The story of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 is well known, and not just among the English. Your Girl Reporter heard all about it at Kennedy Road Junior School in Hong Kong.
We made a mural of scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry for the classroom and I was inspired enough to think that one day I might be able to go to England and stand in the very spot where Harold fell with a Norman arrow in his eye.
All the history I learned in primary school occurred in the British Isles, with just a passing mention one afternoon that the rising sun carved into the wall overlooking our playground was a remnant of Japanese occupation during World War II.
There was no further time for that, nor the inglorious details of the Opium Wars which culminated in the establishment in 1841 of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong on that barren rock, with barely a house upon it.
A depiction by James Grant of one of the battles in the Opium Wars. Not covered by Your Girl Reporter’s colonial education in Hong Kong.
Instead, we drew pictures of serfs and the narrow strips of faraway land they worked in the three fields attached to the manor house which changed hands from Saxon to Norman lord after the events of 14 October, 1066.
Years later, my long-forgotten ambition to stand where history happened returned in a whizz-bang flash as I watched a fireworks display over the ruins of Hastings castle.
It was an intoxicating sensation, to find the foreign suddenly familiar, even if the events in question actually happened down the road at a place ever since called – wait for it – Battle. And the Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery.
A portion of the Bayeux Tapestry, which is not really a tapestry at all, but an embroidery. Crafters know the difference.
My father, who grew up in a tiny town called Grenfell in country Australia, had a similar experience on his first visit to Britain. His primary school teacher Sister Ignatius had introduced him to the outside world like this: “Today children we’re going to learn a new subject called Geography and it goes like this: London is on the River Thames.”
Dad said it had struck him, as he enjoyed an English pint overlooking the mighty Thames, as a very peculiar concept to expect a child to grasp while growing up shoeless in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.
My sister Alin had the worst of it, enduring ridicule from her teacher and her classmates when she failed to comprehend an instruction to draw a picture of Big Ben and handed in a portrait of my big red teddy bear.
The real Big Ben, with your school-ready Young Girl Reporter, off to endure the rigours of a colonial education.
Alin and I both ended up living in England – her in Yeovil, a pretty little rural town in Somerset, and me in Hastings. We met often in London over the years but only once was it just the two of us.
We started in Kensington, as her mission was to obtain a visa for an impending trip to Spain but the queue was long and we quickly decided there were better things for two colonial girls to be doing in London.
We popped into Harrods where, as canny Hong Kong shoppers, we were shocked at the prices, then headed over to the Tower to stand in a bit of history. Traitor’s Gate was Alin’s favourite spot – I think it appealed to her anarchic nature.
We wandered through Leicester Square, Piccadilly, one of the parks and we were in Trafalgar Square, surrounded by pigeons when Alin said she wanted to see Big Ben.
My sister Alin, getting ready to hone her canny Hong Kong shopping skills, on a day out in Tsim Sha Tsui with Your Girl Reporter.
“Let’s do it,” I said and, without a clue where to go or how to get there, we turned 180 degrees and there it was, straight ahead of us, gleaming through the surrounding buildings in the summer evening light.
We walked down to the river and along to Westminster and when we got there she was awestruck. She had never expected it to be so beautiful, with all that intricate golden detail.
On one of Dad’s visits to Hastings Alin and her family came down too and naturally we went to Battle Abbey, so they could see for themselves the lie of the land and walk the battlefield and imagine how it must have been all those hundreds of years ago.
The Harold stone at Battle Abbey, where the arrow-to-the-eye incident is said to have occurred.
And we stood by the slab which marks the spot where the original altar is supposed to have stood. Legend has it this is the spot where Harold fell.
Someone had left flowers – the kind of bouquet you would pick up at a service station – with a card which read, “To the memory of the last true King of England.”
History. We were standing in it.
© Maria Spackman 2018
Further reading:
Memorial – A meditation on memorials to war inspired by the Bayeux Embroidery, as it shall henceforth be known in these pages.
All about the Battle of Hastings – with English Heritage
On another visit to the historic battlefield Your Girl Reporter met a man in Lincoln green called Robin and fell in love with his longbow (oo-er!). Read all about it!
Growing up in rural Australia the concept of the River Thames was mystifying to Young Boy Reporter Jack Spackman. By Your Girl Reporter, natch!
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