𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Visitors will enter via a mezzanine which means they will be able to see the entire length of the work in one go from afar.

They’ll then walk – presumably at some pace – closer to the action; the 58 scenes of the events leading up to 1066 and the Battle of Hastings, complete with 626 figures, 202 horses and six women.

We got a glimpse of one of those women as the conservators working on the tapestry lifted up a section of the cover that is on it now to protect it from the light.

It shows a woman fleeing with her child from her house as Norman soldiers begin to torch it during the Conqueror’s devastating journey to fight Harold for the throne. A human interaction that reveals the horror of war.

Horton-Insch called it “one of the most poignant moments on the tapestry”.

“Her experience is the experience of the everywoman if you will, the experience that a lot of english women, including the english women who probably made the tapestry, would have lived through and would have experienced”.

Lewis told me there are still so many mysteries about the tapestry. One I wanted cleared up was about a section – sadly under cover for our visit – which shows a figure, believed to be Harold, with an arrow in his eye at the Battle of Hastings.

Some historians believe the arrow was added later, during restoration in the nineteenth century. Lewis agrees it’s a later addition.

“The earliest drawings of the tapestry don’t show the arrow in the eye… my feeling is the arrow is a later invention based on a tradition that comes along in the 12th Century that Harold died with an arrow in his eye. But I’m happy to be proven wrong”.