Here is a woman whose lifelong husband is going to have sex with a widow whose husband he had killed, just so that his future son can be King of England! This is the dramatic story of Edith Swan-Neck who had to identify her husband’s mutilated body at Senlac north of Hastings. 

On 11 October 2022 in the Seafront Room in the White Rock Hotel, Hastings, there will be a series of celebratory lectures and presentations on the life of Edith Swanneshals (Swan-neck), the Danish right-handfasted wife of King Harold Godwinson. The doors at the White Rock open at 12.30; however, the celebration organised by the Friends of Edith starts with a visit to the specially conserved statue in West Marina Gardens not too far from the Bo-Peep public house at 11am, to which everyone is invited.

The statue, in West Marina Gardens

Having studied elements of Edith’s life and considered the pressures upon her mental health, I have the greatest admiration for her as a wife and mother of almost all of King Harold’s children. Several modern books have been written about aspects of her life and those of her offspring, including the highly praised Conquered: The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England by Eleanor Parker, Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford – and the ground-breaking study, Edith the Fair by historian Bill Flint, 2015 – published by Gracewing Press – a book that connects her to the shrine at Walsingham.

We may dismiss the battling lives of early medieval heroes and heroines as being legends or myths, yet these were humans capable of the same feelings of joy or loss that we have today – and so this article I would like you to consider how you would feel – as a woman or man – if you had to face up to the following situations.

Edith was born around 1025. We do not know her mother for sure, although she too may have been named Edith or Wulfhild – a daughter of King Æthelred. However, it is thought that Edith’s father was the great mercenary Jomsviking warrior, Thorkell the Tall, whose drunken horde had invaded Kent in 1009 and physically and mentally abused Ælfheah, the Archbishop of Canterbury, leading to his terrible fate on 19 April 1012 – clubbed to death with a cattle bone by a man he had just baptised. Shocked and embarrassed, Thorkell then changed sides and began to defend England on behalf of King Æthelred the Unready, rather than invade it. 

So, Edith was a Dane living in an often-violent culture that accepted long term sexual and emotional commitment using the binding of hands in a ceremony – handfasting, ‘in the way of the Danes.’ The ceremony of binding two people together meant that for a short-term relationship, left hands were bound by ribbons in a ceremony performed in front of relatives – but right hands were bound if the intention were to love each other lifelong. Her Anglo-Saxon right-handfasted husband, Earl Harold Godwinson, born around 1022, also had Danish roots since his mother was the Danish noblewoman, Gytha Thorkelsdóttir (sometimes Thorgilsdóttir). He would have understood this custom even though he was nominally a Christian who gave large sums of money to the Church – especially to Waltham Abbey near London. Edith was certainly not his concubine, as
many historians have claimed inaccurately.

Left: The statue, in West Marina Gardens; RIGHT: Identifying the body

Earl Harold had built a west country hunting lodge for King Edward the Confessor, and this had been destroyed by Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, King of Wales. Earl Harold attacked this Welsh king, and eventually in 1064, he was beheaded, by a Welshman with a deep grudge – but undoubtedly motivated by Harold’s campaign aims. Gruffydd’s head and the prow of his ship were sent by Harold to King Edward, as proof of his death. Gruffydd had married Ealdgyth, the daughter of Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia and now she was widowed.

In those far-off days, women bore many children and considered themselves lucky if even one of them survived. The English Christian Church of the time was deeply traditionalist. Despite pleading by Edith Swan-neck, church leaders refused her permission to bury a stillborn child in consecrated ground. To make matters worse, when Harold became King in 1066, the Church told Harold that if he was to die in battle but wished to leave a legal descendant to be king after him, then he must marry in the Christian Church. Any child products of a handfasted marriage would not be valid for kingship, despite the fact that Edith had given him (almost certainly) four sons and two daughters. Therefore, despite his deep love for Edith Swan-neck, he married Gruffydd’s widow, Ealdgyth in church. To produce a child – a hoped for son, he then had to persuade her to sleep with him even though he had effectively procured her first husband’s death. We have to assume that Harold must have been conflicted by this turn of events.

Even greater turmoil flooded the life of Edith Swan-neck. She had to stay loyal to her king and husband through this emotional period. It is one thing to say – ‘Oh, they were used to it’ – but, in my opinion, it is highly unlikely that mere custom and Christian rites would be sufficient to stop the dreadful sadness Edith experienced, having to see her husband undertake a dynastic marriage with another woman – and then to identify her beloved Harold’s horrifically mutilated and possibly castrated body in the cold light of a late autumn evening on the battlefield at Senlac.

About the Friends of Edith

FoE is a not-for-profit organisation formed on 14th October 2018 and committed to protecting the statue of Edith and Harold in West Marina Gardens, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex and to increasing the awareness and appreciation for Edith Swan-neck who is depicted in the statue finding the body of her husband, King Harold II, killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The statue was made in 1875 by Charles Wilke for Lord Brassey, who was MP for Hastings at the time and who subsequently gave the statue to the town. Due to the rain and salt air (it is fifty metres from the sea) it is eroding significantly. 

FoE has been formed to help protect the statue from further erosion and preserve it for future generations. In addition, Edith’s life story, largely hidden from history, has interesting resonances for today and so deserves to be more widely known. FoE is linked to CARE, an established Campaign for Action to Rescue Edith (by the original name of Campaign for A ‘Roof’ for Edith) which raises funds to put a plaque on the statue. It can be found on both Facebook and Twitter, and also has an online petition page (all @roof4edith) A copy of the Articles of Association can be obtained from info@friendsofedith.org.uk

It is hoped that the event will be held again next year, and its scope increased substantially. It may become an annual event depending on the public response. The event will be filmed, and sound recorded and promoted through a range of media. The significance of the event is that Edith was the wife of Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England who died on 14th October 1066 – and Edith’s identification of his mutilated body may have enabled him to have an honourable burial. No financial support for the Friends of Edith has been given by Hastings Borough Council but some officers and elected members of the council have given verbal support. The future aims of the Friends will be extended depending on the interest shown, and support given. However, it is noted that Kevin Boorman is the Major Projects Manager at Hastings Borough Council, and he is working with consultants to produce a world-class history interpretation centre at Hastings Castle. During the presentations on 11 October, a clear vision of the future of the history project will be revealed.

• For more information see friendsofedith.org.uk

The Programme

2.30-3.30pm Edith in Canterbury
David Reekie, a local historian based in Canterbury will reveal the four townhouses that Edith owned in Canterbury and her other connections to the town.

4.00-5.00pm ‘Eadgifu Swanneshals and Aristocratic Benefactors of St Edmund’s Shrine in Late Anglo-Saxon England’
Dr Francis Young FRHS, a Latin translator and author will explain the land grants that Edith made to the Shrine of the English king killed by the Vikings in 869 CE – St Edmund the Martyr.

5.00-6.00pm ‘The Landboc of Eddeva Pulchra’ – Edith’s landed wealth and core homesteads
Ian Jarman, Founder and Secretary of Friends of Edith has researched the life of Edith for more than 40 years. Landboc – Edith’s landholdings in England, and her legacy. 

6.45-8.00pm ‘King Harold’s mother’ – Gytha Thorgilsdottir
A short play and one-woman performance by Heather Leech, local playwright, and actor.

8.00-9.00 pm ‘The Wyrtruman of Eadgifu Swanneshals’ – Edith’s family history, beliefs, and final fate
Ian Jarman, FoE, and Carol McGrath, author of ‘The Daughters of Hastings’ novel trilogy on Gita, Lady of Kyiv, Edith’s daughter. ‘Wyrtruman’ – the family ‘roots’ and belief system of Edith Swanneshals and her final fate and Edith as a Ukrainian princess.

The group is chapioning Edith Swan-neck, the consort of King Harold II who died at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her statue – and that of Harold – is a local landmark in West Marina Gardens on the St Leonard’s seafront, although few know the story behind the woman tending the dying man. The story is largely her story and is one the new group believes should be more widely appreciated, especially these days, when the meaning of statues is very much under the spotlight following the toppling of the Coulston statue in Bristol and the relegation of Churchill into a wooden fridge.

PICTURE: Dave Young

“She was a lady of great character and strength,” says Ian Jarman, the group’s founder, “whose story demonstrates the hidden influence and key contribution she and women like her made to our history. So much so that we believe by looking at – and telling – history from a woman’s perspective will give us profound insights into our understanding of events and, indeed, change how we think about it and its meaning for today.”

There are many echoes today of aspects of Edith’s life: she was Harold’s long-term partner, but not married to him in the eyes of the Church (today we might say they were in a common-law relationship); they had six children over their 20 or so years together which speaks of an unusually harmonious and nurturing family life. (One of their daughters, Gytha, subsequently married in to the Russian royal line and, through them, passed their blood to a 31x Great-grand-daughter alive today – Queen Elizabeth II). Yet, shortly after Harold became King in January 1066, he set Edith aside so that he could marry a lady of a Northern dynasty (the grand-daughter of Lady Godiva) in order to cement a political alliance. Edith’s treatment is poignant, even today, though it is not known the exact form her banishment took: there is some evidence that she removed herself to Harold’s estate in Crowhurst.

When Harold died on the battlefield later that year, cut to pieces by Norman knights and stripped of all his regalia, it was Edith who was called upon to pick through the fallen and identify his body parts. This famous act is what is represented in the statue in West Marina Gardens, though presented more romantically in a Victorian but nevertheless evocative manner. It was made by Charles Wilke in 1875 to the commission of Thomas (later Lord) Brassey, who was MP for Hastings at the time, who subsequently donated the sculpture to Hastings Corporation (the fore-runner of Hastings Borough Council). Since then it has been in various inside locations, including the Brassey Institute in Claremont and Hastings Museum in John’s Place. Since 1953 it has been in its current location outside at the mercy of the elements in the West St Leonards Park. It is eroding badly (its original inscription, for example, has completely disappeared) and one of the key aims of the new group is to find ways of preserving it for future generations to enjoy.

Edith was called upon to pick over the fallen and identify Harold’s body parts

The ‘Friends of Edith’ were formed last year after a plaque was affixed to the statue (unveiled by the then MP Amber Rudd and the Mayor, Nigel Sinden) to replace the missing inscription, paid for by funds raised by CARE: Campaign for A ‘’Roof” for Edith, which was founded in 2017, also by Ian Jarman, and with the help of the Hastings Local History Group.

Among the projects the group hopes to initiate this year are: the cleaning and sealing of the statue (in fact, the initial cleaning, which took just over two weeks, was completed on 19th June this year); installing CCTV and running a Statue/Neighbourhood Watch scheme for the community; providing better signage to and around the statue, including story and interpretation information boards; creating a better ambience at the site through murals on adjacent walls; enhancing visitor experience through virtual reality facilities to bring the statue alive on smart phones in animated 3D, music and voice; providing educational resources by developing a 1066 Garden and Wildflower Meadow planted with historical indigenous flora, including wildlife ‘hotels’ to encourage diversity of local fauna and play some small part in re-wilding and greening of our environment – all with the help of local schools and other educational establishments. In this way the group hope to harness Edith’s legacy in a meaningful way.

“As much as it is our desire to protect the statue from further decline,” states Ian Jarman, “we want it to be a trigger or focus for real actions and activities for the now and in the future. We don’t want it to be a museum piece: we want it to provide the impetus or force for good in the community today – that is Edith’s real legacy: the practical enabling and nurturing of understanding and collective endeavour for the betterment of our community, by channelling our heritage in positive ways.”

PICTURE: Dave Young

The group are currently in discussion with HBC and others about many of the proposals, and are pleased to have learned that HBC will shortly be granting them a licence to undertake their garden project, but this will all inevitably take considerable resources and funds – there is no public money available – thus, the group are reliant on fund-raising activities, grant schemes and donations. 

If you are interested and would like to help (for example by becoming a member of ‘Friends of Edith’ for £10 a year) you can find further information on their website at friendsofedith.org.uk and on Facebook and Twitter. They hold regular local meetings/informal chats in the form of Drop-bys/Drop-ins every first Thursday of the month, 12-2 at the statue and 2–4 in the Marina Fountain (when it re-opens), Caves Road, St Leonards (opposite the statue): all are welcome, whether members or not, no booking required.

Help Edith achieve her 2020 Vision!

Among the many projects the group initiated in 2020 year was the cleaning and sealing of the statue. This is now almost complete. 

• For a more in-depth article, read Features in the next edition of HIP.

This statue was created in 1875 by German sculptor Karl Augustus Heinrich Wilke and was donated to the Borough by Lord Brassey, MP for Hastings 1868-1886.  It is now open to the elements and in a sad state of repair. 

A Panel will discuss whether the Edith Swan Neck Statue should be moved to a safe place and, if so, where. 

Panel members will be Tim Craven, former Curator of Art at Southampton City Art Gallery and Artists Claudia De Grandi, Matthew Radford and Alan Rankle. For short bios of panel members, see the Community section of HIP’s website.

The Panel discussion will feature a contribution from Andrew Kötting together with selected excerpts from his film Edith Walks.  

The Edith Swan Neck Panel Discussion is one of a series of events staged by the Burtons’ St Leonards Society: www.burtonsstleonardssociety.co.uk

The Society’s aims are to encourage high standards of architecture and town planning in St Leonards on Sea, prevent unsympathetic development in the area and to stimulate public interest in the beauty, history and character of the area of St Leonards and its surroundings.

• A Panel Discussion on the future of the Edith Swan Neck Statue, Kino Teatr, Norman Road, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex
Sunday 24 February  4.00pm-6.30pm , £5 admission.

If you didn’t know it was there, you could be forgiven for missing the statue of Edith  Swan Neck altogether as you drive along the West Marina in St Leonard’s.  Looking somehow too small for her grassy location, she seems oblivious to the rolling sea at her back, intent as she is on the corpse of her husband Harold lying prostrate beneath her.  People who don’t know the story might be forgiven for thinking it depicts a woman strangling her husband. For those who do, she seems a picture of stoicism as she endures the added insults of wind and weather, which are visibly damaging this beautiful and typically Victorian statue, the work of artist Charles A W Wilke in 1875.

The statue of Edith Swan-neck, or Edith the Fair as she was also known, commemorates the history and folklore surrounding the rescue of King Harold’s body after he was slain at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.  Bexhill historian Ian Jarman, who is co-ordinating a Campaign for a Roof for Edith, agrees that hers is a story of myth and romance,  but it is also the story of a courageous and heroic woman – a woman for our times. Accounts of the battle record that Harold’s body was dismembered by Norman soldiers after his death, and Edith, his ‘handfast’ wife of twenty years, toured the battlefield in search of his various body parts.   Accompanied only by two monks, she eventually succeeded, aided by marks on his body – some say tattoos, others teeth marks  –  that were known only to her.  Accounts describe Harold’s head, his torso, and one of his legs, collected by Edith after a long search among the dead and dying. 

The statue depicts Harold’s body conveniently reassembled to suit Victorian romantic sensibilities.  Its journey around Hastings, Bexhill and St Leonards, while not as momentous as Edith’s journey from Waltham Abbey to Hastings (as featured in Andrew Kotting’s haunting 2017 film ‘Edith Walks’), has probably notched up just as many resting places.  Originally commissioned by Lord Brassey, MP for Hastings, for Hastings Town Hall, it has variously been displayed at the Brassey Institute, Cambridge Halls (a public space on the site now occupied by ESK) and Bexhill Museum, where it was placed on the lawn.  Finally donated to Hastings Borough Council, the statue has been situated on its current spot since 1953.

It’s a hard job for the present-day tourist to identify it because, as Ian points out,  there is simply no information at the site about its subject or provenance.  The inscription around the base, which once read ‘Edith Finding the Body of Harold on the Battlefield of Hastings’, has long since worn away.  But Ian believes that Edith is a well-loved landmark and should remain where she is.  Her weathered state after 93 years would look incongruous indoors, and restoration is not a priority. His campaign is to preserve her current condition by sheltering it from the further effects of wind and weather and to provide signage and information so viewers can learn who Edith was and how the statue came to be there.   ‘She came out of the shadows of history’, he says.  ‘I would like her statue to be around still in 2066.’

Currently over 600 people agree, and have signed the Campaign’s petition for a Roof for Edith.  When the target of 1066 signatures is reached, Ian will present it to Hastings Borough Council and hope to persuade them to contribute to the maintenance of the piece of heritage they own.  He estimates that the cost for design and build of canopy plus information stands within would be in the region of £10,000.   He told me he would be happy with a match-funding arrangement with HBC. Realistically there will have to be some private fundraising too:  to this end he would want to give local residents a say in the design of the shelter.  Meanwhile English Heritage at Battle Abbey have been supportive of Ian’s idea to incorporate an ‘Edith Trail’ into the tourist experience there as well as pointing them towards the West Marina end of St Leonards. 

• To sign the petition, go to you.38degrees.org.uk/campaign-for-a-roof-for-edith or go to Facebook.

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If you have an interest in film that falls into the British psychogeographical genre you are likely to have come across Andrew Kötting, a local to St Leonards on Sea for over 15 years and an award winning film maker. The exhibition currently showing at The Towner includes three films which fall comfortably into a surrealist ‘exploring through walking’ category, much aligned with Patrick Keiller or Iain Sinclair’s work, the latter a collaborator here.

While the films have been shown outside of a gallery context, the exhibition assembles a broad range of ephemera related to each film, such as Anonymous Bosch’s stunning pinhole camera photograhs and daughter and fellow artist, Eden Kötting’s moving drawings and paintings.

‘Explor[ing] the outer reaches of the M25’, Edith Walks, is centred around Edith Swan Neck, King Harold’s first ‘handfast’ wife who, according to folklore, identified his body in the battlefield. A costumed group of four walking at a sort of military gait to a snare drum contrasted with the soporific singing of Edith’s ghost and the playing of bicycle wheel spokes with violin bows. By Ourselves follows poet John Clare’s footsteps through an exhausting walk along motorways, through fields and into suburbia by Sinclair, Kötting (as the Straw Bear), Eden (as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz) and Toby Jones (as the ghost of  Clare). In the end Clare becomes “foot foundered and broken down”. Swandown tracks a 150 mile journey along waterways from Hastings to Hackney in a Swan pedalo (from Hastings boating lake), during which Kötting discusses various topics with guest pedallers such as Sinclair, comedian Stewart Lee and graphic novelist Alan Moore, through quintessential English landscapes and an almost physically present history where the birds in the trees are “the entities of people who once lived in this place.”

On first viewing there seems to be an almost exclusive white male voice throughout much of the film-based work. While Edith Walks revolves around the (almost silent) figure of Edith Swan Neck acting out an imagined devotion as unrecognised wife to a King while surrounded by men talking about her dead husband, the film still feels devoid of a female point of view (surely there is more to Edith than being a wife and mother). To feature Clare as a subject, whose misogyny is discussed in the film, and his journey in search of his long ‘lost love’ (does she want to be found?) or references to the drownings of Ophelia and Virginia Woolf in Swandown feels like a silence that can’t be ignored. Unless that is the point.

Having said that, I admire Kötting’s work. It is difficult not to feel a connection to the personal vulnerability and feeling of endurance, demonstrated in the act of (long) walking, for example, and the folkloric treatment of universalities like death and pain, though dealt with with quirky idiosyncratic humour. I was reluctant to return to real life and leave the dimmed gallery with the sonic aesthetic of multiple soundtracks amongst the ephemera or ‘evidence’ of the film-making process. Of course I have said so little about Eden’s work (is this irony?) which I find truly engaging with a depth of emotional communication that I find hard to explain. You will have to go see it all for yourself. Highly recommended.

Andrew Kötting: Who You Walk With Alters What You See, Towner Art Gallery Eastbourne until 31 December, Tues – Sun 10am – 5pm, free entry

Townereastbourne.org.uk