Battle of Hatfield Investigation Society

It’s always good to consider alternatives to our belief that the skeletons discovered at St. Mary’s Church in 1951 are the vanquished from the Battle of Hatfield in 632 AD.

This article, courtesy of the Mansfield CHAD and dated 7/1/1953, offers the possibility that the skeletons may represent Norton and Cuckney plague victims from 2 outbreaks in 1601 and 1605.

There is a reference in the article that in 1603 the number of male and female adults in Norton Cuckney Parish was 340 of a possible total population of 536.

As 1603 is after the 1st plague outbreak of 1601 and if we accept a third of all adults had already died by then, it could be that in 1601 the adults were 3/2 * 340 = 510.

Let us assume that the male adults were 50% of those 510 (ie. 255 – we could possibly extend to 300).

The 1951 excavation unearthed at least 200 supposedly uniformly young adult males with perfect sets of teeth. As Stanley Revill says, in his 1975 article, “King Edwin and The Battle of Heathfield”, “The vicar himself counted about 200 skulls” … but they … “did not include those bodies of which Professor Barley saw only the thigh and the leg bones”.

If the skeletons were to be attributed say, to the possibly higher population of the 1601 plague, then the adult (males and females) deaths might have been c. 255 (ie. 510 * a generous 50% mortality rate) / (200 (skull count) + an undetermined number of others represented by the thigh bones etc.. = possibly close to a 100%) .

This seems wholly unlikely. If we consider that the highest plague mortality rate was, “a third” (say 35%) during the Black Death of 1348, then this would put the likely adult male deaths of 1601 at a max. 300 (of the 510) * 35% = 105.

Even allowing for regional disparities we might stretch this from 105 to 150 (50%) adult male plague deaths in 1601, yet we need to explain well over 200 adult male skeletons.

The CHAD article also states that Norton and Cuckney were, “shut off from contact with other parts”. This should mean that plague deaths from outlying villages, such as Holbeck, ought not to have swelled the number of adult male plague victims.

The only way of explaining the matter as plague related would be to say that the 200 + burials unearthed in 1951 were the combined result of the adult male plague victims from both 1601 and 1605.

This would assume that, say, 150 adult males died in 1601 (50%) and another 85 (ie. 50% of the 170 total male adults of 1603), adding to around 235 possible adult male deaths.

Two separate outbreaks of plague might also explain why the burials took place in, “3 or 4 ‘battle’ pits”.

Yet it does not explain why no skeletal remains of women and children were deemed to have been found in 1951 or the total lack of clothing or artefacts discovered.

Furthermore, there was speculation by Revill that there could be as many as 800 skeletons in those, “battle pits”, which would only be explained by a near 100% mortality rate of the total adult population ‘explanation’ (including women) of 510 in 1601 and 340 in 1603.

As the skeletons were also thought to pre-date the existing church (built c. 1150) then this does not support a church burial of 1601 / 1605. As Revill says, “The skeletons were found under the north wall of the church and the footings of the Norman church, and extended outside the church for at least 7 feet.”

Our view is that the plague possibility does not have enough merit to usurp the Saxon battle theory. This concurs with the views of Professor Maurice Barley in his 1951 Thoroton Society article, “Cuckney Church and Castle” .

His opinion regarding the discovery of c. 200 skeletons was that, “The alternative explanation of plague burial seems unlikely. There were too many dead for plague to have carried off at one time in this poor and thinly populated part of the county.