Battle takes its name from the Battle of Hastings, fought here in 1066, where William, Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold to become William the Conqueror. The town grew up around Battle Abbey, which William ordered built on the site to commemorate the battle and atone for the bloodshed, with a settlement outside its gates by around 1110. For some 250 years afterwards, official documents called the place simply Bellum in Latin or Bataille in French. There are few towns anywhere with a founding story this precise, and it draws visitors from all over the world.
The Abbey and the trade it brought kept the town alive in what would otherwise have been an unlikely spot for a settlement, and Battle held on to some fine medieval buildings as a result, including Wealden-style hall-houses in Upper Lake, at Pilgrim’s Rest and along the High Street. Later, the surrounding woods made it a centre for gunpowder. Daniel Defoe wrote in 1722 that the town was remarkable for making the finest gunpowder in Europe, milled at works on Powdermill Lane, whose remains have since been turned into a hotel.
There is more to lean on than the Abbey. The town was known for the skill of its clock and watch makers, and even claims a hand in the first ever electric clock. Eliza Acton, author of the pioneering Modern Cookery for Private Families, was born here in 1799, and her book shaped the way recipes were written for generations. Battle is also home to the Battel Bonfire Boyes, claimed to be the oldest of the Sussex Bonfire Societies, whose November celebrations are a fixture of the local calendar.
Battle sits in the High Weald National Landscape, about twenty miles east of Lewes, with Hastings to the south-east and Bexhill to the south. It is linked to both Hastings and London by the A2100 and the A21. Its railway station is a real feature in its own right, a Grade II listed piece of Victorian Gothic on the Hastings Line, with services run by Southeastern towards London via Tunbridge Wells and down to Hastings. That direct rail link makes the town easy to reach and helps its shops and businesses draw trade from well beyond the immediate area.
The town wears its history lightly, but it is everywhere. Close to the parish church stand concrete dragon’s teeth, Second World War anti-tank obstacles left in place, and the old gunpowder trade is remembered in the odd dramatic story, including one occasion in 1798 when more than fifteen tons of powder were left in the oven too long and exploded. Battle is run by its own town council within the Rother district, and its place in the protected High Weald landscape keeps the setting largely intact. For a local business, that steady, well-kept character is part of the appeal, and a website that reflects it rather than fighting it tends to land better with the people who choose to live and shop here.
The town punched above its weight for skilled work over the centuries. It was most likely the birthplace of two leading medieval stonemasons, John of Battle, who worked on some of the Eleanor Crosses for Edward I, and Thomas of Battle, who helped build Caerphilly Castle and the Tower of London. The heavily wooded Weald around the town supplied oak and other timber for the navy’s shipyards, along with the materials that fed the gunpowder trade, with the finished powder carted off to Portsmouth and Chatham. Even a small settlement, in other words, has always been connected to a much wider world through its trades. A modern Battle business is no different: a good website lets a specialist here reach customers well beyond the High Street, whether that is people travelling in for something they cannot get locally or visitors planning a trip around the Abbey and the 1066 story.
For a local firm, all of that specific detail is the point. Being true about where you are, the Abbey, the High Street, the villages of the Weald around the town, is exactly what makes a website read as genuinely local, and it is what Google rewards over generic copy that could be about anywhere. We write your site so it belongs to Battle, and set up your Google Business Profile so you appear on the map when people nearby search for what you do.
Also covering: Hastings, Bexhill, Robertsbridge, Netherfield, Catsfield, Crowhurst and the surrounding villages.
