King Edwin and the Battle of Heathfield

Contributed by John Marlow

Tradition has it that Edwinstowe owes its name to Edwin, the Christian King of Northumbria, who reigned between 616 and 633 AD. Experts in the field of place name studies came to the rather reluctant conclusion in 1940 that the village was named after the king on the grounds that it was hard to envisage any other Edwin being important enough to have been commemorated.

Writing his 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People' only a century after the death of Edwin, the Venerable Bede refers to a "fierce battle fought on the plain called 'Haethfelth', and Edwin was killed on 12 October in the year of our Lord 633." In recent times the site of the battle has been known as Hatfield, with a location a few miles to the north east of Doncaster being the one favoured by the historian William Camden in the seventeenth century. Camden's interpretation of the scant evidence was accepted until well into the twentieth century, but with recent archeological evidence some historians have tried to be more precise. In 1975 Stanley Revill took a logistical view of the circumstances when Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, and his brother in law Penda, King of Mercia, joined forces to defeat Edwin in battle. Revill argued that a site close to Cuckney, known as Heathfield, was a logical location, given that it was well situated in relation to the presumed routes taken by Cadwallon and Penda from the west and south. A tantalising piece of evidence was provided in 1950 by excavations within the nave of the Norman church at Cuckney. At least 200 male skeletons were found jumbled together in a pit at least two metres deep, close to the north wall of the church and with every indication that the pit extended beyond the church wall. The pit pre-dated the construction of the church and the suggestion was made that the burial pit could well have been used to inter the remains of soldiers killed in 633 AD at the Battle of Heathfield.

It is known that King Edwin gained his throne through the death of King Aethelfrith of Northumbria in 616. Edwin was assisted by Raedwald, King of East Anglia, in a surprise attack. Bede recorded that "Raedwald had not given him time to summon and assemble his whole army and he killed him on the east bank of the river which is called the Idle". Again, an analysis of the old Roman roads available to an army on the move would suggest that the battle site was close to Austerfield. The remnants of Aethelfrith's defeated army may have tried to escape by way of higher ground at Hatfield Chase where there are burial pits containing skeletal remains.

With Edwin being one of the most important kings of early Anglo Saxon England, it is significant that the two battles marking the beginning and end of his reign should have taken place at sites only sixteen miles apart.

For further reading:

"Edwinstowe Church" by Harry Gill. Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, Volume XVIII, 1914; p19-34.

"King Edwin and the Battle of Heathfield" by Stanley Revill. Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, Volume LXXIX, 1975; p40-49.