There is no doubt that 1066 was a turbulent year in British history. It all started in January when King Edward the Confessor died childless. King Harold was crowned shortly afterwards but his brother Tostig, Hardrada the Norwegian King and William, the Duke of Normandy, all claimed the throne instead.

Harold defeated Tostig and Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire on 25th September which just left William contesting the crown. William landed with his army on the south coast of England on 28th September and Harold and his exhausted army marched south from Stamford Bridge to confront them.

The two armies met on 14th October 1066 in a field seven miles northwest of Hastings at the present-day town of Battle and the fighting lasted from 9am to dusk of that day.

This week Dave, the dog and I stayed at the very edge of this battlefield in an English Heritage cottage:

The cottage looks out over the field where around 14,000 soldiers fought nearly a thousand years ago and where the course of British history was radically altered:

Harold and his men were positioned at the top of the hill where Battle Abbey now stands, using their large shields to form an impenetrable wall. The Normans were at the bottom, in the foreground of this photo:

This drawing from an information board is of the same view on 14th October 1066:

It is estimated that there were somewhere between 6,500 and 10,000 deaths on this field that day.

Towards the end of the afternoon, King Harold himself was killed:

The battle was a decisive victory for William the Conqueror, who was crowned king soon afterwards, marking the end of Anglo Saxon rule in Britain. In 1070 William founded an Abbey at the top of the field where Harold fell as a memorial to the Battle of Hastings and as an atonement for all the men who were killed on 14th October 1066.

Much of the surrounding land was then preserved as the Abbey’s great park, resulting in it being grazed but unploughed for a very long time, probably since the medieval period. This has allowed yellow meadow ant colonies to flourish in some parts of the battlefield, within enormous anthills that have been there for hundreds of years:

In the nearby village of Crowhurst, the Crowhurst Yew is a living witness to those tumultuous times in 1066. This tree is thought to have been planted around 700AD and would have already been three hundred years old when William and his army passed by on their way to the Battle of Hastings a thousand years ago:

This ancient 1,300 year old yew is growing in the graveyard in St George’s Church in Crowhurst in Sussex. In a ridiculous and confusing coincidence, there is another ancient yew growing in another St George’s Church graveyard in a second village called Crowhurst, but this time in Surrey. Both trees are called ‘The Crowhurst Yew’ but the Surrey yew is much older at 4,000 years old:

Whilst we were staying in Battle, we decided to spend a day in Romney Marsh, seeing some of the distinctive churches there. The most iconic of them all is the tiny Church of St Thomas Becket which stands in solitary isolation out on the marsh:

We had to collect the enormous key for the church from its closest house:

And walk to the church across wet, sheep-grazed fields:

Although the church itself dates back to the 12th century, the interior of the church was restored in the 18th century and was surprisingly fitted out with white box pews and a triple-decker pulpit:

The Church of St Augustine in Brookland was also very memorable with its detached wooden bell tower and its strange stable-door style entrance:

The amazing 12th century Norman lead font in the church is still in use today:

We visited four Romney Marsh churches in total:

Now that it’s November, most National Trust and English Heritage properties in the area are closed during the week. Bodiam Castle, however, was fully open and looking fabulous in the November sunshine:

In the centre of the photo below is the castle gatehouse, the top floor of which is an important maternity roost for Daubenton’s and Natterer’s bats.

I was surprised to see that visitors are allowed to walk through the rooms in which the bats roost, including during the summer when the bats will be breeding:

Bat droppings on the top floor of the gatehouse:

We saw Egyptian geese on the battlements:

And a load of enormous carp in the moat. Presumably they are fed because they were very interested in any human peering in at them:

The weather forecast for our stay in 1066 Country had been pretty poor, but actually we were quite lucky with the early November weather. As we walked the dog in some of the many woods in the area, there were plenty of rich autumnal colours to admire:

It is always a bit nerve-wracking taking the dog with us on holiday because she is generally quite anxious of things. But we are conscious that she is getting older and find ourselves wanting to spend as much time with her as we can.

I have mentioned quite a few churches already in this post but will finish with one more. St Mary’s in Battle has installed a river of poppies cascading from its bell tower for tomorrow’s Remembrance Sunday:

Community groups, schools, care homes, and residents worked together to produce this memorial and I think that they should all be really proud of what they have produced.