I am still investigating the ruins but it is clear from what we know so far that this is the missing link that allows us to understand the Norman invasion and the real origin and course of the Battle Of Hastings. The present discovery of William's fort, on the site of a prior Roman fort and Saxon burh shows other accounts of William's landing over the last 1000 years to be pure fabrication based upon speculation about sea level and the misguided speculation about the geography of the site in 1066.
William's landing place, Hastings, firmly at it's center and being the absolute pivot of William's plan , through both the geography of the shallow lagoonal bay west of the current 'Castle Hill' (i.e modern Hastings), with its then deep tidal Priory Stream.
And for the first time acknowledging its people of 1066 - their role in the invasion realized and acknowledged here for the first time as 'The Hestengs' or Horse Followers (hesta - horses) The way the 'e' and the 'ae' - both being pronounced and taking meaning - a matter of dialect between those with a Germanic accent and the Hestengs who were ancient - arriving half a million years ago from Denmark (following horses, as continental glaciers melted and land and grass emerged on peninsulas westward toward the warming oceans) (some of the oldest horse fossils being found near Hastings from half a million years ago) - so Hestengs identified clearly and deliberately as such by William on the Bayeux Tapestry (literally Hest-Eng - 'Horse meadow' from the Danish) (rather than thought and described previously as being 'Followers of a nebulous Haesta'). The Hestengs selling William horses for his cavalry when and because Harold did not use cavalry and did not indeed recognize the Hestengs as revealed through the spelling on his maps and coinage. Harold being a farmer (Anglo Saxon {Meadow-plougher} or farmer)
Hastings and its people, themselves, thus historically being trivialized on the periphery of the invasion,- Indeed, both overlooked by Harold - to his demise - and ever since - until this listing. But here shown to be the key to the events that transpired and explaining exactly why Hastings does not appear in the Domesday Book.
(Below is a copy of a letter I sent to Hastings Museum.)
The location of the ruin is adjacent to the original entrance of a deep tidal inlet of the Priory Stream. The inlet and its seaward alluvial deposits - derived from the flooding of a large catchment, - its appearance as a small stream on maps and prints deceptive. In flood it required a substantial 100 foot wide bridge to resist it, carving out a gully which provided a tidal inlet and haven - navigable when back-flooded by the sea. The gully may still be present beneath the sea, there forming over millennia, and indeed, this sub-sea terrain might have been responsible for the flooding of Harold Place, at the site of the stream's exit to the sea, in the early 1900s, - just as high tides had likewise washed away the America ground in 1820 and the Roman fort (positioned on the stream's banks to make use of the deep water in an otherwise shallow bay) and to guard the tidal access to the narrow Priory stream - which was still navigable in the early 1700s - as shown on crude maps of the time - (the bay itself referred to as 'Pond-bay' in the 1825 guide book to Hastings). The stream itself having carved a deep gully in flood which was back-filled by the sea at high tide. Likewise William's fort, built on the site, would have been washed away by the same sporadic, unpredictable high tides (created by the position of Hastings on the English channel which funnels random tides from the North sea due to the collision of deep depressions there) which would scour the banks of the gully, with an outgoing tide, (like the river Mersey for example) exactly where the Roman fort , the Saxon burh and William's fort were situated, exactly to make use of the high water-level on the stream's steep banks for loading and unloading whilst boats could remain level up against the bank and horses could walk off of a ramp.... A high tide was thus more damaging than a storm to the site due to a rapid tidal outflow of a large volume of water in the haven, through Priory Stream's narrow gorge - created in flood from ground water and from rapid outlet of the tidal flood. Water level and the height of the tide being crucial to this process, determining the volume of the water in the haven at high tide and the rate it would efflux as the tide receded. Thus sea levels do not appear to have changed since 1066 but the narrow entrance to the tidal 'haven' as recorded on the earliest Speed maps and an early map c1700 (which I will reveal) may have been partially blocked by the great floods of the 1200s.
Originally the area appears to have been grazing land of the Hestengs (horse herders or followers) - and not followers of Haesta - as has been described previously in history books (thus explained below)(see Wikipedia etc.)
This interpretation of - Hesteng - as seen most prominently on the Bayeux tapestry. William advertising the fact - his clue to what had really happened in 1066. Harold's navy was in all probability to the west of Hastings in Pevensey and the Isle Of Wight. together with his archers and any cavalry he might have had as a mobile response unit to repel or delay William's fleet - just as the British had done prior to invading Danes. However William had outmaneuvered Harold and with a falling tide and wind against them - Harold's deep keeled warships (as shown in early depictions of him) could not launch or catch William's fleet. William thus building a Motte at the deep water entrance to the Priory stream so that the deep keeled boats of Harold's fleet could not land behind him. (nor any subsequent invader)
William had built his fleet bespoke, to land on the shallow lagoonal beach at Hastings- which as shown on a Yeakell map of 1778 had tidal lagoons (called 'Pondbay' in the 1825 guide book of Hastings.) in which William crucially could scuttle his boats utilizing a design feature observed in Viking long ships. 'A drain plug', I propose for the first time that this plug was key to understanding the transport of livestock by Vikings in relatively small boats, allowing them to be scuttled in shallow water and allowing his horses (or other large animals) to swim to shore - his larger boats mooring in the deep water of the Priory inlet at the site of the Hesteng's fort on top of the old Roman fort and unloading via a ramp with the boat level.. Moreover his horses had been largely towed across the channel in barges without the adornment of dragons on the prow and lacking rigging to avoid heeling in the wind. They are shown having been cut in two, on the Bayeux tapestry, so that the horses could walk out. Then probably stacked to make space on a crowded beach. All of these facts, about the landing of William's fleet, are new revelations - previously not known since 1066. This latter observation concerning the 'Drain Plug' would allow Vikings to steel and trade horses. IIndeed I propose for the first time that the word 'Henge' as in 'Stone Henge' is really a declension of 'Hesteng' - a small meadow and enclosure for horses. Thus explaining the origin of Henges of which there are 100 in Britain. They derive from livestock trading, the Danes bringing the technology of iron in the form of magnets to navigate and build tracks between them and trading horses and livestock - with other horse traders such as the semi-nomadic 'Hestengs' and with the first farmers who could buy 'ploughs' (or Seaxes from them). Such places would also host every other conceivable type of social event as it would be a meeting place for nomadic and farming peoples. (This is a new observation to history)
The Bayeaux tapestry was clearly made to deflect attention from the Hestengs who had provided the horses for William's army. More-over William had spread the word (through literate people - (who he trusted less than those who were not) that he would be landing at Pevensey - so that Harold would have his navy there. William possibly sent a skirmishing group to engage them - together with his literate followers who he had also used to spread the subterfuge before the battle. Hence they could not see William's technically secret method of landing on the shallow lagoonal beach of Hastings.(revealed here for the first time) Harold would have believed the subterfuge as his boats required deep water (shown on records of the time) and could not have landed en-masse on the shallow bay at Hastings, - William designing his fleet to do so - knowing that he would be welcomed by the Hestengs who had supplied him with horses). Perhaps a relative of his sacking and stealing horses from Hastings in 1011, thus proving that horses could be transported across the channel in small boats.
Finally - Harold did not know that there had been a Roman fort at Hastings ( just as- until this observation - it was believed in the present day that there had not been a Roman fort there- as until now there was no evidence) as there was at Pevensey, and so he would have believed William would have intended to land at Pevensey with its Roman fort, especially if his spies had told him so. I advocate that William told none of the force that he used where he was going other than he might have let out that it was Pevensey. Like on D-Day when 150000 troops did not know where they were when they landed. (secrecy and subterfuge had won the day - the fleet followed William to their landing site) Hastings did not appear in the Domesday book, notbecause it didn't exist but it no longer had to pay taxes. The land was free to the Hestengs after hundreds of years of having been ruled by the farmer Saxons and they may have continued to supply horses to William - their venerated messiah (albeit that they were illiterate.). I wonder if the semi - wild ponies of the moors and of the New Forest are their descendants?
The Battle of Hastings was won when William had landed his ships unopposed with the collaboration of the Hestengs.
The story rings true 'That upon setting foot on land - he held his hands up and said "I have taken England between mine own hands"
Noting that the above fits exactly with the records of Battle Abbey from 1097 which describe William's castle to be 'at the foot of a cliff before it was washed away'.
Below I explain the origins of the Battle Of Hastings in terms of a pre-existing feud between farmers (Anglo-Saxons (Anglo-Saxons - meaning 'Ploughed Land' or meadow (see-below)- hence, farmers, -and horse 'herders' (Hestengs - horse followers - literally 'horse meadow ' from the Danish as clearly written on the Bayeux tapestry). - the area of Hastings traditionally being their land for grazing before Harold's or even the Saxon's or Roman's arrival to take their grazing land.
Because of this feud - the Hestengs would supply William with horses for a cavalry which Harold did not use in battle and allow William to land at Hastings unopposed, using their horses to beat Harold.
The division between the Hestengs and Harold would arise from the fact that 'horse herders' - or followers - from where the name ''Hesteng' (Hest Danish Horse - Eng - meadow) derives , as seen on the Bayeux Tapestry - were not recorded in the earliest records of land ownership prior to 1066 - only half the land was recorded officially - the rest assumed to be barren by historians, - I pose that indeed it was barren as far as Harold was concerned as it probably did not yield taxes- prior to 1066. The 'Hestengs' acknowledged by the Romans in the name Hastingceaster - before the true Iron Age arrived in Britain with the Anglo-Saxons - and in fact naming their fort after the 'tribe'
Indeed I think it likely that the Hestengs - of Danish origin - probably spoke a different language to Harold - himself primarily of Germanic (Saxon - or 'farming') origin.
Thus the ancestral name of the Haestingas - as seen also seen in 'Hastingleigh' (Really 'Horse meadow' (Hestengleigh) also from the Danish)) and a number of other towns with that prefix around to the east of Hastings and their locale - was not regarded by Harold - to derive from its real original historical routes of a quasi nomadic 'Horse-people', 'horse meadow','horse followers' etc. He preferring the word 'Hastings' to 'Hestengs' (as in records of land ownership - coins etc) - so denying the historical claims of the Hestengs to their traditional lands and the name 'Hastings' emphasizing his own and the Saxons influence in bringing the technology of iron to plough and farm land with the coming of the iron age to Britain, a land previously used by the herders of livestock. As a Saxon (from the word 'Se-ax' - I believe meaning Plough - generally a wooden handled Iron implement - Anglo derivative from the Danish Eng for meadow)) Anglo-Saxon thus meaning 'Ploughed Meadow' or 'farmer'.) (similarly England - Meadowland - Poland - 'Ploughed land' from the Danish for plough) (Saxony -Ploughed land)
Harold was thus a farmer and the Hestengs 'Herdsmen'. Hence a strong division and source of contention. This might well have been why Harold did not use cavalry and rather the Hestengs supplying William with horses and his cavalry and allowing unopposed access to the port of the 'Hestengs' as a part of the deal.
In fact this could well be the later origin of the dispute of ownership of the land known as the 'America-Ground' -on the exact site of the invasion in 1827-29. A strong unwritten historical and traditional claim to land in the area from 'herders' - (or 'Nomads) as opposed to farmers having transcended many centuries.
Pevensey by distinction would be firmly, Historically under Saxon influence - perhaps Harold had warships there. Perhaps the Saxons had first landed there hundreds of years earlier.
This is why the landing was at Hestengs and why it is recorded on the Bayeux tapestry as such.This might also be a good reason why William would keep Harold's body and bury it - forever in prison - in the Bailey of his castle - on the promontory beneath Castle Hill. - Probably still there as the records show that the internal wall of 'Hastingceaster' - built on the ruins of the Roman fort - was 1600 meters. (And upon which William built his castle )
Kind Regards
Peter Reynolds