Three Days After Stamford Bridge, William’s Fleet Appeared off the Sussex Coast

Three Days After Stamford Bridge, William’s Fleet Appeared off the Sussex Coast

On the 28th of September 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, landed at Pevensey in Sussex. Three days earlier Harold Godwinson had been at Stamford Bridge, near York, fighting Harald Hardrada and his own brother Tostig. Both were killed and the Norwegian invasion was broken.

William had been ready to cross for weeks. His fleet gathered near the mouth of the River Dives during August, but sailing depended upon the wind and for about a month it was against him. A storm on the 12th of September drove the ships east towards Saint-Valery at the mouth of the Somme, which meant more waiting.

 

They eventually sailed on the 27th.

William’s own vessel was the Mora, given to him by his wife Matilda. Around it sailed hundreds of other ships carrying the invasion army, its horses and equipment. We cannot put an exact number on the fleet. Medieval writers disagreed and some produced enormous figures; English Heritage puts the likely number somewhere between 700 and 1,000.

They crossed during the night and reached Pevensey before dawn.

Pevensey looked rather different from the place we see now. The Roman fort stood much closer to the sea, with marshland around it, and its great walls had already survived for centuries. William’s men made use of what was already there, creating a temporary fortification within the Roman enclosure, repairing sections of the walls and cutting a ditch across the peninsula.

The Bayeux Tapestry also gives us some of the practical details of the invasion. Men are shown unloading armour and equipment, horses are brought from the ships and food is prepared. William had brought far more across the Channel than soldiers alone.

Pevensey was only the first stop. On the following day the Normans moved towards Hastings and established themselves there. William’s men took supplies from the surrounding countryside and there was burning and pillaging in the area while they waited.

Harold and his family held extensive lands in Sussex, so William had landed in a part of England closely connected with the English king.

The news reached Harold more than 200 miles away after what had already been a punishing campaign. English Heritage records that he had travelled more than 200 miles in the space of a fortnight before Stamford Bridge. Some of those same men had then fought a major battle.

Harold came south again, stopping in London and collecting more troops before travelling on towards Sussex.

There were only nineteen days between Stamford Bridge on the 25th of September and Hastings on the 14th of October.

Harold and many of his men had covered an enormous distance and fought one major battle before they ever faced William’s army.

What do you make of Harold’s decision to head south so soon after Stamford Bridge?

Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 38, showing William’s fleet crossing the Channel and arriving at Pevensey. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why Were Enormous Water Tanks Built in Britain’s Parks During the War?

Why Were Enormous Water Tanks Built in Britain’s Parks During the War?

On the 20th of May 1941, Herbert Morrison told Parliament what had happened during one particularly difficult air raid.

High-explosive bombs had broken the water mains. Firefighters switched to a reserve static supply, but that was hit as well. The pumps were smashed and men were killed or injured.

Hoses were then run from another source some distance away. A large building collapsed across them and the water was cut off again.

Incidents like this were one reason huge Emergency Water Supply reservoirs began appearing around Britain. Historic England records that they were being constructed in towns and cities across the country from late 1941, giving fire brigades a supply that did not depend entirely upon the mains.

They were put on open ground, including parks, lawns and bomb sites.

Weston-super-Mare eventually had fifteen.

Three stood on Alexandra Parade beside the Odeon cinema and another three were placed on Beach Lawn. Others were built on bomb sites and in residential areas. Historic England’s study of wartime aerial photographs found that none of Weston’s fifteen reservoirs appeared before July 1942.

By the 26th of November 1942, MPs were discussing a different issue: children getting into the tanks.

Metal mesh had already been tried, but Morrison said children were dancing on it within an hour and one fell through. He announced that rings of barbed wire would be fitted to make access more difficult.

People were also throwing rubbish into the reservoirs and interfering with pipes and valves. Morrison described the supplies as being of “first-rate importance” to the war effort.

At Weston-super-Mare, the three reservoirs on Alexandra Parade were still standing when an RAF photograph was taken on the 13th of January 1946. By then they no longer contained water. Historic England records that they had been removed by 1948.

Their purpose was straightforward: if bombing had broken the mains, firefighters needed another source of water close enough to use.

It is another often-overlooked reminder of how much had to be planned for war. Everything had to be considered, including what would happen if something as basic as the water supply suddenly failed.

Did your town have one of these Emergency Water Supply tanks during the war?

Ministry of Information Photo Division, Marchant’s Hill School, Hindhead, Surrey, 1944. The large pool shown in the photograph was actually a wartime static emergency water tank, built so that it could also be used as a swimming pool by the children. Imperial War Museums collection. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

At 3.50pm, Two Explosions Tore Through Albion Colliery- 290 Men and Boys Never Came Home

At 3.50pm, Two Explosions Tore Through Albion Colliery- 290 Men and Boys Never Came Home

At about 3.50pm on the 23rd of June 1894, two loud bangs were heard at Albion Colliery in Cilfynydd, near Pontypridd. Dust and smoke rose from the shafts. In all, 290 men and boys were killed.

The colliery began producing coal in August 1887. By 1893, around 1,500 men and boys worked there. A number had travelled to Cilfynydd from elsewhere in Wales in search of work.

There was no accurate record of exactly how many men had been underground when the explosion occurred, adding to the confusion as relatives searched for missing family members. A few men were brought out alive, and most of those who were rescued later died from their injuries.

Bodies recovered from the mine were taken to a hayloft above the colliery stables, where relatives were asked to identify them. Relatives searched by lantern light during the identification process.

Some of the bodies were so badly injured that identification was difficult. In at least three cases, families took away the wrong body and later had to return it.

Albion employed men from well beyond Cilfynydd. Workers from North and West Wales were living in lodgings near the colliery, and men from the Mountain Ash area had also moved there after Phillip Jones became manager. Not all of them had brought their families with them. Some wives and children remained in other villages and towns while the men worked at the pit.

An inquest opened in Pontypridd the following month, but witnesses disagreed about where the first ignition had occurred. The jury concluded that gas had exploded and that coal dust had helped carry the blast through the workings.

Barrister J. Roskill was later asked to examine the disaster. His report placed the first ignition at blasting timber. He believed this had ignited accumulated gas, with the coal dust then carrying the explosion further through the mine.

Roskill criticised inadequate watering to control coal dust and the practice of blasting timber while men were still working underground.

Albion's 290 deaths were the highest then recorded in a South Wales mining disaster. The figure was not surpassed until the 14th of October 1913, when 439 miners were killed at Senghenydd. 

The scale of the loss is difficult to take in. 290 men and boys were killed in a single afternoon, leaving families without husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. In a place where so many households depended on the colliery, the effects reached far beyond the pit itself. Homes across Cilfynydd were left in mourning, neighbours lost friends and relatives, and the whole community had to live with the aftermath of one of the worst mining disasters South Wales had seen.

Albion Colliery, Cilfynydd, c.1894. Unknown photographer. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Britain Would Not Defend the Channel Islands - Guernsey Parents Had Hours to Decide Whether Their Children Should Leave

Britain Would Not Defend the Channel Islands - Guernsey Parents Had Hours to Decide Whether Their Children Should Leave

On the 19th of June 1940, families in Guernsey learned that the Channel Islands were to be demilitarised. British forces would be withdrawn, and civilians who wanted to leave would be given the chance to do so.

Schoolchildren could be evacuated to Britain. They were to be registered that evening and brought to St Peter Port harbour at eight o’clock the following morning, packed and ready to leave.

France was collapsing under the German advance. German forces now held ports and airfields only a short distance from the islands, which British planners had long regarded as difficult and costly to defend. The War Cabinet decided on the 19th of June that the Channel Islands should be demilitarised, and ships were sent so that civilians who wished to leave could do so. Evacuation began the next morning.

The Guernsey Evening Press of the 20th of June described thousands of people crowding the narrow streets making last-minute arrangements. It also recorded that “Nowhere in the town could a suitcase be purchased.”
Families were looking for luggage, packing clothes, working out who would go and getting children ready for the harbour. The evacuation was not completed in a single morning; boats continued to leave over the next few days as places were found for those who had decided to go.

Thousands of Guernsey schoolchildren were evacuated at very short notice. Children of school age travelled in their school groups, with some mothers accompanying them as helpers. Mothers with children under five were allowed to travel with their young children. For many of those leaving, it was the first time they had ever left Guernsey.

Evacuation was voluntary, so every household had to make its own decision. Children sometimes left while their parents stayed behind. Some families managed to leave together, while others remained on the island. Nobody could know at that point how long any separation might last.

The other islands responded differently. Alderney’s authorities recommended evacuation and most of the population left. In Sark, most people stayed. In Jersey, more than half the population initially registered to evacuate, but only about 6,600 eventually left.
Guernsey saw a much larger exodus. Around 17,000 people left, about two-fifths of the island’s population according to contemporary parliamentary figures. Four-fifths of Guernsey’s children were evacuated.

On the 28th of June, German aircraft attacked Guernsey. At St Peter Port, tomato trucks at the harbour were mistaken for military vehicles. Thirty-three people were killed and 67 were injured.

On the 30th of June, German troop-carrying aircraft landed at Guernsey airport and the occupation began. German forces arrived in Jersey on the 1st of July.

The word evacuation can sound orderly. In Guernsey it meant thousands of people making last-minute arrangements, shops running out of suitcases and children expected at the harbour the next morning.

I’d especially like to hear from anyone with a Channel Island family connection to this period. Did someone in your family leave in June 1940, or did they stay through the occupation?

And if this had been your family, do you think you could have put your child on that boat the next morning?

Image info:
Two Guernsey women with children collecting Red Cross parcels from Le Riche’s shop in St Peter Port during the occupation. Imperial War Museums, HU 25920 / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Mary, Queen of Scots on Trial at Fotheringhay

Mary, Queen of Scots on Trial at Fotheringhay

By the autumn of 1586, Mary, Queen of Scots had lived in England for more than eighteen years. She had arrived in 1568 after fleeing Scotland following her defeat at the Battle of Langside, hoping that Elizabeth I might help restore her to the Scottish throne. Instead, she spent the years that followed under guard in a succession of houses and castles. By October 1586 she was at Fotheringhay, and the discovery of the Babington Plot had placed her in immediate danger of prosecution and execution.

In my previous post, I looked at Anthony Babington and the secret correspondence intercepted by Francis Walsingham’s intelligence network. When the plot was uncovered, Mary’s rooms were searched and her papers taken. Her ciphers and correspondence were examined, while her secretaries, Claude Nau and Gilbert Curle, were questioned about letters which the English government believed connected her directly to the conspiracy against Elizabeth.

Before the main proceedings at Fotheringhay began, there was already disagreement over whether Mary should answer to Elizabeth’s commissioners. On the 12th of October she refused to submit to them and repeated her objections in further answers that day and on the 13th. Mary had been forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in 1567, but for most of her life she had been treated as royalty. She had been crowned Queen of Scots as a baby, ruled Scotland in her own right and briefly been Queen of France during her marriage to Francis II. She regarded her imprisonment in England as very different from being one of Elizabeth’s subjects.

The hearing finally began on the 14th of October and continued the following day. The commissioners questioned Mary about the Babington correspondence and the claim that she had approved a conspiracy which included Elizabeth’s assassination. Nau and Curle also appeared repeatedly in the evidence because of their involvement in handling Mary’s correspondence.

Mary had to answer the accusations before the commissioners herself. Her papers were already in government hands, and she questioned the use of copies of letters rather than originals. She denied approving Elizabeth’s murder and disputed evidence attributed to the men who had worked in her household.

Something I think is easily lost when we reduce this story to “Mary was tried and found guilty” is just how much argument took place at Fotheringhay. She challenged the letters, the testimony and the authority of the men sitting before her. Her objections about jurisdiction were serious enough that lawyers had already been considering the problem of proceeding against a woman who claimed the privileges of a sovereign ruler.

Once the hearings finished, the commissioners returned to London. They met again in the Star Chamber at Westminster on the 25th of October, where Mary was found guilty without being present. Parliament then pressed Elizabeth to carry out the sentence, with petitions presented during November, and Mary’s condemnation was publicly proclaimed in December.

For the rest of that winter Mary remained at Fotheringhay. Elizabeth still had to decide whether the conviction should end in execution, and this was a decision involving far more than the fate of one prisoner. Mary had once ruled Scotland, her son James VI now sat on the Scottish throne, and her treatment was being followed outside England as well as within it.

On the 1st of February 1587, Elizabeth signed the warrant authorising Mary’s execution. A week later, on the 8th of February, Mary was executed at Fotheringhay Castle.

The warrant itself would now become part of the controversy. Elizabeth’s secretary William Davison was later blamed for the way it had been handled and for the execution going ahead when it did.

That is where I want to pick up the story in my next Tudor post: Elizabeth, the death warrant and what happened during Mary’s final days at Fotheringhay.

What do you think mattered more at Fotheringhay - the evidence against Mary, or whether England had the right to judge her at all?

Image info:

Mary, Queen of Scots, engraving by James Thomson, 1829. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

London’s Deep-Level Air-Raid Shelters

London’s Deep-Level Air-Raid Shelters

Beneath Clapham South station are two long tunnels which were once filled with thousands of bunks. Some of the old signs and iron bedsteads are still there today.

Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer / Imperial War Museums / Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain.

Clapham South was one of eight deep-level shelters built beneath London during the Second World War. The others were at Belsize Park, Camden Town, Chancery Lane, Goodge Street, Stockwell, Clapham North and Clapham Common.

Today I want to share a little more about them.

The government approved the shelters in November 1940, at a time when London was being heavily bombed. Each was built roughly 30 metres below ground and was around 400 metres long, with space planned for about 8,000 people.

There were upper and lower levels, bunks, toilets, canteens and first-aid facilities. The tunnels were divided into smaller sections, and those sections were given the names of historic British naval commanders. With thousands of people potentially sleeping underground at once, even finding the right part of the shelter had to be organised.

Something else about the design is easily overlooked. London Transport had hopes that the tunnels might eventually become part of an express railway after the war, with trains running under parts of the existing network. That scheme never went ahead.

The shelters themselves took until 1942 to complete. The main Blitz on London had ended in May 1941, so they missed the period when the demand for deep civilian shelter had been greatest.

They still found plenty of use. Goodge Street was taken over for military purposes and was later used as a headquarters by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clapham South housed troops from 1943, while Chancery Lane was allocated for protected government and military use.

Then came the V-weapons.

The first V-1 flying bomb hit London on the 13th of June 1944. Clapham South opened to civilian shelterers on the 19th of July, and V-2 rockets began striking London later that year.

Several of the deep-level shelters were opened to civilians during these attacks.

I find the dates themselves tell the story well enough. Approved in 1940, finished in 1942 and finally opened to large numbers of Londoners in 1944. By then the threat above ground had changed completely.

Most photographs of wartime Underground sheltering show crowded station platforms. These tunnels were something else entirely: purpose-built spaces much further beneath the streets, large enough for thousands of people to spend the night.

If you have ever been inside Clapham South or another surviving wartime shelter, I’d love to hear what stood out to you.

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?