BATTLE

town (parish), Rother district, administrative county of East Sussex, historic county of Sussex, England, just inland from Hastings. A ridge to the southeast, called Senlac, was the site of the famous battle in which William I the Conqueror defeated the English in 1066. Before the battle William vowed to build an abbey on the spot if victorious, and in 1094 its church was consecrated, with an altar standing where the English king Harold II fell. The great gateway, built in 1338, survives alongside the town, but after the Reformation the church was destroyed and the abbey converted into a mansion that is now occupied by a school. Pop. (1991) 5,235.