Amazing and weird history fact:
Did You Know? The Battle of Hastings didn’t take place in Hastings. The famous Battle of Hastings actually took place 7 miles from Hastings in a town that is today known as Battle.
The battle of Hastings is something of a misnomer. Although William, having landed at Pevensey, quickly moved along the coast to Hastings and established his camp there, the actual engagement with King Harold took place some six miles to the northwest, at a site that has been known ever since as Battle. This location has been contested in recent years, but the arguments for alternative sites are extremely flimsy, whereas the evidence for the traditional site remains overwhelmingly strong.
Having won the battle of Hastings, William was determined to commemorate his victory and atone for the bloodshed by building an abbey – Battle Abbey – and happily its ruins still survive today. According to a host of 12th-century chroniclers (not just, as is often claimed, the Chronicle of Battle Abbey itself) the high altar of the abbey church was erected over the place where Harold was killed. Even William’s obituary in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written by an Englishman soon after the king’s death in 1087, noted that Battle Abbey was built “on the very spot” where God had granted the Conqueror his victory.
This strong chronicle evidence is supported by the site of the abbey itself, which from monks’ point of view was badly situated on sloping ground and ill-supplied with water. It is a location that makes sense only if William insisted they build in that precise location, as tradition maintained was the case. source
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