Battle Fields and Abbeys

Today again I set to find some Roman ruins. One of the things that is on my list of things to do while we are here in England. Got lost again. I ended up fifty miles south of where I thought I was heading, so I decided to go somewhere else. My sense of direction is most unusually out of wack. I never get lost (almost anyway). My excuse is that the sun is in the wrong place and there are "too" many roundabouts when driving on one's own. 

All was not lost, even though I was. When I eventually found a bit of road that I could pull up on, I discovered that I was not too far from a town called Battle. It is just up the road from a seaside town called Hastings. So I headed out in East Sussex for Battle going through all sorts of Villages and stopping to look at the odd 12th century church here and there. Heaven really. Mum (Gran) may have worked out by now that I am talking about the Battle of Hastings. When I got there I found the remains of a very grand Abbey set on the hilltop where the Battle of Hastings had taken place. Genna and Izzy, Gran will be able to explain what the Battle of Hastings was all about. 

I was able to walk around the hillside where William the Conqueror and his soldiers and fought their way to the top of the hill to fight with the English under King Harold, which they did three times, and imagine something of what it must have been like. There is no signs of the battle today though. After William had become the King of England, he ordered a group of Benedictine Monks to build a Monastery on the top of the hill where the battle had taken place. The Altar for the original church at the Abbey was placed on the spot where it was believed Harold had been killed. Sadly the monastery was dissolved during the reformation and many of the buildings were destroyed, the church completely.  I was able to wander around the ruins for a long time and think about what it must have been like in it's heyday. 

Here are a couple of pictures, one of the battle field and one of a part of the building that the monks lived in.

By the way, I forgot to mention that yesterday I popped into the local parish church near where we are staying. It is called St Dunstan's. The church dates back to the 11th Century. During the 1400's a local family built a chantry chapel on the side and I found when I went into the chapel that it was dedicated to St Thomas More. I couldn't work out why this would be until I found some information to say that his head had been placed in the crypt of the chapel as a relic. All sorts of bits the history that I have read about and studied for years and years is becoming a whole lot more real. Tomorrow, once again I set out to find some Roman ruins.