The Battle of Hastings 1066

The Battle of Hastings, 1066, between William of Normandy and Harold II, is supposed to have taken place where the site of Battle Abbey now stands, at Battle, East Sussex. While various theories have been put forward in support of possible alternative sites, they have generally overlooked the importance of an early medieval place known as ‘the grey apple tree’. In one of the only old English texts to describe the events of 1066, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle mentions the armies meeting at the site of the ‘haran apuldran’ - Hoar (meaning ‘Grey’ or ‘Boundary’) Apple Tree. While scholars have generally doubted the significance of the Hoar Apple Tree, deeming it to be a local boundary marker, now lost, the medieval place name Horeappeltre, at Heathfield, suggests the presence of an important Saxon assembly point, situated on the ancient boundary between the Rapes of Pevensey and Hastings. Its location, near a large area of land once known as ‘Slaughter Common’, points to the battle possibly having taken place there. I was surprised to find that the Journal of the English Place Names Society mentions Horeappeltre in 1930, but not in relation to 1066. Instead, the journal postulates another Hoar Apple Tree in Sussex where the two armies met. Yet no evidence of another such place in the vicinity of Battle (or anywhere else in East Sussex), has been found.

Coupled with a substantial number of eighteenth and nineteenth-century travelogues and gazetteers which name the conflict ‘The Battle of Heathfield’, and locate it on Heathfield Down, in the parish of Heathfield, this new evidence points to the need for a thorough consideration of Heathfield as a strong candidate for the lost site of one of the most momentous battles in European history. This body of evidence, which Simon Coleman and I have worked on together for the last five years, forms the basis of our article ‘Heathfield Down, 1066: An Alternative Location for the Battlefield of Hastings’, published in the International Journal of Military History and Historiography (IJMH). This is the first academic article - peer-reviewed by experts in the field - to thoroughly consider an alternative location for the battlefield of Hastings. If you would like to read a copy of the final article but do not have access to the IJMH we would be happy to send out an electronic version. The article can be found here.

The Hoar Apple Tree of the Battle of Hastings

Traditional accounts of the Battle of Hastings which allude to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D version of events often mention the hoar or grey apple tree, which is generally understood to have marked the spot where the two armies met. In the Chronicle, the reference appears as ‘com him togenes æt þære haran apuldran’, which is translated as [William] ‘came against him [Harold] at the hoar (or grey) apple-tree.’ A number of sources for the battle record that the battlefield was barren heath (uncultivated grassland) where perhaps trees had once grown. As described much later in 1875:

‘It was probably a down covered with heath and furze, – a wild rough common, without houses, and almost without trees. The Saxon Chroniclers had no better mode of indicating the locality of the hostile meeting than by saying that it occurred at the Hoary Apple Tree (at thaere haran apuldran), – probably from some venerable tree of that species growing near at hand.’[1]

Some believe that the hoar apple-tree once stood on Caldbec Hill, but no evidence has been found in support of this idea. Aside from the apple’s spiritual associations, how convincing is the idea of an apple-tree as a landmark, over say another, larger and more visible type of tree; an oak, ash, or beech, for example? When I first read about the hoar apple-tree of the Battle of Hastings I questioned it. Why would an apple tree be growing by itself on a remote hill top? How would an apple tree be a prominent enough landmark to offer a meeting place for thousands of troops? These questions prompted me to look more deeply into other contexts for the appearance of ‘apple-tree’, in Anglo-Saxon charters, and in English place-names, to see how they correlated.

The haran apuldran would have been a well known local landmark – a meeting place, perhaps, near to  the Hundred boundary, and it would have needed to be easily navigable from the routes through the surrounding landscape. We know that the battlefield was close to woodland – sources state that the English occupied woodland and had recently travelled through it,­ so it would be logical to imagine that the haran apuldran was a type of tree that could also be found in the woodland. Or that it was a relic of former wood pasture. A beech, oak, ash, or hornbeam could all be possibilities.

It is generally accepted that the crab apple was the predominant species of apple in Anglo-Saxon times (see Biggam (1998:142), although the Romans likely introduced other types. While this may be so, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all Anglo-Saxon words containing ‘apple’ and ‘tree’ simply meant a crab apple or other types of apple. It is logical that apples and other fruit trees would have been cultivated in enclosed areas that were near farmsteads, or part of them, and which offered protection from the elements and from roaming animals. We know several Anglo-Saxon words for orchard and garden, one being ‘tun’, which is echoed in place names such as Huntington or Rustington. It is logical that Anglo-Saxons grew their fruits and nuts in enclosed areas, just as we do. It would be less likely, on the other hand, for an Anglo-Saxon farmer to cultivate an apple tree in a hedgerow on his land or woodland boundary (where several instances of ‘apple-trees’ are recorded) where the fruits would fall prey to animals and birds, and where he would have a greater distance to walk to retrieve the fruit than to the garden adjacent to his house.

A further issue is the hoar or grey prefix. This is usually understood to mean that the tree was of an age to host enough lichen to cause it to appear grey. Apple trees live relatively short lives, with an average lifespan of 100 years, but if they are not pruned and managed they are prone to stunting and their lives are much shorter. By comparison pollard beeches can live up to 500 years, and oaks even 1000 years or more. Lichen is very slow growing, and is known to favour ancient pollard trees. An older or ‘veteran’ tree would be a more likely candidate for a historic meeting place (see, for example, trees existing within the last few centuries, such as the Watch Oak at Battle itself, which was close to the Fair Field where sheep fairs were held, or the old elm that once stood at the centre of Braunton in Devon). An older tree would be better known to local communities over time, but equally it would make a more permanent landmark for travellers, thus acting much like a symbol on a contemporary O.S. map. Current accounts that mention the hoar apple-tree of the Battle of Hastings place the tree on or near the exposed ridge where Battle Abbey stands. It is unlikely that any hoar apple-tree growing in such a spot in 1066 would have been managed or pruned as it would have been so far from any settlement site. We would thus be looking at a very old, probably stunted, lichen-covered apple-tree growing alone on a ridge, or near it. This makes for a less convincing landmark than a pollard of several hundred years that would much more likely have survived in the minds of future generations and would have been more immediately visible to arriving troops. Pollard trees could be found where boundaries crossed, and could form markers for parish and woodland boundaries. Ancient pollard trees were often situated on common land where they were owned by a single person and managed by others. If we consider the haran apuldran to have been an ancient pollard tree, situated on common land, then its function as a meeting place for Harold’s army becomes more plausible. This alternative translation also potentially tells us something new about the location of the battle itself.

One explanation for the incongruities surrounding the hoar apple-tree of the Battle of Hastings is that ‘apple-tree’ to the Anglo-Saxons did not only mean the type of tree that we recognise today. The idea that ‘apel’ did not necessarily mean a literal apple, but could also mean apple-shaped, was alluded to in 1860 by Professor Donaldson, a government land drainage surveyor:

‘the word apple is the Anglo-Saxon Apl, aeppel, aepple, meaning any thing that is round or made round, from a and bal, anything round;… The Celtic name “apl” is the German “appel”, and the English “apple”.’[i]

Natural imagery was potent in the medieval imagination, and much further back in time. Apples with their folkloric and biblical associations carried powerful symbolism. It is quite conceivable that a feature could be known for its apple shape. It is indeed widely accepted that the word apple had a broader meaning than the apple we know today. Even as late as the 17th century in England ‘apple’ included beech-apples and oak-apples (beech mast and acorns). In Latin pomum became the old French pomme. ‘Pomme’ was also originally known as any fruit and the shape was incorporated into words for round objects, such as the rounded tip to a horse saddle that we know as the pommel. Etymologies of ‘apple’ in other languages trace the word to mean any fruit, not simply a type of eating apple we know today.

The southern European languages have, by and large, not distinguished too clearly between words for ‘apple’ and words for ‘fruit’ in general, a clear sign of the apple’s centrality: Greek melon, for instance, source of English melon and Latin mālum, signified any fruit as well as specifically ‘apple’, and Latin pōmum, source of French pomme ‘apple’, meant ‘fruit’. It is no coincidence that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, which Adam and Eve ate with such disastrous consequences, and which is not specifically named in Genesis, has come to be identified in popular culture as an apple.

Around the same time ‘apple’ became fixed as the round sweet fruit, it also became the fruit of the Bible. The apple as the Forbidden Fruit appeared in Western Europe by the 12th century or earlier. One explanation that has been put forward is that the apple was the subject of a pun: the Latin malus meaning “apple” and “evil,” which may account for why early Christians interpreted the apple in this way.[9] These fixed ideological associations of the apple seem to have held back how we interpret the word in other contexts. Scholars have tended to avoid questioning it, even when interpretations of the word’s appearance in Anglo-Saxon charters would make more sense with a different translation. For example, some of the adjectives which precede ‘apple tree’ in the charters, such as ‘crooked’, ‘untrimmed’ and ‘broad’, would conceivably be more applicable to an overgrown pollard oak, beech, ash or hornbeam. It may also be significant that most working trees in Anglo-Saxon England (i.e: those that produced something, like firewood, mast, fruit or nuts) were pollards.

There are, however, a number of challenges to the idea that apple meant something more than simply the round fruit. For example, if ‘apoldre’ included a meaning of ‘pollard oak’ then why are there so many references in Anglo-Saxon charters to the ‘ac’ (‘oak’)? If ‘apoldre’ referred to any fruit or nut tree, rather than apple-tree, then what is meant in the Anglo-Saxon charters by ‘swet’ (sweet) and ‘sur’ (sour) apoldre? Other issues arise if we apply the idea to place-name research. Several ‘apple’ place names in England are understood to have been named after the fruit growing that took place there or to have been ‘the place at the apple-tree’. But in a number of cases, these places are entirely unsuited to apple growing, being situated near salt water estuaries (eg: Appeldram in Sussex (known historically as Apeldrum); Appeldore in Devon (known in former times as le Apildore), and Appledore in Kent (which used to be by the estuary and was known as Apuldre in the tenth century). These places would also be unsuited to the growing of fruits or nuts.