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Battle of Hastings 1066AD - S1 - The Hoar Apple Tree



Who suggested this site and where is it ?

A site proposed by Rebecca Welshman and Simon Coleman on their website, the Battle of Hastings at Heathfield.

We analyse the relevance of the haran apuldran (‘Hoar Apple Tree’) in the ‘D’ text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as an original name for the battlefield and discuss the survival of this name in medieval deeds concerning a nearby place ‘Horeapeltre’. We consider the military and cultural reasons why the battle might have taken place near here and show that the haran apuldran was probably a military assembly point.

Please take a look at the site, there seems to be some valuable research carried out for this website.

Site Concept ?

The argument is that the Saxons forces mustered at Horeapeltre which is where North Down in Heathfield is currently located, this is approximately at the junction of Newick Lane with the A265.

And then the battle took place just outside Cade Street in an area to the North east of Punnets town known as Slaughter Common, this is about 1.5 miles (2.5Km) from the mustering point at Horeapeltre.

Slaughter Common

The name Slaughter Common seems to have been recorded in:

The Highways and Byways of Sussex - V.E.Lewis 1904
Slaughter Common, near Heathfield, is said to be the scene of a more wholesale carnage, Heathfield people claiming that there Caedwalla in 635 fought the Saxons and killed Eadwine, king of Northumbria. Sylvan Harmer, in his manuscript history of Heathfield, is determined that Heathfield shall have the credit of the fray, but, as a matter of fact, if Slaughter Common really took its name from a battle it was a very different one, for Caedwalla and Eadwine met, not at Heathfield, but Hatfield Chase, near Doncaster.

From a historic point of view, the only Battle that could even possibly have been here from the 6 or 700's was the battle between King Offa and the Haestingas in 771AD, where the Haestingas were defeated and absorbed into Mercia.

This battle site has never been found, but would have needed to be on the border of the Kingdom of the Haestingas, so this is a possible site but not for Caedwalla and Eadwine but this would seem the only possibility for this legend.

Landscape details effecting the site


Awaiting article for 1066AD_location




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Author Simon M - Last updated - 2025-11-27 08:19:16
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