Back in May Chris Russell phoned up to see if I was interested in a trip to Battle, where English Heritage (the body responsible for looking after the bits of our history still owned by the state) were presenting a display called ARMIES OF THE SUSSEX COAST: from the Romans to D-Day. This was billed as "A recreation of some of the invaders and defenders of the South Coast through the ages". Never having been to Battle before, I naturally accepted.

The journey would normally take 40 or 50 minutes on a clear road but being a Bank Holiday, the roads were infested with traffic jams, so we worked our way down via country lanes, getting lost as expected. We got there before the demonstrations started, however, and trudged onto the site from the car parks (grassy fields borrowed for the event).

For those of you not familiar with it, Battle is a village grown up around the Abbey of the same name, built to commemorate the Battle of Hastings, and situated on the battlefield itself. The town of Hastings is a few minutes further south.

As we followed the crowds into the grounds, we discovered we were walking along the slope originally occupied by the Norman army, and the display taking place on the site of the battle of Hastings itself. The Abbey was built on top of the ridge occupied by the English army. Both slopes were reasonably smooth, though of course not bowling green quality, but there's no telling what they were like in 1066. The dark areas on the map are rougher ground. I was quite suprised at how small the site was. Admittedly, I have never sat down and worked out how much space the armies would have taken up, but having wargamed Hastings (in 15mm at 1:20) I always imagined much more space on the field.

The opposing ridges are roughly V shaped with the English left and Norman right approaching each other. Unless there has been extensive landscaping since 1066, the two fronts were either angled away from each other, or the Norman line ran down its slope and onto the English one. On the map, the English would have been lined up just in front of the Abbey wall (a line drawn through "static displays" would mark the crest of the ridge, running off the edge of the map past "portaloos". The crest follows the abbey site around the hill towards the shop. Powdermill Lane marks the top of the slope on the other side of the valley, and the Normans would have been deployed on the slope between "way in" and "traders", along the dotted line, or else coming off their slope at the foot of display area 1 and running across the Saxon slope towards the word "display area 2". The junction of the two slopes meets roughly along the line marking the bottom of Display areas 1 and 2, parallel with Powdermill Lane.

The display opened with the Ermine Street Guard marching down the hill through Display Area 1. They marched about a bit, did a few manoeuvres, showed off their armour and weapons to the crowd, did some weapon excercises, and formed a testudo and almost marched through the barrier into the crowd (good discipline these Romans, turn on a sixpence). They had some artillery pieces at the foot of the slope and fired them off. There were a couple of torsion crossbow types, one small one for anti-personel work, and a larger for less discerning targeting. They also had a catapult for lobbing things at a higher trajectory. They were very impressive, even though there were only about 20 of them taking part. You could imagine how terrifying a Roman army must look from the wrong end. The big battle scene from "Spartacus" came to mind. They marched off after half an hour to be replaced with the next offering.

The Norse Film and Pageant Society gave us a battle between Normans and Saxons. These were all on foot, and basically clumped together to form two lines for a shield wall clash. They did separate into two or three sub-units on occasion, and the people on the fringes broke up into single combat, with the occasional two on one, but one shieldwall clash after another with a speech in between was a bit dull compared to the Roman display. You could spot the film-extra techniques of combat simulation - hack away at each other's shields to look agressive. Most of them looked like bikers (a different breed to the American varieties) and a chap at the local games club who used to be a member of the society confirmed that this was in fact the case.

They were replaced with a display of Arms, Armour and Weaponry from the Plantagenets to the Civil War, given by Corridors of Time, The Company of ordinance and The Siege Group.

A small party of peasant types wandered on, armed with bows and a few miscelaneous items. They set up a target and the archers then demonstrated why English armies had lots of them. After a few ranging shots, the target looked like a porcupine in no time at all. They then had a competition between a stirrup crossbow and a longbow. The crossbow got off one bolt to two dozen or so arrows. It was rigged, of course, but even so...

A couple of men-at-arms came on to join in the fun, one on foot, in armour, with a halberd, who just wandered around the edge of the area displaying himself to the crowd, and a mounted knight, flat-topped helmet, cloth covered horse, who galloped up and down the slope, demonstrating that the Norman horsemen could have charged the English line. This rider was on a big horse, mind you. I don't know if the Norman horses would have been as powerful, but then their loads would have been lighter. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the horse against foot, the knight took a swing at an infantryman with his sword against a shield, knocking the shieded chap back a couple of yards.

These were replaced by a group of Tudor infantry, with a couple of bowmen and some calivers, closely followed by some English Civil War types with pike and musket. The calivers were firing off with little poping sounds, while the muskets had a bit more power behind them. One chap had something reminiscent of an elephant gun, and when that fired you could feel it. This was a siege musket, used to fire from walls, as it was fairly hefty and needed more than the usual amount of support.

There was an interval in which Chris and I went around the stalls and static displays. There were people selling reproduction medieval weapons and armour, some beutiful pieces. The static displays were mainly period camp sites put on by the demonstrators. We went in to the Abbey and wandered around the museum. Not much on display other than tracing the development of the Abbey itself. It was in private hands from the Dissolution to the twentieth century, until it was bought by the government. There is a private school occupying the modern buildings, having been tenants since before the sale, but the historic bits are mostly available to the public. We wandered out through the fair, situated just outside the main entrance and had a look in the village, a typical modern rural English town which runs past the Abbey site.

We missed the Napoleonic display and just caught the end of the World War II display, the firing of a 25-pounder gun as we went back along the ridge. A good time was had by all.