Cooke's 'Views in Sussex'
Print
1819 (engraved)
1819 (engraved)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Line engraving entitled 'Battle Abbey, the spot where Harold fell'.
Object details
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| Titles |
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| Materials and techniques | Line engraving on copper |
| Brief description | Engraving by W. B. Cooke entitled 'Battle Abbey, the spot where Harold fell', for the publication Cooke's 'Views in Sussex' (1816-1820), after a drawing by J. M. W. Turner. Great Britain, 1819. (Mummery Bequest). |
| Physical description | Line engraving entitled 'Battle Abbey, the spot where Harold fell'. |
| Credit line | Bequeathed by Horace Mummery |
| Subject depicted | |
| Places depicted | |
| Association | |
| Bibliographic reference | On 14 October 1066, Duke William of Normandy defeated King Harold of England at the Battle of Hastings.
Arguably the most famous battle ever fought on English soil, William's triumph, and his subsequent coronation as King William I (1066-87), marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England.
No later than 1070, King William 'the Conqueror', as he now was, marked his victory by establishing a great Benedictine abbey at Battle. On the one hand, this important religious foundation would serve as a memorial to the dead, and could be seen as a public act of atonement by the king for the bloodshed caused. Even the abbey's own chronicler was to later write that the fields had been 'covered in corpses, and all around the only colour to meet the gaze was blood-red'. But there was another purpose to the foundation, one reflecting the more calculating side of William's nature: it would stand as a symbol of the Norman triumph. Indeed, the abbey chronicler reports the king's insistence that the high altar in the abbey church was to stand on the very spot where Harold had fallen in battle.
William envisaged an initial community of 60 monks at Battle Abbey, rising to an eventual total of 140. It was not until 1094, during the reign of William II (1087-1100), that the completed church was finally consecrated. The ceremony was performed by the archbishop of Canterbury, along with seven other bishops, and in the presence of the king and a host of his nobles and courtiers. Meanwhile, as a result of the Conqueror's generous endowments, Battle was on the way to becoming one of the richest monastic houses of medieval England. It was to flourish for over 400 years until religious life at the abbey was brought to an end in 1538, during the suppression of the monasteries under King Henry VIII (1509-47). |
| Other number | R129 - Rawlinson number (Mummery Bequest) |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.2590-1946 |
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| Record created | June 30, 2009 |
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