The 11th century owner of Holmwood Common in Dorking, Surrey, had a rough time of it.
King Harold was England’s last Anglo-Saxon king. He had one of the shorter reigns in history, and one of the more famous deaths.
On 14 October 1066, he was killed at the Battle of Hastings by William the Conqueror’s army with, legend has it, an arrow to the eye.
Many scholarly hours have been devoted to debating whether this was in fact simply an arrow to the head, or whether, as according to another account, he was instead dismembered by four knights. The illustrations in the Bayeux Tapestry, alas, are somewhat inconclusive.
Either way, William the Conqueror became King of England. Harold’s predecessor, childless Edward the Confessor, was William’s first cousin once removed, and William understood himself to be the country’s natural heir.
