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Hello behind a car park in a picturesque village a few miles east of York is a diminutive obelisk and monument to a bloody battle

Which took place 945 years ago a placated space informs visitors that the battle of Stanford Bridge was fought here or

Somewhere in the neighborhood on September the 25th 1066

Nobody knows exactly where the battle of Stanford Bridge took place

But we do know that it was one of the most significant events of a year that changed Europe forever

It was a decisive victory for the angler Saxon king Harold who fought off a Viking invading force

But even as his English soldiers were putting this kind of name used to flight in the north the French were invading the south coast

Within a few weeks Harold was dead at Hastings and the Norman conquest had begun

So what effect did Stanford Bridge have on the later events of 1066 and why did it take place at all

We'd me to discuss the battle of Stanford Bridge are John Heinz professor of archaeology at Cardiff University

Elizabeth Rowe lecturer in Scandinavian history of the Viking Age at the University of Cambridge and Stephen Baxter reader in

medieval history at King's College London

John Heinz at the beginning of 1066 England's King was Edward the Confessor. How prosperous and stable was the country at that time?

If we can

Imagine the point of view of an active and alert adult in shall we say the beginning of 1065 a year before all of the great events of

1066 I think somebody in that position could really have thought of the country as having

seen a period of stability

And prosperity if those terms had been available to them first of all if we look at the situation economically

Important of course to remember that agriculture was absolutely the foundation of any form of

subsistence

...