Evidence in Person 11

PLACE NAMESXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Mr Gardiner provides six paragraphs in response to my confirmation that place names can be important in helping to identify a site of such significance (my manuscript page 150). Since I make the point that the interpretations are speculative, I really wonder why Mr Gardiner feels that it is important to try to counter my statements, since his speculation on the place names, must be as valid as mine. Thus enforcing my case that investigation by qualified archaeologists is therefore valid.
In Mr Gardiner's opening statement, his paragraph 8.1, he states "Place names, however, are rarely a record of events of national importance". He then goes on to say in the same paragraph - "The town of Battle is an apparent exception to this general principal". OOPS - I'm not sure this is your case Mr Gardiner , I think you are making mine. The point is that if the site is important often the name can carry through.
In any event I would like to remind Mr Gardiner of his own words his book The South East to AD 1000 - "Place names give an insight into the Anglo-Saxon landscape and settlement which the excavated evidence alone cannot do. They reflect the way in which countryside was perceived and the manner in which it was used. Unfortunately though, the study of place names is still at a very early stage… The main problem which has faced scholars is that it is very difficult to date the formation of a place name, because its first record in any document may be many centuries after it was first used".
What Mr Gardiner is saying in his book is that he cannot possibly know whether his assumptions are correct. Therefore my assumptions are just as valid as his. However because I know that the Norman landing site is at Wilting, and he does not, because he has not looked at the excavations, my justification for tying the names to the events of that time must have the potential to be more valid.
In my manuscript page 150 I claim that Monkham Wood, an ancient wood in the centre of the farm, and situated between the upper and lower camp, may have been named as such because William employed monks on the night before the battle to negotiate with Harold, and this is where they were camped. Mr Gardiner disagrees but provides no other reason why Monkham wood is so named. Monk-ham being a quite legitimate camp or place of abode of the monks.
In my manuscript page 150 I suggest that the name Sandrock, the field where they actually landed, is the origination of the term Senlac (Sannde roc) in French. This might be one of my wilder connections, but it is undoubtedly a great coincidence that Sandrock field is where the Normans landed and Sandrock hill leads from Wilting to the battle site. My own view is that time will tell on this. I do not rely on this evidence and Mr Gardiner (para 8.3 of his critique) cannot prove there is no connection, preferring to rely on an interpretation of Senlac that is not proven either.
Bulverhythe on the other hand has a well reported history and is covered in my manuscript page 151. Mr Gardiner even seeks to disagree with me on this, pointing out that it means "the landing place or hythe of the burgesses". Yet in his own book he says Bulverhythe means "the harbour of the citizens". It appears he cannot agree with himself, so it must be even harder to agree with me. I would prefer to rely on Mrs Margaret Gelling, who was referred to me by the history journalist for the Independent newspaper, who has been researching my evidence. He says, and I have no reason to doubt him, that she is the foremost place name expert in the country. She states in her letter to me dated 3^rd May 1995 "Bulverhythe cannot refer to the Norman Invasion. There are thirty plus major place names containing Old English Hyth. They are on rivers (as is Redgeland) or at the junction of fen with firm ground. It is a place name term for an inland port, and I cannot imaging Old English burhware "town dwellers" being used by an invading army."
Although writing a letter in the belief that she was dismissing my evidence, of course it provides conclusive name place evidence to support the inland port. Hence Bulverhythe indeed means landing place of the citizens (or townspeople if you prefer Ms Gellings use of English) at an unstated inland port, where Redgeland now stands. Place name evidence that directly supports the Invasion story, no matter how remote it may be. Mr Gardiner does not argue the point and appears to accept that my supposition that the name is connected to a port is correct, because he does not challenge this particular aspect of my manuscript. The fact that it is an inland port does however have major relevance that has been ignored in the past.
Paragraphs 8.5.1 and 8.5.2 of Mr Gardiners work deal with the name Redgeland, dealt with in my manuscript page 151. As stated earlier in paragraphs 140 to 157 of this presentation.
I have made the case that the names were transposed by the spoken word and are not related to their origins. In consequence Gardiner's reliance on traditional derivatives do not apply , as in his paragraph 8.5.1. He quotes a date of 1433 for the Abbey Survey whilst Redgeland dates back to 1399 in the Court Rolls. This does not prove anything since using his own words "The main problem which has faced scholars is that it is very difficult to date the formation of a place name, because its first record in any document may be many centuries after it was first used"as is likely in this case.
In the case of his paragraph 8.5.2 the use of the name at the Abbey site has no relevance to the authenticity or otherwise of the name at the original port of Hastings. Mr Gardiner seems more interested in make something out of the Battle of Hastings and the battlefield than he does about Wilting. I cannot see that this paragraph has any relevance to the Norman camp and landing site at Wilting and should be dismissed.
On page 16 of Mr Gardiner's manuscript he presents a summary of the historical evidence. Here he invokes the law of Occam's Razor. A particularly beutiful piece of philosophical doctrine made famous by Bertrand Russell in the thirties I believe.
It is what I would call a classic debunking tool for philosophers which states that reductionism ultimately explains everything in terms of the known.
Occam's razor is a logical principal attributed to William of Occam, although it was used by some scholastic philosophers prior to him. The principal states that a person should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything, or that person should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed. This principal is often called the principal of parsimony. Since the Middle ages it has played an important role in eliminating unnecessary elements from explanations.
Mr Gardiner seeks to apply this principal to justify the lack of any evidence on his side of the rebuttal and in his own words "an interpretation which makes fewer assumptions is to be preferred to one that makes more". This is of course nonsense in relation to an archaeological investigation of unseen evidence since Occam's razor cannot apply to the sciences and many areas of life that require human experience.
If we took Occam's razor as a principal of evaluation Einstein could never have evaluated the equation e = mc2, Stephen Hawkin could never have proposed the theory of black holes, the laws of Chaos could not exist and neither the Mona Lisa not the Cisteen Chapel would ever have been painted.
No the Law of Occam is an outdated philosophy restricted to a last stand, when all else fails. I would rather rely on Gillette's Razor, at least I know I wont get my throat cut when I try to explain how to apply it to boat parts in the Combe Haven valley.
I hope that every time Mr Gardiner hears a reference to Occam's razor, he will remember my advise to trust in Gillette's razor. Reductionism is a cop-out to avoid looking at the evidence. What is known is explainable and it is no good seeking a simple existing solution to new scientific facts.
From Section ten onwards of Mr Gardiner's report he looks at the archaeological evidence. Paragraph 10.1 produces a list of archaeological evidence which Mr Gardiner details that I have presented as evidence.
Mr Gardiner has omitted from this list the excavations at the Norman camp, he has omitted the Norman boat parts, he has omitted the Redgeland Wood evidence and the evidence for the port at Redgeland, all of which are crucial elements in building the case. To fail to report them here does not induce any sense of trust in the conclusions reached.
In section 10 Mr Gardiner deals with the resistivity survey, which I believe I have dealt with adequately, in order for a conclusion to be reached as to the validity or otherwise in my earlier evidence paragraphs 424 to 448. I do not believe it is necessary to repeat the errors Mr Gardiner has made using Mesh instead of Composite data studies. In consequence Mr Gardiners conclusions in paragraphs 11.1 to 11.6 have no basis upon which to draw conclusions and should be dismissed.
Section twelve - Earthworks at Upper Wilting Farm, has also been dealt with in paragraphs 399 to 420 and 521 to 588 of this presentation. This includes the issues relating to the Upper Norman fort, the earthen bank across Monkham inlet, and the lynchets. These have all been dealt with except for a number of small details where Mr Gardiner uses the words "it seems probable" 12.6.2 to seek to explain pits, where no excavation has been undertaken and offers opinions on a number of small items, where no visual excavation has been taken.
It is clear to me and should be clear to those here that Mr Gardiner has not produced one single element of proof in the whole of this working paper. His sole case rests upon Occam's Razor in a vain attempt to fall back on the conventional landing story at Pevensey, without examining any of the archaeological evidence.
He states in his conclusion (paragraph 14.3) that my "archaeological remains he uncovered are no longer open to view and cannot be re-examined" This is of course nonsense, as I have stated earlier. Does he expect these remains to be left open to the air for his arrival one day, should he decide to look - NO
Mr Gardiner has no case at all.
What I dislike about the Gardiner Critique is not what Mr Gardiner includes in his Critique, but what he deliberately omits.
On page numbers 194 and 195 of his own book entitled The South East to AD 1000 he refers to the Saxon Shore Forts having yielded stamped Roman tiles of the British Fleet. He states that "Elsewhere in the Weald the fleet's stamped tiles have been found..at Beauport Park" I will remind you Beauport Park was the largest iron producing Roman bloomery is south-east England. The text continues:
"At Beauport Park about 1,600 Classic Britannica tiles were found in association with a well preserved six room bath house. The large number of stamped tiles clearly demonstrate the connection between the fleet and the bath house". Mr Gardiner does not mention this connection in his report or the report, when looking at the Roman connection with Beauport or the port at Combe Haven - the nearest port to Beauport. He also writes "There is a curious gap in the string of ports between the trading centres of Kent and the port of Hamwic in Southampton. No-where along the Sussex coastline has a port of comparable size been found". Indeed he goes on to write "The archaeological evidence for many of these ports is very sparse indeed. At neither Fordwich nor Sandwich has pottery from this period been found, and they are known as ports only from documentary records".
So what we have here is confirmation, in Mr Gardiner's own handwriting so to speak, that there may well be no evidence of any substance to provide the obvious clues that one might expect for a port in this area, because the other ports from the same period in history have failed to produce what you might expect.
However for me the major omission is from page 227 where Mr Gardiner states "Beyond Hastings, still along the coast, was Bulverhythe. The place name means "the harbour of the citizens" and it is usually suggested that it was a subsidiary port for the people of Hastings. It is however, equally possible that there was a small town here, lying east of Bexhill, for Domesday records twenty burgesses under the entry for Bullington, which lay very close to Bulverhythe. Thus along this short length of the south-east coast of Kent and Sussex was a group of ports which developed in years around 1,000 to serve the increased level of contact with France, and such was the scale of trade and wealth of the hinterland that they were able to develop into towns. None of these towns, excepting Rye, has been subject to archaeological investigation and no finds dateable to before the thirteenth century were discovered there."
So Mr Gardiner says one thing in his book and seeks to prefer that this information does not exist when asked by the Highways Agency or their representatives, to challenge it. Why would he seek to argue that Roman pottery would be normal in the shore fort (his Proof of Evidence paragraph 4.2.4), which I claim is connected to Beauport Park when he knows that this is not normal? Why would he seek to deny that there is a port on the Combe Haven valley, when he reports the probable existence of one at Bulverhythe in his own book?
I do not believe we are getting the full shilling from Mr Gardiner's critique, we are being given the dance of the seven veils, where now you see it, now you don't, is more appropriate than a serious examination of all the evidence in relation to the case.
From what I have read of Mr Gardiner's work he makes no pretence at finding the truth. He employs what ever technique, literary, or otherwise, including interpreting my words to suit his case, in order to make or score a point, where non would otherwise exist. I must therefore ask the inspector to dismiss Mr Gardiner's report as unreliable
I have spent several years of my life preparing the evidence for the site at Wilting. I am amazed that with all the resources available to it the Highways Agency have adamantly failed to properly investigate my claims. No excavations have taken place and no-one has taken the claim seriously.
The consequence of failing to conduct due diligence is an inherent cost to the taxpayer of requiring the current published route to be diverted and the associated costs that this will involve. This might be because of the new rules for Public Inquiries where routes are published as the Inquiry progresses. However Mr Gardiner's statement in his Proof paragraph 4.2.11 that it was "not considered appropriate to trench the sites of the iron Age fort, the Roman fort or the two Norman forts" is in my view inexcusable given the issues of national importance raised by the site. I believe this one failing will require the published route to be altered to allow the excavations that are required to satisfy due diligence. Since to have failed to do this leaves open the question of whether Wilting is the Norman Invasion site or not. Since neither Mr Gardiner nor anyone else has provided one shred of evidence to counter my in depth proposals that Upper Wilting contains the site of the first Norman Camp and the Norman Invasion landing site.
In these circumstances I do not believe it is possible for a decision to be made where the landing and camp site could be put at risk, where a cheaper alternative, less damaging ecological route is available to be chosen. This is of course route S3A which I shall deal with shortly.
However I now need to tie up some loose ends in relation to the archaeological work which needs explaining before addressing the issue of the alternative S3A route.
Firstly the issue of Graves

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