Senlac Hill

The name Senlac was popularised by the Victorian historian E. A. Freeman, based solely on a description of the battle by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis.

[b][2] Orderic was born in Atcham, Shropshire, England, the eldest son of a French priest, Odeler of Orléans and an English mother.

When Orderic was five, his parents sent him to an English monk with the name of Siward, who kept a school in the Abbey of SS Peter and Paul, at Shrewsbury.

[5][c] In fact, there was a local legend that was maintained for centuries after the battle that the soil in the area turned red after a heavy rainfall.

[7][8][d] .."Asten[e] once distained with native English blood; Whose soil, when yet but wet with any little rain, Doth blush, as put in mind of those there sadly slain, When Hastings' harbour gave unto the Norman powers.

"From Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion 1612[7][10] Freeman suggested that Senlac meant Sand Lake in Old English, with the Norman conquerors calling it in French Sanguelac.

John Horace Round published his "Feudal England: Historical Studies on the XIth and XIIth Centuries" in 1895 in which he strongly criticised the Freeman view.

The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066 at this location. The Saxon position was on top of the hill in which the Abbey later stood, and the Norman position was approximately where the photographer is standing.
The River Asten near Sheepwash Bridge, Bulverhythe . [ e ]