Or... how many English exiles simply changed their names and fought for William, some of the 'De's' like the De Warenne line in my area can be traced back, but many of the others have very vague bloodlines. For William to hold a whole nation successfully with the amount of troops available to him must surely have meant that a number of Englishmen were members of the Norman army and took over their old enemies, the Godwines', lands (?). I'm too old to trudge round castles in Normandy nowadays but some years ago when I did visit many castles in the area the names mentioned in Domesday rarely cropped up in the Norman castle histories. Perhaps a more youthful Gesithas member might fancy a tour of family discovery in the Normandy region and prove this theory to be totally incorrect!

By 1086, according to the Doomsday Book, almost all the English landowners had been replaced by Norman ones, so what happened to them?   Were they utterly ruined and left the area with their family or did they become stewards to the estates instead , working for a Norman boss?    Any thoughts  or facts welcome.  Many thanks

Ah yes, I see. So at least some full-time occupations were performed by both/either gender. Very interesting. Thanks

While the Pre-roman inhabitants of Britain of referred to as woad-painted men, and Ibn Fadlan describes Scandinavian warriors he met as heavily tattooed, I've yet to see any mention of Anglo-Saxon tattoos. I was wondering whether anyone knows of any sources that inform us if the Anglo-Saxons had tattoos, or what possibly they may have been.   

Has anyone else a favourite scene in The Lord of the Rings?


Mine is: "So Theoden and Eowyn came to the City of Gondor, and all who saw them bared their heads and bowed; and they passed through the ash and fume of the burned circle, and went on and up along the streets of stone."

so many! But the arrival  of the Rohirrim at Pelennor Fields gets me every single time, it's so uplifting:

For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.