Senlac Hill
Coordinates: 50°54′43″N 0°29′15″E / 50.91194°N 0.48750°E
Senlac Hill (or Senlac Ridge) is the location where Harold Godwinson deployed his army for the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066. The name Senlac was popularised by the Victorian historian E.A. Freeman based solely on a description of the battle by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis. Freeman went on to suggest that the Normans nicknamed the area Blood lake as a pun on the English Sand lake.
It is not improbable that Orderic would have known the English name for Senlac as he spent his early life in England having been born to an English mother. His education, towards the end of his time in England, was from an English monk. However, Freeman's hypothesis has been criticised by other historians as it relies purely on the evidence from Orderic Vitalis. Orderic was born nine years after the Battle of Hastings and chroniclers who were more contemporary with the battle did not use the name Senlac.
The name Senlac was introduced into English history by the Victorian historian E.A. Freeman, his only source for this being the Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis. Freeman suggested that Senlac was the correct name of the Battle of Hastings site since the name of the hill was Senlac and was near a stream called Santlache. Orderic describes Harold's forces as assembling for the battle ad locum, qui Senlac antiquitus vocabatur and the battle itself as being fought in campo Senlac .
Orderic was born in Atcham, Shropshire, England, the eldest son of a French priest, Odeler of Orléans and an English mother. When Orderic was five, his parents sent him to an English monk with the name of Siward, who kept a school in the Abbey of SS Peter and Paul at Shrewsbury. Although Orderic moved to a monastery in Normandy at the age of ten, he seems to have maintained his links with England. Freeman concluded that it was perfectly possible for Orderic to have known the English name of the ridge. The Chronicle of Battle Abbey describes what it calls Malfosse, which was a large ditch that opened up during the course of the battle (some sources say after the battle), where many soldiers of both sides fell and were trampled to death, the result was rivulets of blood as far as one could see. In fact there was a local legend that was maintained for centuries after the battle that the soil in that area turned red after a heavy rainfall.
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