This book is about war, and specifically about early battlefields in Britain. Some of its material has appeared in historical journals (as shown in the bibliography); other Chapters are previously unpublished. All of them break new ground. They relate, for example, the British victory over West Saxons at Mount ‘Badon’ in 493 to Braydon in north Wiltshire; the massacre of an allied Scottish- Irish force at ‘Degsastan’ in 603 to Wester Dawyck, southern Scotland; the Northumbrian defeat at Maserfelth in 642 to Forden, near Welshpool; and the English triumph at Brunanburh in 937 to Lanchester, County Durham. The traditional locations proposed for these battles (Badbury, Dawston Rigg, Oswestry, Bromborough) can hence be rejected.

If arguments for such places are compelling, there are three main benefits. First, much Anglo- Saxon history can be rewritten. We shall understand better the aims of commanders on both sides and their success (or lack of it). Second is an advance for archaeologists. They need not waste time excavating a site in mid- Wiltshire or the Wirral in a quest for swords and spears, because they would be looking in the wrong place. Third is the demonstration of a method. Analysis of place names in English or Welsh allows emendation of (for example) ‘Badon’ or ‘Degsastan’, which make no sense, to names that do make sense and can be found on the map. The technique can be applied to sites other than battlefields. The sixth- century writer Gildas refers to the (fourthcentury?) martyrdom of Aaron and Julius at ‘Legionum urbs’, often taken as Caerleon, in south- east Wales. Yet the form is better emended to Legorum urbs or Leicester, more important than Caerleon, and hence a likelier place for persecution of Christians. Again, for St Patrick, who refers to his home at the obscure ‘Bannaventa Burniae’, it is not difficult to show this (after Ludwig Bieler and the local historian Harry Jelley) as a corruption of Bannaventa Tabernae (Bannaventa of the Tavern) and therefore Banwell, Avon. St Patrick would have been a Somerset man, living near the opulence of Roman Bath, but also near a low- lying coast dangerously open to Irish predators.

This does not limit the applications of place names. If British Battles 493– 937 demonstrates their significance for military history, three volumes in preparation show their uses elsewhere.