also be a peculiar interpretation of Pevensey’s foundation Charter, equivalent to describing Devon’s location as between Cornwall and East Anglia; not wrong but misleading. It would contradict S527, which says that pefenes ea is near Glindlea and Hankham whereas Lydd is 20 miles away. And it would contradict Benoît’s description of William “arriving below a fortress handsome and strong”. We are convinced that her new clues better points an island near the ness of modern Pevensey, which is consistent with our proposed location for Old Pevensey. It could easily have had a low tide ford to Langney.

Perhaps we should explain our thinking with the rest of Figure 83. There must have been at least one break in The Crumbles, to allow fresh water to drain into the sea. Pevensey Haven (aka Hurst Haven) drained the land to the north and west. Waller’s Haven drained the land to the east. Waller’s Haven was redirected in the 16th century. Its original route can be followed along ‘Old Haven’ on OS maps. It makes an inland confluence with Hurst Haven several hundred metres to the east of Pevensey. It had to drain into the sea somewhere to the southeast of that. It is common for silty estuaries to form spits at their mouth. We think Old Pevensey had just such a spit tail, somewhere around modern Beachlands.

We discuss the international port above. It is just worth noting here that Old Pevensey was not it. A port has a wharf to load/unload cargo, whereas a harbour does not. Old Pevensey had no natural resources, no hinterland, no roads to distribute goods, and hardly anyone to distribute them to. It was, as ASC suggests, a sheltered harbour rather than a port. We say earlier that there was no port or settlement at modern Pevensey at the time of the invasion. It is accurate. Old Pevensey was not at modern Pevensey and it was not a port.

Our proposed location for Old Pevensey sheds a new light on S133, a Saxon Charter dated 790 which gifts land in East Sussex and elsewhere to the Frankish Abbey of St Denys. The gift included a port: de portu super mare, Hastingas et Pevenisel”, “the coastal port of Hastingas and Pevenisel. Note ‘port’ singular. It is ambiguous. It could be trying to say: “the coastal port of Hastingas et Pevenisel, with ‘Hastingas et Pevenisel’ as a noun, or the coastal port of Hastingas, and Pevenisel, with Pevenisel somewhere other than the port. In the first edition of our book, we speculated that that the former was more likely, because we thought that it could be synonymous with the port mentioned by Orderic as Hastingas et Penevesellum. We have subsequently refined our understanding of Penevesellum – see below - which makes this unlikely. We now think that the latter is more probable. The attestation in S318 suggests so, in that it refers to the gift as land in/at Hastingas and land in/at Pevenisel.

One source of confusion about the Norman landing is that ASC-D, the Tapestry and Chronicon immediately pass from the arrival at Old Pevensey to the construction of a fortress or, in the case of Chronicon, to the battle. Historians read into this an implication that the Normans landed at Pefenesea. We think the journey to the landing place and the landing itself were redacted. All three of these accounts are heavily abridged, covering the invasion in a few paragraphs. They had to redact uneventful details like the journey to the landing site and the landing.

There are a few puzzles about the Norman Channel crossing and Pefenesea.

Why did the Normans moor near Old Pevensey if their ultimate destination was the Hastings Peninsula? We guess that it was standard practice for Norman trading ships to moor off Old Pevensey before docking at Hæstingaport, probably to wait for the tide. With the prevailing south-westerly breeze, they had to moor somewhere southwest of Hæstingaport. The only shallows were Royal Sovereign Shoal, five miles south of modern Pevensey, and Four Fathom Sand Ridge, four miles south of modern Hastings. The latter was closer to Hæstingaport but also close to a rocky lee shore, a dangerous place to sail in a ship with no centreboard, especially in the dark. Royal Sovereign Shoal was off the Crumbles shingle bank, which would have been a comfortable place to land if there had been a minor navigation error or a sudden squall. Wace says that the fleet steered towards a port/harbour, which was presumably well known to his sailors and navigators. We think that harbour was Old Pevensey whereas Four Fathom Sand Ridge was not in the direction of a port or harbour. Poitiers explains that William wanted to avoid sailing in dangerous or unknown waters at night. Royal Sovereign Shoal would have been well known and safe whereas Four Fathom Sand Ridge was unsafe.

Why did William delay the invasion – as Wace and WP say – to wait for a southerly breeze? It is very odd. The fleet started at Dives-sur-Mer, needing to sail north-northeast to arrive near Pevensey. WP says that they were born to St Valery on a westerly breeze. But they could easily have made the Channel crossing to near Pevensey on a westerly breeze. Indeed, it would have been the optimal wind direction if they used an ebb tide to offset leeway. Instead, they sailed to St Valery, from where they needed to sail northwest to arrive near Pevensey. A 60° change of direction, yet William still waited for a southerly breeze. We explain in our book that William needed a southerly breeze to affect a simultaneous Brede landing.

In the first edition of this book, and the blogs upon which it was based, we speculated that Peuenisel with an ‘i’ – as mentioned in S133 - might have referred to somewhere other than Pevenesel with an ‘e’. Refinements to our understanding of the name Penevesellum have persuaded us otherwise. We now think they both referred to Old Pevensey (pefenes ea).

Penevesellum

Three of the earliest and most trusted primary sources specifically say the Normans landed at Penevesellum. One of them says that William returned there six months after the invasion, reiterating that it is where the Normans landed. They are unambiguous but provide few clues where it was. 

Historians think that Penevesellum referred to modern Pevensey, partly because it is a declension of Penevesel which looks like a corruption of Pevenesel, and partly because Gesta Stephani has two unambiguous references to Penevesel that refer to Pevensey castle. The logic is undeniable, but we explain above why we think it implausible that the Normans landed anywhere near modern Pevensey. Something else must be going on.

The first thing to note is that Penevesellum only appears in Norman accounts. It is a Latin format name but with no obvious Old English place names in the vicinity upon which it might have been based. The only likely reason that the Normans might have their own name for somewhere in Sussex, especially one with no English root, is that it was part of the land that belonged to the Norman Abbey of Fécamp. In this vicinity, this means that it was part of Rameslie manor, nowhere near modern Pevensey.

There are four references to Penevesellum. WP and WJ say that the Normans landed at Penevesellum then went to Hastingas, building a fortress at both. Orderic says that Harold withdrew his ships and troops from “Hastingas et Penevesellum”. Later he says that the Normans occupied “Penevesellum et Hastingas” upon landing, leaving a body of men to guard them both. Note the reversal of names, so they are not ‘Tyne and Wear’ style proper nouns. At least one, probably both, are saying that Penevesellum and Hastingas were separate settlements or small areas. If they were protected by ‘a body of men’, they must have been close, probably adjacent. This is also consistent with WP and WJ.

So, Penevesellum was close to, or adjacent to, Hastingas, which referred to Hæstingaport in early Norman accounts. Hæstingaport was at Old Winchelsea (Winchelse). Pett was adjacent to Old Winchelsea, but the Pannel did not have a long enough strand to land more than half the Norman fleet. Therefore, the Norman fleet must have landed in the Brede estuary. There is an entire section on this in our book. We will summarise here.

There are four inlets or estuaries around the Hastings Peninsula that could accommodate the Norman fleet: Hooe Haven, the Ash Bourne, Combe Haven and the Brede. They all had nearby hills that would have made good camps. The first three were in rich farmland but the Brede has the other advantages:

  • The Brede is the only landing candidate accessible via a Roman road
  • The Brede is the only landing candidate lined with dried out salt evaporation ponds, to provide a long straight firm landing area, as described by Wace
  • The Brede and Hooe Haven are the only landing candidates, again thanks to dried out salt evaporation ponds, that have a perfectly level landing area to construct a kit fortress without a motte
  • There is a pinch point at Sowdens on the Udimore ridgeway that could easily be blockaded to give more time to establish a bridgehead
  • The Brede is the only landing candidate with a sea-cliff (at Cadborough) that overlooked the landing, as described by Carmen and Wace
  • The Brede is the only landing candidate that was overlooked by a fortress at anywhere that could have been Hastingas, thereby matching the Warenne Chronicle landing description of William entering England between the fortresses of Hastingas and Pevenesellum
  • The Brede is the only landing candidate that would require a southerly breeze for a successful landing and William waited for four weeks for a southerly breeze
  • The Brede is the only candidate adjacent to land once owned by the Norman Abbey of Fécamps, which matches Jo Kirkham’s sensible theory that the invasion was planned by monks from that Abbey

Most of these advantages only apply to the Brede’s north bank. We are therefore convinced the Normans landed on the north bank. It is also consistent with Tapestry Panel 40 which is captioned: “here the knights hurry to Hestinga to forage for food”. As we explain earlier, we think the Tapestry’s Hestinga referred to the Hastings Peninsula. If the knights hurried there, they started somewhere else. The only landing place candidate within easy riding distance of the Hastings Peninsula but not on it, was the north bank of the Brede estuary.

Therefore, we think Penevesellum was on the north bank of the Brede estuary, presumably downstream of Brede ford. In the first edition of our book, we mused that it might have referred to Rye. There is no evidence of Saxon era occupation of Rye, but 150 years later it had 20% the trading volume of Hæstingaport, which was the busiest port east of Southampton. We speculated that Rye was an uninhabited Saxon era harbour belonging to the Norman Abbey of Fécamp and known to them as Penevesellum. We guessed that Hæstingaport ran out of capacity soon after the Conquest, so the Abbey of Fécamp had to build a settlement and expand this harbour, renaming it Rai, after a town near Fécamp. We are pretty sure that our guess is right, but it looks like our speculation is wrong.

Soon after we published our book, Kathleen Tyson published her Carmen translation, in which she says that the name Penevesellum means ‘fort in the wash’. Her derivation looks good to us. There is no evidence of Saxon era occupation at Rye, let alone a fortress. If Kathleen is right, Penevesellum was somewhere else on the north bank of the Brede estuary. She thinks it was at modern Udimore village, where William built a grand manor house now known as Court Lodge. She speculates that it was built on the ruins of a fortress and suggests that Udimore would be a ‘magnificent place for a navigation beacon’ and an ideal place to tax cargo passing from Hæstingaport to Kent on a causeway across the Brede.

We are sceptical. Udimore has shown no archaeological evidence of pre-Conquest occupation, let alone a fort. It has a severely restricted sea view, making it a poor place for a navigation beacon, and that view pointed to Boulogne in what was Hauts-de-France rather than to Normandy. It is difficult to believe that the Saxons had the wherewithal or skills to construct a pioneering 2km tidal causeway, especially when there was a low-water ford and a bridge a few miles upstream. And Udimore was 6km from the end of the Udimore peninsula, so it was barely ‘in the wash’.

If Penevesellum was a fortress, it is more likely to have been close to the eastern tip of the Udimore peninsula, where it had a wide sea view. This would be consistent with it being ‘in the wash’. Orderic’s “one body of men to guard Penevesellum and Hastingas”, suggests that it was opposite modern Winchelsea.

Figure 8: Yeakell & Gardner Cadborough in 1770

Perhaps we can be more specific about Penevesellum’s location. It makes no difference to our theory if we are wrong, but we think that Penevesellum referred to Cadborough. Yeakell & Gardner (Figure 8) label Cadborough as Caresborough in 1770. The Brythonic term ‘caer’ means fortress. If the name has a Brythonic origin, it must have predated the Saxon invasion, which means it must be Roman. Most ‘boroughs’ were Saxon lookout or messaging towers, sometimes within fortifications. Some were built at former Roman fortifications on promontories overlooking places that the Vikings had previously raided. Cadborough fits the bill, at the eastern tip of the Udimore peninsula, where it was definitely ‘in the wash’. It had the widest sea view of anywhere on the Udimore Peninsula and the Y&G road seems to divert around a large square space that looks as if it might previously have held a fortress.

Figure 9: Brede estuary 11th century place names

If we are right, Orderic is saying that Harold withdrew his troops from fortresses at Winchelsea and Cadborough. It makes sense that this would be his main garrison. The Brede offered the best incursion point opposite Normandy, so Harold would try hard to defend it. It would be a poor tactic to place all the troops on one bank, because the Normans would land on the other. The 16-mile hike to the seaward end of the other bank via the Brede crossing at Sedlescombe would give the invaders a chance to establish a bridgehead. Moreover, troops on the north bank could also defend the Tillingham and Rother, while troops on the south bank could also defend Coombe Haven and the eastern side of the Pevensey Lagoon.

We are not suggesting that the Normans actually landed below Cadborough. It had a dangerously narrow strand and a steep cliff. Rather we think that it was the closest place to the landing that had a name, at least one that Normans would recognise. Most likely, they landed upstream of Cadborough, between Float Farm and Brede ford. This would be below Court Lodge, so Kathleen Tyson may well be right that Court Lodge commemorated the place where the Normans landed.

Rameslie manor

Rameslie was a big and wealthy manor in Guestlinges hundred, which it shared with the manors of Guestlinges and Ivet. Manors in the same hundred were not always contiguous, but most are, especially as in this case, when one is dominant over the others. Guestling survives as a settlement south of the fluvial part of the River Panel. Ivet was very small. There are no other hundreds in the vicinity. Therefore, it is safe to assume that part of Rameslie manor filled the Winchelsea Peninsula between the Panel and the Brede.

Domesday lists Rameslie manor with 100 saltpans, 35 ploughlands, 7 acres of meadowland, 2 woodland swine renders and 5 churches. The Winchelsea Peninsula was not big enough to hold it all. It must have had a lot of other land, including perhaps four other significant settlements.

In 1247, Henry III did a deal negotiated through the Pope to swap Old Winchelsea and its port for lands elsewhere, claiming it was vulnerable to an invasion because monks could not defend themselves. There is no mention of modern Hastings which implies that it was not in Rameslie and/or that it did not have a port, even in 1247.

By tradition, Rameslie stretched from Rye to modern Hastings. The Rye part is good: Rye and Old Winchelsea were still in Rameslie manor when they were exchanged by Henry III in 1247. Like so much else, the rest is derived from the traditional location of Hæstingaport below modern Hastings. Rammesleah manor was gifted to the Norman Abbey of Fécamp by King Cnut as a dowry for his Norman bride Emma of Normandy in 1017. Rameslie manor was held by the Abbey of Fécamp in Domesday and Rammesleah looks like an alternative spelling of Rameslie. We will assume they were one and the same. The gift is described in a Charter (S949), which notes that the manor had saltpans and a port. The only significant port in the vicinity was Hæstingaport, traditionally located in the Priory valley. This is how Rameslie traditionally stretched along the coast from north of Rye to southwest of modern Hastings.

Rameslie’s traditional footprint is an implausibly gigantic 11 miles long. No one would haul bulk freight like salt, timber and iron from their source in the Brede basin up and over the Hastings Ridge to be shipped from modern Hastings, so there is close to zero chance that it held the port mentioned in S949. It is unlikely that a coastal manor of 30km2 would only have 7 acres of meadowland. And Dawson and Taylor reckon that Ivet manor was around modern Pett, so Guestlinges and Ivet manors bounded Rameslie to the south. Thus, Rameslie did not extend south of the Pannel, and it did not come within five miles of modern Hastings.

If Rameslie did not stretch south of the Pannel, it must have stretched west and/or north from the Winchelsea Peninsula. Matthew concludes that Rameslie spanned the Brede. It certainly contained Rye and Old Winchelsea on either side of the Brede. Medieval salt evaporation ponds in this region average 30m across. They are best placed on the north strand of a wide east-west estuary, where they get reflected sunlight, no riverbank shade and have no need for deforestation to prevent tree shade. Better on an east flowing river, where they are protected from storm surges or bores that might flood the saltpans. Most estuaries on the south coast are south flowing. The east flowing Brede was the only east-west estuary on the south coast that was long enough to hold 100 saltpans. If these saltpans were predominantly on the north bank, Rameslie must have stretched at least as far west as Brede Place on the north bank of the Brede.

This is still not big enough for five churches. Iham (which became modern Winchelsea) had one, St Leonards. Old Winchelsea had two, St Thomas and St Giles, the latter known to have been built by the Abbey of Fécamp. Two more to find. S982 confirms that the manor of Bretda was included in Cnut’s gift of Rammesleah to the Abbey of Fécamp. Manors that are worth coveting should be wealthy enough to have a church. Bretda is never mentioned again, so it was presumably absorbed into Rameslie. We think it accounted for one of the two remaining churches, probably at Brede village. By a process of elimination, the fifth was probably at Cadborough, Rye or Icklesham, the only other Domesday era settlements adjacent to the Brede estuary. We think Cadborough because there is a legend that the stones for St Mary’s Udimore came from a church closer to the sea (we are unconvinced about the part of the legend that they were moved by angels).

Cooper must have gone through similar reasoning 170 years ago, because he worked out – without saying how – similar locations for Rameslie’s five churches. He says that one was at Brede village, one in Rye, two in Winchelse (St Thomas and St Giles), and one at Winchelsea (St Leonards). We think he is right, other than that his church at Rye (see Rye below) is more likely to have been at Cadborough or Icklesham.

The fact that Bretda’s status had to be confirmed in S982 suggests that it was not specified in the earlier S949 Charter. This means that Bretda did not incorporate the port or the saltpans. Its name makes it sound like it was beside the Brede, in which case it was either west of Brede Place on the north bank, or west of Guestling on the south bank, or both.

Bretda’s location could be narrowed down by excluding land occupied by other Brede side manors. Ivet (sometimes spelled Luet) was once thought to be centred on Lidham, and therefore with estuary frontage, but it is now thought to be centred on Pett. The only other Domesday manors in the vicinity that might have had estuary frontage were Sedlescombe and Dodimere. Sedlescombe was south of the Brede and upstream of the current the Sedlescombe crossing in the 11th, at least 1km beyond the head of tide. That leaves Dodimere.

By tradition, Dodimere manor surrounded the settlement of Udimore on the Udimore ridge. East Sussex HER says that Dodimere was a dispersed ridgetop hamlet on the Udimore Ridge. This seems unlikely because ‘mere’ is the Old English term for a body of water, which would not apply to a ridgetop settlement. The manor is not listed with any saltpans, which implies it did not have Brede estuary frontage. It was in Babinrerode hundred, whose only other manor was tiny Kitchenham (2 households) on the Rother. If Dodimere was on the Udimore Peninsula, Goldspur hundred would have separated it from Kitchenham. Divided hundreds are not uncommon, but it would be very odd for one that only has two manors when the other is tiny. Something must be wrong.

Dodimere manor is associated with Udimore because Robert Count de Eu was Lord of the manor and Dodimere sounds like Udimore which was named after him. But he was Lord or Tenant-In-Chief of over 100 East Sussex manors any of which might have been named after him. We suspect that Dodimere and Udimore were different places that were independently named after him, and that Dodimere manor spanned the Rother Peninsula north from Beckley Furnace.

If we are right, Bretda manor lined one or both banks of the Brede estuary downstream from the tidal limit at modern Sedlescombe, meaning that Rameslie manor entirely lined both banks of the Brede estuary. We are inclined to think that Bretda was on both banks of the Brede, but Kathleen Tyson told us that she has evidence it was only on the north bank, so that is how we depicted it in Figure 10.

Bretda’s location would have made it prime real estate. It controlled the Rochester Roman road and the Sedlescombe river crossing, through which all land hauled imports and exports would have to pass. It contained a rich woodland that conveniently sloped down to the estuary banks for easy export of valuable timber. It is unclear how much iron was being produced in this vicinity in medieval times, but it contained the Chitcombe iron bloomeries, and controlled the output from the three other biggest Romano-British iron bloomeries, at Footlands, Oaklands and Beauport Park, once the third biggest source of iron in the Roman empire.

Figure 10: Brede side manors

The Brede estuary was a medieval mini-Ruhr Valley, producing prodigious amounts of salt and timber, and probably some iron. Salt was crucial for preserving food, which is why there were herring salting plants at Winchelse. There would have been wharfs and jetties all along the north bank, for shipping salt and timber. If iron was being produced, there would have been wharfs and jetties all along the south bank too. Kathleen Tyson has found evidence there was once a low-tide canal from Sedlescombe to Winchelsea, which presumably took timber, salt and perhaps iron on barges to the port at Winchelse.

Jetties, wharfs, barges, warehouses, ferries, paved roads, canals, bridges, and a river crossing do not come cheap and there are no surviving Charters to make anyone responsible for maintaining them. It was a capital-intensive infrastructure business before there was an easy way to raise capital. The only people wealthy enough to operate these services were monasteries. In our opinion, the Abbey of Fécamp provided all these infrastructure services as part of what was effectively an entrepôt, probably paid for by a levy on the value of goods passing through the port.

Hechelande

Hechelande is the only specific clue to Hæstingaport’s location, but it is not necessarily trustworthy. CBA has five references to Hechelande, variously spelled Hecilande and Hechilande. One explains that it is shy 1½ miles southeast of Battle Abbey, between Bodeherste and Croherste. This places it adjacent to the Hastings Ridge, near to Telham. Two more references are consistent with the first. A third says that it is the name of a wood. The other that it is a hill.

There are no conical hills northwest of Telham and the crest of the Hastings Ridge would probably have been unwooded. A spur is a type of hill. We interpret the clues to mean that CBA is describing a manor on a spur west of the Hastings Ridge that contained an eponymous wood. It would be on the land now occupied by Loose Farm. That land contains Bushy Wood. Professor Searle translates Hechelande as Hedgland. Might there be a link between Bushy and Hedgey?

CBA’s hill reference has the key Hæstingaport location clue. It refers to Hastingarum, a Latin declension of Hastinges, which CBA had previously said was a port ‘not far’ from where the Normans landed. Professor Searle translates CBA to be saying that Hechelande ‘lies towards Hastingarum’, Lower ‘in the direction of Hastingarum’. A line from Battle Abbey through Loose Farm intersects with the coast at Hastings Castle. It is as clear as any clue in the contemporary accounts, yet we think it is misleading.

For one thing, this part of CBA cannot be trusted. It was written to defend Battle Abbey’s wealth and independence, through what we think to be a spurious claim that the Abbey was built on the battlefield. If we are right, the locations of Hechelande and Herste were moved to support the deception, as we explain in the ‘Norman Battle Camp at Hechelande’ and ‘Herste’ sections of our Battle of Hastings at Sedlescombe book.

For another thing, we are unconvinced by the translations. CBA says that Hechelande was ‘a parte Hastingarum’. Lower and Searle’s translations are valid but uncommon. CBA has other passages that describe the ‘direction of a place’ and ‘towards a place’ that do not use ‘a parte’. On the other hand, it has 30 or more uses of ‘parte’ where it means ‘side’, as in the ‘south side’, the ‘opposite side’, the ‘side of the church’, and so on. We think the most natural translation of ‘a parte Hastingarum’ is ‘to the side of Hastingarum’. CBA’s Hastinges was a port, so if Hechelande was to its side, it could not be near Telham or anywhere else inland.

Even if CBA did mean that Hechelande was in the direction of Hastinges, it might be an anachronism. As we explain above, we think that the Normans referred to Hæstinga port as Hastinges at the time of the invasion but that they referred to Hastings Castle as Hastinges by the time CBA was written. CBA’s description of Hechelande’s location might therefore accurately refer to a newly created Hechelande at Loose Farm being in the direction of Hastings Castle, in which case it was elsewhere at the time of the invasion.

In our opinion, nothing can be assumed from CBA about Hechelande’s location at the time of the invasion. It supports our argument if it is saying that Hechelande is to the side of Hæstinga port, but this is just an interpretation. 

Rye

The 1247 Charter in which Henry III acquires the towns of Old Winchelsea and Rye explains that they were in the manor of Rameslie which still belonged to the Norman Abbey of Fécamps. Domesday analyses always refer to Rameslie manor as Rye manor, as if Rye was its major town. We cannot find the origin of this conventional wisdom, but it is clearly faulty. Rye has been subject to dozens of excavations without finding any evidence of Saxon era occupation. It was a small uninhabited island in the 11th century, perhaps with a harbour and low tide causeway, which makes it an implausible hub for a huge and hugely wealthy manor like Rameslie.

Yet Rye had become a major port by the time of the Ship Service in 1227, being charged to provide five ships, as many as established ports like Romney and Hythe, half as many as Winchelse, and five times more than any other port around the Hastings Peninsula. It cannot have grown to half the size of Winchelse in less than 100 years. A Charter assigning it additional liberties was issued in 1191, which means it was already well established by then. These liberties were later sold by the Abbey of Fécamp.

This might solve one last enigma, which is the meaning of the ‘novus burgus’ in Rameslie’s Domesday listing. Domesday’s boroughs generally refer to somewhere that has liberties and/or rights to toll, typically a port or harbour. In our opinion, novus burgus probably referred to Rye, established less than twenty years previously.

We believe that the Abbey of Fécamp established some sort of administration and maritime service centre at Rye soon after the Conquest. Perhaps they just needed more capacity to handle extra passenger and freight traffic with Normandy. We suspect that they were pushed out modern Winchelsea when Norman military administrators and a garrison moved into Hæstingaceastre.

As a matter of interest, it is usually assumed that the name Rye has an Old English root, with its ‘ye’ ending being typical of many islands in this region, and it was an island in Saxon times. Yet Rye was originally spelled ‘Rai’ which, as far as we know, would be a unique structure for an Old English place name. It was in the Abbey of Fécamp’s manor of Rameslie. We think they named it after Rai, a town in Normandy some 60 miles south of Fécamp.

Bibliography

Contemporary sources, in chronological order:

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (of which three versions covered the invasion, known as C, D and E); reasonably contemporary with events
Carmen Widonis (aka Carmen de Hastingae Proelio); Guy of Amiens; c1067
Gesta Normannorum Ducum; William of Jumieges; c1070
Gesta Guillelmi; William of Poitiers; c1072
Bayeux Tapestry; finished c1077
Domesday Book; finished 1086
Adelae Comitissae; Baudri of Bourgueil; c1100
Quedam Exceptiones de Historia Normannorum et Anglorum; Battle Abbey; c1107
Crowland Chronicle; Pseudo-Ingulf; allegedly before 1109, but perhaps forged later
Brevis Relatio de Guillelmo Nobilissimo Comite Normannorum; Battle Abbey; c1115
Chronicon ex Chronicis; John of Worcester; c1125
Historia Ecclesiastica; Orderic Vitalis; c1125
Historia Anglorum; Henry of Huntingdon; c1129
Gesta regum anglorum; William of Malmesbury; c1135
Roman de Rou; Master Wace; c1160
Draco Normannicus; Stephen of Rouen; c1167
Chronicle of Battle Abbey; Battle Abbey; c1170
Chronique des Ducs de Normandie; Benoît de Sainte-Maure; c1170
Historia Regum; based on Symeon of Durham; mid to late-12th century
Warenne Chronicle (aka) Chronicon monasterii de Hida iuxta Winton; Hyde Monastery; c1200
Monasticon Anglicanum; Volume IV; William Dugdale; 1690

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Nick Austin; The Secrets of the Norman Invasion; Ogmium Press; 2002
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Thomas Birch; Living on the edge: making and moving iron from the ‘outside’ in Anglo-Saxon England; ResearchGate upload; 2011
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Monika Otter; Baudri of Bourgueil, “To Countess Adela”; The Journal of Medieval Latin 2001, Vol. 11, pp. 60-141
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Catharine Pullein; Rotherfield: The Story of Some Wealden Manors; Courier Press; 1928
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Louis Salzman; The Inning of Pevensey Levels; SAC 53; 1910
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E J Upton; TURNPIKES: THE GATES AND TOLL HOUSES IN AND AROUND BATTLE; BDHS; 1971
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