On May 5, 1010, a great battle was fought between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes at Ringmere Heath. At battle’s end, it was the Danes who remained masters of the field of slaughter.

It was a terrible loss for England, whose men fought under the banner of Ulfkytel of East Anglia, a great lord wed to one of the daughters of King Aethelred. The roll of dead listed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is an indication of just how bad it was.

There was slain Athelstan, the king’s relative, and Oswy, and his son, and Wulfric, son of Leofwin, and Edwy, brother of Efy, and many other good thanes, and a multitude of the people.

It was a wretched day for the Angelcynn.

Last October I went to East Anglia in search of Ringmere Heath. It wasn’t easy to find. Pre-Conquest battle sites may be marked on occasion, but even the people living nearby are sometimes unaware of the events that took place there a thousand years ago. I asked for directions at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village, but no one could help. Even the ice cream man, who knew every lane within miles, just shook his head. It wasn’t until the next morning that we finally found our way to Ringmere Heath.

I was glad that we had waited. A thick fog had settled on the landscape that morning, atmospheric as heck. It was easy to imagine an enemy army suddenly appearing out of the mist to the horrified surprise of the defenders. I never saw the actual mere, although it was there somewhere, behind a stand of trees. To the north of the lake and to the east was flat wasteland, studded with rabbit warrens, the perfect setting for a battle. Possibly there were woodlands all around the heath a thousand years ago, barriers that two armies could have used to good effect to prevent the enemy from out-flanking them. There is no way of knowing if what we saw was anything like what was there in 1010, but the fog and the landscape were evocative.

As I walked the field I wondered if somewhere beneath my feet the detritus of battle still lay undiscovered – broken weapons, the bosses from long-rotted wooden shields, the bones of dead warriors. Was it ghoulish of me to have come in search of such a place, where so many men died such wretched deaths? It didn’t feel that way to me. What I felt was sadness, and awe at standing in a spot marked by such a history. For all I knew, one of my own ancestors may have fought here and managed to escape the carnage. There are many well-marked battlegrounds that are much-visited historic sites – Hastings, Waterloo, Gettysburg, the beaches at Normandy. I think it must be a human compulsion to honor the warrior dead, even as we are appalled by the strife that engulfed them.

West Stow Village in Suffolk was a sixth century Anglo-Saxon settlement. Nothing remarkable happened in this spot, it was just a place where several family groups settled to farm and to raise their children. The village stood for roughly two hundred years, until its denizens abandoned the site, around A.D. 700, to move closer to a settlement that had formed around the newly established Christian church a little to the east. The old village of West Stow disappeared – its remains ravaged by time and weather until all memory of it was lost. But beneath the soil, remnants of the settlement lay untouched, and more than a thousand years after it was abandoned, the ancient village of West Stow was rediscovered by archaeologists and historians.

Warrior Scarecrow

Today it is an archaeological site, a research facility and a museum. I visited the village in 2007 and found it to be a remarkable place; in the summertime it is a slice of living history, with costumed re-enactors giving demonstrations about aspects of Anglo-Saxon life. Last October I went to West Stow again, hoping to learn details I might have missed on my first visit. I was not disappointed.

Pat at West Stow, 2012

Shed behind the cottage, with a coracle under contstruction

There are only a scattering of houses there today, built as part of a historical/archaeological research project, putting theories about Anglo-Saxon building techniques into practice and learning what would have worked – and what would not have. The buildings here have led historians to revise some of their earlier theories, and their newer ideas are reflected in the different structures that have been built on the site.  Research has shown that there were probably twenty houses in West Stow Village in A.D. 550, with a population of between sixty and ninety people, probably made up of three family groups. Each cluster of houses would have consisted of individual dwellings built around a central hall. The buildings were made of overlapping vertical planks – like the ships that first brought the settlers here – and would have been thatched with rye, reeds, heather, even wheat. Each dwelling contained a central hearth, or fire box, for heating and cooking. Chimneys were still hundreds of years in the future, so the smoke from the fire would have been drawn out the open gable ends and not through a central roof hole as was once imagined.

Fire box and cooking area from 2007 visit

The dwellings today are based on what archaeologists have discovered here over the past fifty years. They contain beds, storage areas, and work spaces. Skins on the floor, rather than reeds, would have been a sign of status, but everything in the house would have been valuable, even the chain on which the cooking pot hung. The doors had locks, and the keys discovered here were carved from antlers.

A ‘coffin bed’, specific to E. Anglia

Matting for privacy; storage space

The hall was their living space – the place for meetings, feasts, story times, decision-making. But the weaving hall, where the women gathered to work their looms – an activity that would have been a constant for centuries – was probably the communal heart of the village. Here gossip and news was exchanged, and Anglo-Saxon women made their own decisions about village affairs.

The lord’s chair in the hall

One of the looms in the weaving shed

Array of dyed yarns in the weaving shed.

A sheltered, communal oven, animal enclosures, bee hives and assorted workshops would have been part of the village. Today there is a visitor center, a café, a play area, and a nature trail that circles the nearby lake and heath.

Bread oven, from 2007 trip

West Stow was an early Anglo-Saxon settlement, and by the time the historical characters in my novel were ruling England in the 11^th century, it was already forgotten. Nevertheless it is an enthralling glimpse into a distant and fascinating past.

Many of Britain’s historical sites are clearly visible and extremely well preserved, sometimes as museums or parks. London’s Tower, for example, accommodates thousands of visitors a day. The ruins of the abbey at Bury St. Edmunds or the castle at Guildford have become the stunning centerpieces of city parks.

Abbey remains, Bury St. Edmunds

Guildford Castle. Norman.

But there are other less well known monuments that dot the English landscape: stone circles like the Rollrights in the Cotswolds, monoliths like the Rudstone in Yorkshire, and over a thousand iron age hill forts. Many of them are marked on Ordinance Survey Maps and can be found without too many wrong turns. There are some, though, that are only of interest to history geeks and curious authors, and these take a little more effort to find.

On our recent visit to England my husband and I went in search of two such places, both dating from the early 11^thcentury reign of King Aethelred II. Our first destination was Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. In A.D. 1013 the Danish king, Swein Forkbeard, invaded Britain, and set up camp near Gainsborough, landing his fleet of Viking war ships along the banks of the River Trent. I had read that the earthworks of that Viking camp were still visible at a place now known as Castle Hills, and I wanted to see if I could locate them.

So, on a beautiful fall day we set out from Stow-on-the-Wold via the Fosse Way – one of the four Roman roads built to facilitate the movement of the legions around England. Somewhere northeast of Warwick we crossed another Roman Road, Watling Street, and so we entered the ancient Danelaw. In the Viking Age this area had been settled by wave after wave of Scandinavian invaders, and in the 11^th century certain nobles with lands hereabouts were somewhat ambivalent about their allegiance to the English king. When Swein arrived with a huge army at his back they quickly transferred their allegiance to him.

River Trent – imagine it filled with Viking longships

We arrived at Gainsborough just after mid-day and stopped first at the Old Hall, which is situated on the site where Swein and his son, Cnut, had their headquarters. The 15^thcentury Old Hall would have been worth a visit in its own right – one of the best preserved manor houses in England. Richard II and Henry VIII were entertained there, and on the day we visited it was swarming with school children who were getting a wonderful dose of high medieval history.

Gainsborough Old Hall

I, however, was concerned with events a little further in the past, and so we stayed only long enough to inquire about the site of the Danish camp. The directions we were given were vague, taking us out of town and up a hill away from the river. There was forest on both sides of the road where the camp should have been and little to be seen from the street, so we left the car and followed a path into the woods. It led to a derelict football field, and stepping over a low berm between the forest and the playing field, I theorized aloud that this might be one of the earthworks of the Danish camp. My engineer husband explained that it was probably a leftover from the grading for the field, not a remnant from a one thousand year old fort.

The berm between the playing field and forest.

Disappointed but undeterred, I accosted a pensioner who was walking his dog along the edge of the woods and asked if he knew where the Danish camp was. He waved his arm to take in the entire hilltop.

“They were all over this place. It was the highest point around, and at that time the River Trent ran nearer the foot of this hill. Yes, there are ridges – over there,” he said, pointing. “Some say they are the remains of a fort, but I don’t know.”

Of course they would have sited their camp on high ground, I thought, just like the men who built the Iron Age hill forts a thousand years before them, and like William the Conqueror who came fifty years after them. These men knew that a fort on a hill was most easily defended.

We thanked our guide and continued our search in the area he’d pointed out. For some time the signs of fortification continued to elude us, and I longed for a rune stone saying “Swein slept here,” but no such luck. Eventually, though, we found what we’d been looking for: ridges that I imagined marked ditches and boundaries, covered now with long grass, brush and trees, and many feet higher than the low berm at the edge of the field.

The engineer, standing on Swein’s fortifications

There was no marker to confirm the theory. The Danes had left long ago, and even the inhabitants of Gainsborough were vague now about what once stood here. Their 15^thcentury Old Hall was, of course, of vastly more archaeological significance than the temporary camp of a Danish king. Nevertheless, a thousand years after the Danes built it, the remains of their fortification were beneath our feet. Their ships were gone, and whatever buildings they may have raised crumbled long ago, but the land, it seemed to me, left untouched for a millennium, still remembered them.

Looking down from atop the earthworks

It is a ninety minute drive from Stow-on-the-Wold in Oxfordshire to Holdenby House in Northamptonshire. We didn’t mind it one bit, because it’s a lovely drive, because I was keen to see the countryside, and because at the end of the drive….there would be falcons.

I did not take any notes while we were at Icarus Falconry. I should have, but it’s difficult to write with a giant leather glove and a bird on one hand, and there was so much information coming at me that I needed a tape recorder, not a pen.

My husband and I had a phenomenal half-day session with the staff at Icarus, who gave us an intimate look at the breeding, training and flying of their marvelous birds. We began with a brief overview of the different birds in the weathering ground, and then we set off with Pam to give a little white barn owl named Gracie a bit of exercise.

The birds are feather-light on your wrist and they land light as feathers, too. We were introduced – quite personally – to barn owls, peregrine falcons, Harris hawks, an enormous and beautiful black eagle and a tiny and adorable tawny owl named Sage. We learned about the care of these wonderful creatures (lots of it), and discussed what role they might have played in the court of an Anglo-Saxon king – and whether a king’s son might have started handling such raptors at age five. (Yes.) We learned about bating and mantling; we learned what the birds eat and we learned how complicated the business of falconry must have been in medieval times. We learned that a goshawk would have been so successful and so fast that for an early medieval falconer the bird was near as good as a gun at bringing down prey. (And of course, they didn’t have guns.)

Pat with a peregrine falcon.

We met a tiny merlin — a lady’s falcon weighing seven ounces. Because their prey in medieval times would have been small birds on the wing, like larks (not exactly a filling meal for a hunter), they were considered mere accessories for the ladies when they rode out with the men. (!!!) The merlin though was lovely to watch in flight, playing a game with the falconer who would swing his lure in a wide arc while the bird chased it, turning on a dime in mid-air.

With a merlin — a lady’s bird

After putting Gracie the owl through her paces we had a chance to fly a peregrine on the grounds of Holdenby House. Then we set out on a brief drive up to a hill to fly a larger bird, the Harris hawk, who navigated the winds on the hill with ease.

Lloyd with a Harris Hawk

Birds have to be released and have to land into the wind, and it was astonishing to see with what grace and lightness the bird landed on my wrist. (Truth to tell, she took off and landed whenever she bloody well felt like it. I had little to say about it. My job was to hold my arm out at the right angle. I would not want you thinking that I did anything more than follow instructions from an expert!)

Mike. The Expert.

The staff at Icarus Falconry were friendly, warm, so very knowledgeable about the birds and so caring for their charges. Many thanks to John, Mike, Tracey, Tom and Pam for a remarkable and rewarding experience.