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It was a field of bodies. Among them, five kings lay dead.

A glittering coalition from across the British and Irish Isles and beyond

had brought kings and yarls and lords to this corner of England,

and here they had died.

The rest of the fallen were told, countless.

Forty years later, the English was still calling it the Great Battle.

It was England's great hardening, the testing ground, the moment when England could have been snuffed out.

It was the Battle of Brunambour. In this episode of Dan Snow's history, I'm going to tell you that story.

The story of not only how two armies clashed on that field 1100 years ago,

but how they embodied two opposing visions for Britain and Ireland.

On the one side, you've got the Scots, what we might call

the Welsh, you've got the Irish, the Vikings, and on the other side, a political experiment,

fragile, uncertain, an upstart, England, under arguably its first king, Athelstan.

I am extremely grateful to the kind and enthusiastic legends of the Wirral Archaeological Trust,

...