Pevensey

Yeah.

That's the whole reason they go to Pevensey.

I don't know the name.

Pevensies are the family name.

Our lovely, our lovely, more like holy beef cow.

Our lovely Pevensey farmers, they have a month, as you know, they have that monthly get together.

And they had somebody talking about the curlew, the bird, yesterday.

I didn't even know that was, I knew it was a

The summer of that year, Robert lands at Portsmouth with an army.

Henry seems to have been preparing at Pevensey, so he thought his brother was going to turn up at Pevensey.

Robert instead ends up at Portsmouth and Robert uses this element of surprise to sit still.

What's wrong with him?

That also leaves us in no doubt as to where William actually landed on the coast.

They said they arrived in Pevensey.

And that's why I've come here to Pevensey Castle to begin my journey.

But the first thing you notice about this ancient coastal defensive site is that it lies a good mile from the coast.

The Romans had established a fort at Pevensey some eight centuries before the Norman invasion.

At that time, the castle stood on a finger of firm ground, a projection between the marshy inlet of Pevensey Bay and the long beach that once ran beneath the castle walls.

But what role did this spot play for Duke William? I've arranged to meet David Carpenter,

So

Harald had been king for nine months and had just destroyed one of the greatest Viking armies of the age.

Two days later, William landed at Pevensey on the Sussex coast.

Harold turned his army around and marched south.

He paused briefly in London to rest his forces and gather reinforcements.

So Robert Curthose, the eldest son of William the Conqueror, he's Duke of Normandy, but he wants to be King of England.

His younger brother is actually the King of England, Henry I, and Robert's intending to invade from a place in northeast of Normandy across the Pevensey in a, in a repeat of what his father did to try and reclaim this kingdom for what he considers to be his, his rightful throne.

However, Henry is absolutely not having this.

Henry is waiting for him, and Robert has to redirect, and he redirects to Portchester specifically, according to one of the 12th century historians, Wace, but other sources say it's Portsmouth Harbor.

There are accounts, the Norman accounts say there were shipwrecks during this passage, so it's incredibly dangerous.

We don't know what ships were lost.

They could have been horse transports, they could have been sort of food supplies, uh, which may have implications later when he's landing in the Pevensey area.

So yeah, the weather is really very, I think, significant 'cause it has those implications as well for Harold's intelligence.

This is rectangular in shape, and is contained by a high wall built of rubble stone and narrow bricks, with round hollow bastions at intervals.

One may also see such a stationary camp at Richborough near Sandwich, and at Pevensey in Sussex, and at Silchester near Reading, but the two latter are not rectangular.

One end of this fort was on the top of the Walbrook bank, and the other, if you look in your map, on the site of Mincing Lane.

This gives a length of about 700 yards by a breadth of 350, which means an enclosure of about 50 acres.

End of footnote.

We know what happened with other cities.

Anderida, now called Pevensey, was taken by the Saxons, and all its inhabitants, man, woman, and child, were slaughtered, so that it became a waste until the Normans built a castle within the old walls.

Canterbury, Silchester, Porchester, Colchester, all were taken, their people massacred, the walls left standing, the streets left desolate.

As they

waited in the shadow of the old Roman fort here at Pevensey, Swain turned up on horseback for one last appeal to his family to help get him reinstated.

Somehow or other, he managed to persuade his cousin Bjorn to speak on his behalf to the king.

Bjorn set off for Bossom with Swain and just

So Harold rallied his weary troops and headed south to meet his destiny.

At Stamford Bridge, King Harold had pulled off one of the greatest victories in British history.

But three days later, William of Normandy landed at Pevensey, 250 miles to the south.

Harold had another mountain to climb.

We have the Greensand Way, which is the east-west route, which goes to Hardham and then Chichester.

Uh, and we have a road going eastwards to Arlington and then on to Pevensey.

As well as the roads heading off in all directions, the settlement is also very close to a waterway.

The River Ouse is a tidal river.

It's absolutely kind of like, "We're on." You know, "We've been waiting for a month, and this, what if the wind changes back the other way?" You know? So all of a sudden it's go, go, go, go, go.

So they sail across the channel on the night of the 27th, 28th of September and arrive on the coast of Sussex at a place called Pevensey, again, shown on the tapestry, on the morning of the 28th of September.

If you think about the time it takes news to travel, okay? So you can get across the channel in 24 hours, but you can't get from, from Pevensey to York in a few hours.

So if you think about it, Harold breaks off his defenses.

He lets his army go in in early September.