Conserving historic battlefields
The proposed English Heritage Register of historic battlefields identifies over forty areas of historic significance in England where important battles took place.
This leaflet describes the role of the Register, how it was drawn up, and the advice we propose to issue with the published Register to owners, occupiers, planners, and other interested groups on ways to conserve and enhance the value of England’s historic battlefields.
Separate documents are being issued to owners and interested bodies, and views on these, on the advice in this leaflet, and on the proposed Register entries listed at the end of this leaflet are invited by I December 1994.
The role of the Register Like the Register of parks and gardens) also compiled by English Heritage, the Register of historic battlefields will be for information only. It will provide expert guidance for those involved in conserving the sites on both the extent of the areas of historical significance and the most important amenity features within and around these areas.
However, the Register will not carry any statutory controls, nor any additional powers to regulate development or other work beyond the normal planning system.
Each proposed Register entry contains maps of the battlefield area showing the position of the armies and features which were part of the original battleground.
These maps are intended to be the starting point for battlefield conservation by identifying the most visually sensitive areas and making clear the extent of current public access.
At the same time they highlight particularly valuable features for understanding the battle, which should be conserved and, where appropriate, emphasised for visitors in displays or information boards. The importance of battlefields If, as Winston Churchill wrote, battles are ‘the punctuation marks of history’, then battlefields are the fragmentary pages on which those punctuation marks were written in blood. Their importance is four-fold:
- Battlefields have been the setting for crucial turning-points in English history, for example the Norman Conquest which followed the Battle of Hastings in 1066, or the turmoil of the Civil Wars in the seventeenth century which changed the roles of monarchy and parliament.
- The reputations of great political and military leaders were frequently built on battlefield success.
- Tactics and skills of war still relevant to the defence of the country evolved on the medieval battlefield.
- Battlefields are the final resting places for thousands of unknown soldiers, nobles and commoners alike, ~ whose lives were sacrificed in the making of the history of England.
Where they survive, battlefields may contain important topographical and archaeological evidence which can increase our understanding of the momentous events of history which took place on their soil. They also have a use in education and recreation.
Selection of entries for the Register
The National Army Museum has researched 69 possible battlefields for the Register. Each candidate was considered by a small panel of invited experts with diverse skills and perspectives.
For each battlefield they considered whether the fighting constituted a battle rather than a lesser level of engagement, arid then whether or not the extant evidence, physical or documentary, defined the geographical area within which the battle took place. In order to be considered for the Register, an engagement must have involved recognised military units.
Incidents of civil unrest, while undoubtedly of historical importance, would be impossible to include consistently because frequently examples of these have no real boundaries and documentation is often poor. Sieges are better considered separately from battles because they are usually associated with physical remains which can be conserved through existing mechanisms such as scheduling or listing.
Having passed these hurdles, for an engagement to qualify as a battle three criteria have been used:
- the political significance of the engagement, was it, in fact, ‘a little local difficulty’ or can its impact be traced nationwide?
- its military historical significance, were the tactics of particular note, such as the turning of the tables at Blore Heath?
- the biographical significance; was it the crowning glory of a military career, or was a famous leader killed or captured?’.
If an engagement is assessed as being not a battle but, for example, a skirmish instead, we do not propose to list it formally on the Register.
The reliability of the detailed evidence for each battle was then considered. Where the evidence of documents, archaeology, topography, and landscape history was sufficient, the outer reasonable limit to the area within which the bulk of the fighting took place has been defined as the battlefield area.
In those cases where the general location of the battle was known but where the evidence did not allow a boundary to be drawn, we propose to add the engagement to an appendix to the Register as the ‘site of a battle. A small number of battles cannot even be located ~ generally, and these will not be included on the Register until further evidence emerges.
The list at the end of this leaflet indicates those sites currently proposed for inclusion on the Register, those identified as sites without definable boundaries, and those considered but not at present proposed for inclusion, either because they have been ranked as skirmishes or because there is insufficient information to justify entry at this stage.
Conserving battlefields
Battlefields rarely have identifiable remains. The land on which they took place was often farmland at the time of the battle and has continued to evolve since. English Heritage does not wish to prevent such natural changes, nor do we advise the ‘restoration’ of battlefields to a form consistent with the date of the battle. For the conservation of battlefields, as for the countryside in general, continued management is both desirable and necessary.
Where detailed presentation to visitors is being considered English Heritage can provide only limited further information on the battlefield sites; we recommend that owners and developers bring in appropriate consultants to any such projects. Nevertheless, there are four themes which can guide the conservation of battlefields for current and future generations.