The Battle Harold Won Before Hastings

The Battle Harold Won Before Hastings

 

On the 25th of September 1066, Harold Godwinson defeated Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge. Less than three weeks later, he would be facing William of Normandy at Hastings.

 

Image info:

The Battle of Stamford Bridge, Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831–1892). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

When we talk about 1066, it is usually Hastings that gets most of the attention. Today I want to go back a few weeks and look properly at what had been happening in the north of England before William’s army arrived.

 

Edward the Confessor had died in January and Harold was crowned soon afterwards. His succession was challenged by William, Duke of Normandy, who was preparing an invasion across the Channel. There was also a threat from Norway. Harald Hardrada intended to pursue a claim to the English throne and found an ally in Harold’s own brother, Tostig.

 

Tostig had once been Earl of Northumbria, but a rebellion against his rule in 1065 had driven him into exile. Earlier in 1066, he had already led an unsuccessful invasion of eastern England before eventually joining Hardrada. The Norwegian king brought considerable military experience with him, and in September their combined force entered northern England.

 

On the 20th of September they met the armies of Earls Edwin and Morcar at Fulford, near York. The English earls were defeated, leaving York exposed. The city submitted and hostages were arranged, with a meeting to take place at Stamford Bridge.

 

Harold was a long way from Yorkshire. He had spent much of the summer preparing for the Norman invasion expected on the south coast, even keeping troops and ships ready for William’s arrival. The northern attack forced him to change his plans and travel north with his forces. In less than a fortnight, he had reached Yorkshire.

 

When Harold reached Stamford Bridge on the 25th of September, Hardrada’s entire force was not together. Men had been left with the fleet several miles away, while later Scandinavian accounts suggest that some of those at Stamford Bridge had not brought all of their armour with them.

 

There are several stories from this point in the battle that have been repeated for centuries. According to later accounts, Harold offered Tostig terms if he abandoned Hardrada. Tostig then asked what would be offered to the Norwegian king, and Harold supposedly replied that Hardrada could have seven feet of English ground, with a little more because he was taller than most men.

 

It makes a good story, although it was recorded after the event and we do not know what, if anything, was actually said between the brothers.

 

A later addition to one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records another memorable incident. A Norwegian warrior reportedly defended the bridge against Harold’s advancing men and prevented them from crossing until an English soldier managed to attack him from underneath.

 

The English eventually crossed and the main battle continued. Hardrada was killed during the fighting by a wound to the throat, possibly caused by a spear or an arrow. Tostig also died on the battlefield.

 

Some of the Norwegian troops who had remained with the fleet came to reinforce the army under Eystein Orre. They had covered several miles at speed before reaching the fighting, and the Norse sagas describe the men arriving exhausted. The reinforcements were unable to prevent the Norwegian defeat.

 

Hardrada and Tostig were both dead, and the surviving Norwegians were allowed to return home after giving pledges of peace.

 

What happened immediately afterwards is easy to lose among the much better-known events at Hastings.

 

William’s fleet reached the Sussex coast on the 28th of September, just three days after the fighting at Stamford Bridge. Harold was still in Yorkshire, and news of the landing first had to reach him before he could begin bringing his forces south.

 

We do not know exactly which men who fought at Stamford Bridge also fought at Hastings, and historians have long discussed how much the northern campaign affected Harold’s army. What we do know is that the two battles fell astonishingly close together.

 

Harold reached London and then continued into Sussex. On the 14th of October, his army met William’s near Hastings.

 

There were only nineteen days between Stamford Bridge and Hastings.

 

For me, knowing what happened during those nineteen days changes the way I picture Harold’s final campaign. The man who arrived in Sussex had spent the previous weeks responding to events at opposite ends of his kingdom, and Stamford Bridge deserves to be remembered as a major battle in its own right.

 

Next I’ll look at William’s landing at Pevensey and what his army did after reaching England.

 

Were you taught much about Stamford Bridge, or did most of your school lessons about 1066 concentrate on Hastings?

 

 

 

The Roads Britain Was Preparing to Destroy or Block if Invasion Came

The Roads Britain Was Preparing to Destroy or Block if Invasion Came

In the summer of 1940, Britain was preparing for the possibility that some of its own roads might have to be blocked and some bridges destroyed before an invading army could use them.

image info

Concrete road barriers at Cheriton, Kent, 10th July 1940. An East Kent bus shelter converted into a pillbox can also be seen in the background.

Credit: War Office official photographer, Puttnam / Imperial War Museums. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

After Dunkirk, more than 300,000 Allied servicemen had been evacuated from France, though huge quantities of vehicles, weapons and equipment had been left behind. The speed of the German advance through western Europe had also caused real concern. By June, British planners were looking closely at how an enemy might move inland if troops managed to land.

On the 15th of June 1940, GHQ Home Forces issued instructions for inland anti-tank defences. Stop lines began to take shape across the country, using whatever the landscape already offered. Rivers, canals, railway embankments and marshy ground all had value. Anti-tank ditches filled gaps, pillboxes covered important points and roadblocks were prepared where existing routes cut through the defences.

Near Hoo St Werburgh in Kent, two concrete plinths still survive beside a track leading from Stoke Road. They were part of one of those roadblocks. The wider Hoo defences crossed the peninsula between the Thames and the Medway, and a wartime plan recorded sixty infantry pillboxes and eighteen anti-tank pillboxes around Lodge Hill and Chattenden.

A surviving pillbox on the Taunton Stop Line in Somerset. The photograph was taken in 2006 and shows one of the concrete defensive structures that still survives from Britain’s wartime anti-invasion preparations.

Credit: Gaius Cornelius. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

What interested me while researching this was just how detailed some of the planning became. A road that had once seemed inconsequential suddenly became important because it created a way through a defensive line.

Norfolk gives us some of the clearest surviving evidence. At Bacton Gap on the north Norfolk coast, a Type 22 pillbox was built near the road junction, fourteen anti-tank blocks were placed along the low cliff and a ditch ran for about 350 metres. Three more blocks obstructed Beach Road.

Mundesley, Walcott and Salthouse were also heavily prepared for imminent invasion, with pillboxes, anti-tank obstacles, barbed wire and positions covering the routes inland.

The same sort of planning appeared much further west. The Taunton Stop Line ran for roughly 48 miles from the north Somerset coast towards Seaton in Devon, with more than 300 pillboxes built along it during 1940. Canals, rivers and railway lines were incorporated into the route, then strengthened where necessary.

Bridges were another concern altogether. Axmouth Bridge in Devon was prepared for demolition, with a pillbox covering its approaches. At Blandford Forum in Dorset, road and railway bridges across the River Stour were also prepared for destruction, and roads could be cratered if needed.

Defensive thinking changed during the summer. Sir Alan Brooke replaced Sir Edmund Ironside as Commander-in-Chief Home Forces in July 1940 and placed greater emphasis on mobile reserves. Many of the fixed positions already built remained in place, however, and some of them continued to form part of Britain’s preparations for years afterwards.

The invasion thankfully never came. The ditches were later filled in, the steel obstacles were removed and most of the roadblocks disappeared. Concrete proved harder to get rid of.

That is why pieces of the 1940 defensive landscape can still be found beside roads, fields, waterways, footpaths and on beaches today.

Do you know of any surviving wartime defences near where you live?

The Victoria Hall Disaster: The Afternoon at Least 183 Children Died in Sunderland

The Victoria Hall Disaster: The Afternoon at Least 183 Children Died in Sunderland

On the 16th of June 1883, around 2,000 children went to Sunderland’s Victoria Hall for a Saturday afternoon variety show by travelling entertainers known as the Fays.

The event had been promoted as “the greatest treat for children ever given”. Toys and books were among the prizes, advertisements for the show had been distributed to children through local elementary schools, and most of those filling the hall that afternoon were between seven and eleven years old.

Victoria Hall stood opposite Mowbray Park, at the junction of Toward Road and Laura Street. It had opened in 1872, so the building was still relatively new. The audience was spread between the ground floor, dress circle and gallery, with around 1,100 youngsters sitting in the gallery alone.

Near the end of the performance, certain numbered tickets were announced as prize winners. Gifts had already begun to be handed out downstairs, and large numbers from the gallery left their seats and headed for the staircase.

At the bottom was an inward-opening door that had been bolted partly shut, leaving a gap of only about 20 inches, or 50 centimetres. Sunderland’s Local Studies Centre suggests this was probably intended to control the number passing through at once while tickets were checked.

Few adults were present and there was no organised queue. Those at the front could only squeeze through slowly, while more children continued down the stairs behind them. The stairwell filled until those nearest the bottom were trapped under the pressure of the crowd.

Adults who realised what was happening began pulling children through the gap. Others joined them, and clearing the stairwell took around half an hour.

Sunderland’s Local Studies account records 183 deaths, all from asphyxia. Some families lost every one of their children, while one local Sunday-school Bible class had taken 30 youngsters to the performance and lost all 30.

The death toll differs between surviving sources. The Sunderland memorial records 183, while Historic England now gives a total of 191 and notes that eight traveller children may not have been properly registered at the time.

Funerals began the following Tuesday and continued until Friday. Businesses across Sunderland closed as a mark of respect. A disaster fund helped with funeral expenses and later contributed towards the memorial, while Queen Victoria sent condolences and made a donation.

William McGonagall also wrote about the disaster in a poem titled The Sunderland Calamity.

Inquests were held in Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth. The Bishopwearmouth jury did not place responsibility on one particular person, although the hall manager was criticised. At Monkwearmouth, the jury called for places of entertainment to have enough exits and for both internal and external doors to open outwards. Historic England records that this safety principle was incorporated into legislation by the end of 1883.

A second enquiry was later held, but it still did not establish who had bolted the door.

The memorial created after the disaster depicts a grieving mother holding a dead child. It was moved away from Mowbray Park for many years before being returned there in 2000. Victoria Hall itself survived until 1941, when it was destroyed during an air raid.

The doorway appears to have been restricted to control the flow of children, but nobody was ever able to establish who had actually bolted it that afternoon.

Image info:

Victoria Hall – The Staircase Calamity, contemporary illustration of the Victoria Hall disaster, Sunderland, 16th June 1883. Unknown artist. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Britain Asked Families to Save Paper, Rags… and Bones. But Why?

Britain Asked Families to Save Paper, Rags… and Bones. But Why?

When I was writing recently about the women who collected Britain’s rubbish during the Second World War, I came across one detail that I kept thinking about afterwards. Families were being asked to keep certain things out of the dustbin because they might still be useful.

The Great Round Up, Ministry of Supply / HMSO, artwork by Strube. Imperial War Museums collection. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

One of those things was bones.

It sounds rather strange now, but wartime households were encouraged to save bones alongside waste paper, scrap metal, rubber and old rags. Posters reminded people to separate them from their ordinary rubbish and leave them out for collection.

There was good reason for all this. Before the war Britain brought a great deal of its food, fuel and raw materials in from abroad. Once merchant ships were being attacked and supplies became harder to bring into the country, anything that could be reused at home became more valuable.

A British housewife puts out items for salvage during 1942, Ministry of Information Photo Division. Imperial War Museums, D 7560. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Bones were a surprisingly useful part of that effort. On the 22nd of February 1940, the collection of household bones appeared in a written Parliamentary question. The Minister of Supply confirmed that local authorities had been asked to help with collections and explained that bones were treated in the manufacture of glue, with what remained then being used for fertilisers.

Other wartime publicity went further, telling people that bones were wanted for planes, explosives and fertilisers. Fats could also be extracted during processing for industrial use.

Old Rags Into New Cloth – Salvage in Britain, April 1942, photograph by Richard Stone, Ministry of Information. Imperial War Museums, D 7437. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

 

All of which meant that the remains of dinner might have to linger around the house for a little longer than anyone would probably have preferred. WVS advice even suggested keeping bones in a lidded container until they could be collected.

Paper was everywhere in the salvage campaigns. Newspapers, cardboard and unwanted books could all be gathered up and reused. A Ministry of Information poster from the war claimed that 70 million books had been collected by December 1943. They were sorted rather than all being immediately destroyed: some were pulped, some went towards replacing books in bomb-damaged libraries and others were kept for members of the armed forces.

Old clothing and scraps of material were collected too.

Worn textiles could arrive at salvage factories where they were separated according to their type and condition. Some became wiping cloths for machinery. Knitted material could be broken down and reused in blankets, uniforms and other clothing, while linen and calico were useful in making paper and Admiralty charts. Even material in very poor condition could sometimes find a use in things such as roofing felt or mattress filling.

When clothes were already rationed and families were being encouraged to make do and mend, there probably wasn't an endless supply of perfectly good clothing waiting to be handed over. Salvage really did mean finding some value in things that had reached the end of their ordinary life.

The collections became part of everyday wartime routines. Paper was bundled, metals separated and bones kept aside rather than disappearing into the dustbin. Posters appeared telling households what was wanted, while councils and organisations including the WVS helped organise collections and salvage drives.

Then there were the famous pots and pans.

The aluminium collection campaign is often remembered through “Saucepans for Spitfires”. Families handed over aluminium cookware believing the metal could help aircraft production. The National Archives points out that the government did not actually need all the extra aluminium being collected. But the campaign still gave people at home a very visible way to feel they were contributing.

Going back to those wartime rubbish collections, it makes the contents of the dustbin look rather different.

Before anything was thrown away, people were being encouraged to look at it once more. A newspaper, an old shirt, a broken metal object or the bones left after a meal might still be wanted somewhere else.

I don't think I will ever look at the phrase “wartime salvage” quite the same way again - especially now I know someone had to keep the bones.

The Secret Letters That Helped Send Mary, Queen of Scots to the Executioner

The Secret Letters That Helped Send Mary, Queen of Scots to the Executioner

The Babington Plot of 1586 was one of the most serious threats Elizabeth I faced during her reign. A group of men were planning to kill the Queen, free Mary, Queen of Scots from captivity and place her on the English throne. At the centre of the story were a series of letters that would eventually help bring the plot down.

Anthony Babington with his accomplices, 17th century / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

 What makes the story so compelling is the way politics, religion and personal danger became tangled together.

Mary had been in England since 1568, after fleeing Scotland when her rule there collapsed. She had hoped Elizabeth might help her regain the Scottish throne, but instead she found herself kept under increasingly close supervision.

Her presence in England was always awkward for Elizabeth. Mary had royal blood, she was Catholic and she had a claim to the English throne. Some Catholics who opposed Elizabeth’s religious settlement saw Mary as someone who might one day replace her, and during the years she spent in England her name became linked with several plots against the Queen.

By 1586, Mary was being held at Chartley in Staffordshire. Her movements were restricted and her correspondence was closely watched. Contact with supporters outside her household was difficult, so when a secret way of exchanging letters became available, she began using it.

Those messages were smuggled in and out of Chartley, giving Mary a way to remain in contact with people beyond her household. The system, however, was not as secure as she believed.

Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s principal secretary, had built up a network of informers and agents to investigate threats against the Queen. Instead of shutting Mary’s correspondence down as soon as it was discovered, the authorities allowed it to continue. That gave Walsingham’s men the chance to see who was contacting her and what was being discussed.

Among those writing to Mary was Anthony Babington, a young Catholic gentleman from Derbyshire. He supported Mary and became involved with a group whose plans went much further than simply helping her escape. Foreign support was discussed, along with Mary’s release and the assassination of Elizabeth.

In July 1586, Babington wrote to Mary about the proposed conspiracy. His letter referred to six men who were to carry out the killing of Elizabeth and also discussed plans to free Mary.

The message was written in cipher, but that was not enough to protect it. Thomas Phelippes, one of the men working within Walsingham’s intelligence network, was a skilled codebreaker. Babington’s letter could be intercepted, copied and deciphered before it reached Mary.

Mary replied, discussing preparations for her release as well as other parts of Babington’s plan. Elizabeth’s government later used the letter as evidence that she had accepted the conspiracy. Exactly what Mary meant by some of her words, and how far she supported the proposed assassination, has continued to be debated.

Arrests followed soon afterwards. Babington tried to escape but was caught, and other members of the group were also taken into custody. The plot was stopped before any attempt could be made on Elizabeth’s life.

Mary’s own position became much more dangerous from that point. Her papers were seized and in October 1586 she was brought to trial at Fotheringhay Castle. She denied plotting Elizabeth’s death, questioned the evidence against her and argued that, as a foreign queen, she was not an English subject.

The correspondence with Babington formed an important part of the case, and Mary was found guilty.

Elizabeth now faced a decision that she had avoided for years. Mary was a former queen, a relative and an anointed monarch, so ordering her execution was never going to be a simple matter. At the same time, as long as Mary remained alive, there was always the fear that another conspiracy might gather around her.

Elizabeth eventually signed the death warrant, and on the 8th of February 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle, almost nineteen years after she had first arrived in England.

The part that really brings the Babington Plot to life is the correspondence itself. Babington and Mary were trying to communicate in secret, while Walsingham’s men were quietly following what was being said.

Those letters became some of the most important evidence used against Mary.

Do you think Mary, Queen of Scots knowingly supported the plan to assassinate Elizabeth I, or do you think Walsingham allowed the plot to continue until he had enough evidence to use against her?

 

The Women Who Collected Britain’s Rubbish While the Men Were Away at War

The Women Who Collected Britain’s Rubbish While the Men Were Away at War

One wartime job I had never really thought about was rubbish collection. Women’s wartime work is usually associated with factories, farms and the railways, so I was surprised to find women emptying dustbins and sweeping streets too.

Women of the St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade with their dust carts, London, 1942. Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer. Imperial War Museums, D 8942. Public Domain – expired Crown Copyright. Via Wikimedia Commons.

As men were called into the armed forces or moved into other wartime work, councils began losing some of the people who had carried out these everyday jobs before the war. The rubbish still had to be collected. In January 1943, the subject even reached Parliament. Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, confirmed that dustmen were not generally in a reserved occupation and said that the work could be carried out by men over military age or by women.

By then, women were already doing it. In London, women worked as street cleaners and refuse collectors, pushing handcarts, sweeping gutters and clearing rubbish from the roads. The St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade was working in the capital in 1942, doing a job that before the war would overwhelmingly have been regarded as men’s work.

Mrs G. Warren of the St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade sweeping a London street, 1942. Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer. Imperial War Museums, D 8944. Public Domain – expired Crown Copyright. Via Wikimedia Commons.

It was hard physical labour. Many household dustbins were made from galvanised metal and had to be lifted by hand, and they could be made considerably heavier by ash and cinders from coal fires. A full bin could be extremely heavy. It certainly makes putting a wheelie bin out at the kerb seem rather easy by comparison.

The contents of those bins were changing too. The government wanted households to waste as little useful material as possible, and salvage campaigns asked people to separate paper, metal, bones, rags and other items. One official campaign instructed householders that paper, metal and bones should not go into the dustbin at all, but should be put out separately for collection.

Bones might sound like an especially strange thing to save now, but they had uses in wartime industry. Waste paper was collected for salvage and scrap metal was reused. Kitchen waste was useful as well, particularly for feeding pigs and hens. Even some of the things people would normally have thrown away were now being saved and collected.

That meant more sorting and more collecting for the people doing the rounds. Street cleaners also had the dirt and debris of wartime towns to contend with, and in places affected by air raids they could find themselves working among damaged buildings and piles of rubble.

There was little glamour in carrying bins, shovelling rubbish or spending hours with a broom and handcart, particularly in bad weather. It was simply one of those jobs that could not be left undone for very long.

These are the Home Front stories I particularly enjoy finding. They remind me that, despite everything going on, somebody still had to deal with all the ordinary jobs of everyday life. Rubbish did not disappear because there was a war on, and neither did dirty streets.

Women were among the people helping to keep those everyday services going.

I think I might complain a little less next time I have to drag my own bin outside.

Had you ever heard about women working as refuse collectors and street cleaners during the war?

The Battle of Stamford Bridge: The Victory That Nearly Cost Harold Godwinson England

The Battle of Stamford Bridge: The Victory That Nearly Cost Harold Godwinson England

Harold Godwinson had just won one of the most decisive victories of 1066. The Viking army of Harald Hardrada had been shattered, his own brother Tostig was dead, and the threat from the north appeared to be over. But while Harold was still dealing with the aftermath of the battle, another invasion force was preparing to change England forever.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge, Peter Nicolai Arbo, 1870. Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Today I want to look at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, fought on the 25th of September 1066, because it was not simply a dramatic victory for Harold. It It was also a battle that may have left part of Harold’s army exhausted and battle-weary less than three weeks before he would face William of Normandy at Hastings.The crisis had begun when Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, invaded northern England with a large fleet. He was supported by Harold Godwinson’s own brother, Tostig, who had been exiled from England the previous year after losing his position as Earl of Northumbria. Tostig had turned against Harold and was now helping a foreign king challenge him for the English throne.

Hardrada was not a minor rival. He was one of the most experienced warriors in Europe, a man who had fought across Scandinavia, eastern Europe and the Byzantine world. His claim to England rested partly on earlier agreements involving Scandinavian rulers, and in September 1066 he arrived with a substantial invasion force.

On the 20th of September, Hardrada and Tostig defeated the northern English earls Edwin and Morcar at the Battle of Fulford, just outside York. York surrendered soon afterwards, and the invaders appeared to have secured a major foothold in the north.

Harold Godwinson was in the south of England when the news reached him. For much of the summer, he had been watching the Channel, expecting William of Normandy to invade. Instead, the first major attack came from the opposite direction.

Harold responded with remarkable speed.

He gathered his forces and marched north from London towards Yorkshire. Without modern transport, moving an army such a distance was a considerable undertaking. Men carried weapons, armour and supplies, while horses, carts and pack animals moved with them. Yet Harold appears to have covered roughly 180 to 200 miles in around a week.

Hardrada and Tostig were probably not expecting him so soon.

On the 25th of September, the Norwegian army was gathered near Stamford Bridge, east of York. According to later accounts, many of the Norwegians had left their armour at the ships. They were expecting hostages and provisions rather than the sudden arrival of Harold’s army. 

Then Harold’s army appeared.

Harold is also said to have offered his brother Tostig the return of his earldom if he abandoned Hardrada. Tostig is said to have asked what Harold would give the Norwegian king. Harold supposedly replied that Hardrada could have “seven feet of English ground”, or as much more as he needed because he was taller than most men.

It is a famous story, although it comes from later Scandinavian sources and should not necessarily be treated as a word-for-word record of what was actually said. What we do know is that negotiations failed.

The battle that followed was ferocious.

One of the most famous stories describes a single Norwegian warrior defending the narrow bridge over the River Derwent, holding back the English army while the rest of Hardrada’s forces prepared for battle. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the warrior killed a number of Englishmen before one of Harold’s soldiers finally managed to get beneath the bridge and strike him from below.

Whether every detail happened exactly as later writers described it is impossible to know, but the story reflects just how fierce the fighting became.

Once the English crossed the bridge, the main battle began. Hardrada’s men formed a defensive shield wall, but Harold’s army repeatedly attacked. Hardrada himself was eventually killed, traditionally said to have been struck by an arrow in the throat.

Tostig continued the fight.

Reinforcements arrived from the Norwegian ships, led by Eystein Orre, but they had marched rapidly towards the battlefield and were already exhausted. Scandinavian tradition later remembered their desperate attack as “Orre’s Storm”.

It was not enough.

Tostig was killed and the remaining Norwegian army collapsed. The scale of the defeat appears to have been enormous. Later tradition claimed that the invasion fleet had arrived in hundreds of ships but that only a small fraction were required to carry the survivors home. The exact figures are uncertain, but there can be little doubt that Hardrada’s invasion had been decisively crushed.

Harold Godwinson had achieved something extraordinary. In only a matter of days he had marched an army across England, surprised one of the most feared warrior kings of the age and destroyed a major invasion force.

But the victory came at a terrible moment.

Just three days after Stamford Bridge, on the 28th of September 1066, William of Normandy landed at Pevensey on the Sussex coast.

Harold now faced the situation he had feared all summer. England had been invaded from the south, but his army was hundreds of miles away in Yorkshire after fighting one of the bloodiest battles of the year.

There was no long period to recover, reorganise or replace the men who had been killed and wounded. Harold had to turn around and march south again.

Less than three weeks after Stamford Bridge, he would stand on another battlefield near Hastings.

The victory at Stamford Bridge removed one claimant to the English throne, but it may also have weakened Harold at exactly the moment William needed him to be weakest. That is what makes the battle so important. Harold won brilliantly in the north, but the struggle for England was far from over.

Next, I want to follow William of Normandy as his fleet finally crossed the Channel and landed on the south coast of England.