Battle

Battle, a town in Sussex, 6 miles NW. of Hastings. Encircled on three sides by wooded hills, it consists of one street, extending along a valley from NW. to SE. Till recent years Battle was noted for its manufacture of gunpowder, known as Battle powder. An uninhabited heathland then, Senlac by name, it received its present name from the Battle of Hastings (q.v.), fought here on 14th October 1066, when the Normans, led by William the Conqueror, overthrew the old English monarchy under King Harold. William, to commemorate his victory, founded in 1067, on the spot where Harold fell, a splendid Benedictine abbey, which was endowed with all the land within a league of it, and had the privileges of a sanctuary. The probably fabulous original roll of the Conqueror's barons deposited in it was said to have perished in the burning of Cowdray House in 1793; and the ten 'copies' extant have all been grossly tampered with. The existing Decorated and Perpendicular buildings occupy three sides of a quadrangle—two sides in ruins, the third converted at the Dissolution into a private dwelling-house. The abbey was bought in 1857 by Lord Harry Vane, afterward Duke of Cleveland. Pop. (1891) 3153. See Burke's Roll of Battle Abbey Annotated (1848); Mackenzie Walcott's History of Battle Abbey (2d ed. 1867); and the Duchess of Cleveland's edition of The Battle Abbey Roll (1889).