Battle Abbey Gateway
In 1070 Pope Alexander II ordered the Normans to do penance for killing so many people during their conquest of England. So William the Conqueror vowed to build an abbey where the Battle of Hastings had taken place, with the high altar of its church on the very spot where King Harold fell in that battle on Saturday, 14 October 1066. He did start building it and named it Battle Abbey, though he died before it was completed. Its church was finished in about 1094 and consecrated during the reign of his son William Rufus. It was remodelled in the late 13th century but virtually destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII.
Source
Rev. C. Arthur Lane Illustrated Notes on English Church History (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1901)
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