Today Emmanuel Macron agreed the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to Britain, the first time it will have left France in over 950 years. But where it will be displayed has yet to be announced.

Inevitably the British Museum will be hoping to be the venue but perhaps other locations might be more appropriate.
What about at Hastings, or close to Pevensey Bay where the Normans landed or indeed in the village of Battle itself? However the battle only accounts for about a third of the tapestry's length so another historic site might be more suitable, such as Westminster Great Hall (built just three decades after the conquest) or how about Canterbury Cathedral (Canterbury has been suggested as where the tapestry was actually made). And of course both of these locations would be able to accommodate the 70m long cloth. But London, Kent, Sussex and indeed the whole South-East are already reasonably close to Bayeux itself with good train, plane and ferry connections direct to Normandy, so perhaps it would be better to display the work more centrally in the country? How about, and with a due recognition of William's Harrying of the North, and of Harold's victory at Stamford Bridge, in York or Durham?

Anyway, what are your suggestions, feasible or otherwise?

Reading already has one:

Reproduction of Bayeux Tapestry

There are no Dinosaurs on it, waste of space. ( only kidding )

The Reading one is also free - which I doubt the future exhibition of the real one will be - is full size and is apparently a very faithful copy ... except for a few lewd details, such as the little man who in the original is extremely well-endowed but in the Reading copy the Victorian lady embroiderers decided to clothe with a pair of boxer shorts, into which they could then tuck his prodigious organ out of sight:

Or we could chop it into chunks and display each in the appropriate setting - this might move Brexit event closer  also - and we could refuse to return it unless we get a better Brexit deal.  There's no imagination these days - they used to do things with a bit of  kazam in days of yore.

Bloody French - still gloating after a 1000 years. They're only lending it to us to rub salt in our Brexit wounds.

Geraldine mosaic

I was going to suggest you come to New Zealand to see a wonderful replica, but I see it came to Britain in 2016 and may not be back yet. It is marvellous, made from knitting machine parts, I think, and we have a CD outlining the history of every section in detail. It has taken him a quarter of a century to do, helped by his daughter.

Of course we could send 250ft of paintings to France with similar dedicated content - come on Res Hist help me out here. We surely have enough pics of  say, Sluys, Poitiers, Crecy, Agincourt, Quebec, Nile, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Duke of Wellington and assorted Henry's Admirals and Generals enough to fill a long gallery; some canvases are quite large as I recall. Any illustrated suggestions?

An alternative view:

Daily Mash: Bayeux

Triceratops wrote:

An alternative view:

Daily Mash: Bayeux

She forgot to add that Daenerys - or Henry Tudor - or both - would have been there with the Dragons (plus greyhounds which can also give a nasty bite).




Actually, I once read something in a very good novel about the young Elizabeth Tudor. She is on board the royal flagship during the attempted invasion by the French of 1545.Talking to Thomas Seymour, she observes:

"England won't be invaded. She never has been."

"Not by the Normans?"

"Five hundred years ago! And they were us, or they couldn't have done it!"

"There speaks the proud Plantagenet!"

According to this Article, the display will be at the British Museum.

The Reading Bayeux Tapestry online.

In true Steptoe & Son fashion, right up to at least 1818 (when antiquarian draughtsman Charles Stothard was sent to draw as faithful a copy of the tapestry as possible before it fell apart), the name of the English king as depicted on the worsted was 'Arold. This apparently was how it would have been pronounced in the local dialect of the region at the time it was made. I've been scouring the thing to see if there's an old lad depicted in a bed just outside Hastings at any point shouting for the regent to drop all that bloody battle nonsense and fetch him a cup of tea.

We could lend them the Overlord Embroidery in return, I suppose. Just a little reminder to the cheese-eating surrender monkey tendency of who they need to pull their châtaignes out of the feu when the Boches start to cut up rough next time ......

We'll lend you a 950 year old piece of cloth, LEND. You give us 44 million quid, GIVE

Macron / May

Triceratops wrote:

We'll lend you a 950 year old piece of cloth, LEND. You give us 44 million quid, GIVE

It's called international diplomacy ... Britain used to be rather good at it, nowadays not so much.


... "Chop it into pieces" ... "bloody French" ... "refuse to return it unless we get a better Brexit deal" ... "send 'em some paintings of Agincourt, Crecy, Trafalager, Waterloo" ... "cheese-eating surrender monkey tendency" ... 

Good Lord, it's like the Daily Mail comments section here!

Seriously though, and admittedly prompted by P's suggestion of cutting it into pieces, but is the Bayeux Tapestry (and strictly it's actually an embroidery, not a tapestry) actually one piece of cloth - all 70m of it - or is it already in several separate panels? And if it is all in a single length however does one transport it? You can't just fold it up like a tablecloth and then give it a quick iron when you unpack it at the other end.

A long channel tunnel was built just to manage such  problems - walk it over, of course - then show it in Hastings because it will jam up the motor ways and the M25 has a raked curve.

I expect there would be many in Calais who would volunteer to do this for free.

Meles meles wrote:

Triceratops wrote:

We'll lend you a 950 year old piece of cloth, LEND. You give us 44 million quid, GIVE

It's called international diplomacy ... Britain used to be rather good at it, nowadays not so much.

Well, Boris seems to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick again. He seems to have taken "bridge-building" a tad too literally.

Meles meles wrote:

Good Lord, it's like the Daily Mail comments section here!

I know. I had to cleanse myself by reading Wings over Scotland.

Triceratops wrote:

Meles meles wrote:

Good Lord, it's like the Daily Mail comments section here!

I know. I had to cleanse myself by reading Wings over Scotland.

We haven't even started yet.

From 10 years ago:

Channel Suspension Bridge

Well as one would expect, no sooner has it been announced that the British Museum is to host the Bayeux Tapestry, than others are putting in their bids, with English Heritage quick off the mark in supporting a proposal to host it at Battle Abbey:

Battle of Hastings site launches rival bid to display Bayeux tapestry

I reckon this is going to be like the rivalry to host Richard III's remains ... only I wouldn't be at all surprised if at some point in the next few years, depending on how Brexit goes, France announces the whole thing is called off, as the Tapestry is just too delicate, trop fragile, to travel, et donc tant pis, an' all that.

It all comes down to revenue in the end, and who ends up getting their greedy little paws on it. A bit like the "Conquest" itself, actually.

And loss of revenue ... the mayor of Bayeux is already being lobbied by hordes of local bar-owners, b&bs, post-card sellers, and the makers of plastic swords, Norman key-fobs, and Tapestry fridge magnets, to try and get Macron to stop all this nonsense and keep La Tapisserie de Bayeux, in Bayeux.

What's needed here is a referendum to settle the issue (British style, of course).

Someone needs to inform the elders of the commune Ville de Bayeux que ce n'est pas une tapisserie mais c'est une broderie. That said - I fully support the concerned tourist industry in Normandy (not to mention the concerns of expert curators of ancient textiles) and this Englishman votes that it should stay put.

Here's a possible wording for a UK-style referendum on the issue (stitching together the wordings of the 2011, the 2014 and the 2016 referenda):

"At present, the United Kingdom is loaned 'the Bayeux Tapestry'. Should it leave the United Kingdom, an independent country, for the European Union or should it remain in the United Kingdom?"

Conversely, we could send the Royals to Bayeux on permanent loan to keep it company.

There again Elizabeth Windsor does still have a claim to the Duchy of Normandy, and so she could argue that the Tapestry is hers (it could go in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle).

Although by the Treaty of Paris (1259) King John renounced all his claims to the English monarchy's continental French possessions including the Duchy of Normandy, the Channel Islands were not included and remained under English rule, where, as Crown Dependencies, they remain to this day. Both Channel Islands legislatures refer to Elizabeth II in writing as "The Queen in the right of Jersey" or "The Queen in the right of Guernsey" respectively, however the Queen is still informally referred to as "The Duke of Normandy" (despite being female). When she was on a visit to mainland Normandy in May 1967, it was noted that French locals doffed their hats and shouted "Vive la Duchesse!", to which the Queen supposedly replied "Well, I am The Duke of Normandy!"

In 1872, a photographer from the South Kensington Museum – now the Victoria and Albert – was sent to France to take pictures of the Bayeux tapestry. Photography was in its infancy and the images of the 70-metre long work were produced on 180 glass plates and then coloured by hand, a process that took two years. Only three examples of the resulting complete photographic print are believed to still exist: one in a private collection in Wales, a second is in storage at the V and A, and the third somehow found its way into the hands of the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, who died in 2021. It has just been announced by le musée de Bayeux that this copy was bought by them at last year's auction of Watts’s private collection, with the intention being to put it on display alongside the original tapestry.

The reproduction was printed, lifesize, onto a continuous roll of paper supported on oak reels and is an historic object in its own right being the longest panoramic photograph of the 19th century. Moreover as it is a photograph of the original tapestry, as opposed to a copy however faithfully made, this means it is a valuable tool for tracking the deterioration, repairs and alterations to the tapestry. Already it is clear that there has been some deterioration to the first and last scenes over the past 150 years.



As per the subject of this thread, in 2018 the French president Emmanuel Macron rather rashly agreed to loan Britain the tapestry when the Bayeux Museum closed for renovations; a promise greeted with scepticism by museum officials at the time. As of 2024 the Bayeux Museum is closed and is expected to remain so until 2027, but it now seems highly unlikely that the original tapestry will be going anywhere because of its fragile state.

I had no idea that there were coloured glass plate versions or that Charlie Watts had owned one. Nor did I know that the Bayeux Museum had bought it. The British news media seemed to be quite quiet about this – or else I probably just missed it. I was aware, however, of the Victorian copy embroidered by the ladies of the Leek Embroidery School in Staffordshire in the 1880s:

Meles meles wrote:

The Reading one is also free - which I doubt the future exhibition of the real one will be - is full size and is apparently a very faithful copy ... except for a few lewd details, such as the little man who in the original is extremely well-endowed but in the Reading copy the Victorian lady embroiderers decided to clothe with a pair of boxer shorts, into which they could then tuck his prodigious organ out of sight:

That cheeky chappie appears directly below the character of Aelfgyva, a woman who is depicted on the embroidery with a cleric’s hand reaching out and touching her head. This episode occurs just after William brings Harold to his palace in Normandy and just before they set off for Britanny. Who Aelfgyva was or who the cleric was, and what transpired between them, is something of a mystery. Nor is it clear how this incident is relevant to the story. Several suggestions have been made as to Aelfgyva’s identity. These have ranged from Matilda of Flanders (William the Conqueror’s wife) to Edith of Mercia (Harold’s wife) to Emma of Normandy (Edward the Confessor’s mother) to Aelfgifu of Northampton (King Canute’s first wife) to several others. None of the suggestions, however, seems to satisfactorily explain Aelfgyva’s inclusion in the embroidery and at that point.

The Leek Bayeux Embroidery, Reading Museum: The Mysterious Lady

I’ll pass on trying to identify Aelfgyva, therefore, but to add my own pennysworth, I’ll attempt an identification of the cleric ‘unus clericus’ and suggest that it is perhaps Odo himself. The Bishop of Bayeux, Odo is widely believed to have been the commissioner of the embroidery. He was the half-brother of William the Conqueror and was created Earl of Kent by him following the conquest. In the embroidery, Odo is named on 2 occasions. He is portrayed at William’s right-hand-side during a war council shortly after the Normans have landed at Hastings. Later he is shown encouraging the Normans on during the battle. He’s thus depicted as a statesman and a warrior in those parts of the embroidery and so a depiction of him as a cleric earlier on would sort of complete the hat-trick of his varied career. That doesn’t, of course, explain why he’s not named on that earlier occasion. A wild guess and, therefore, almost certainly wrong.

Oh Viz, you do come up with some interesting meaty morsels for us to chew over. As you say there's no shortage of likely candidates who might have been the mysterious lady Aelfgyva (or Ælfgifu in its Saxon form: it rather charmingly means 'Elf-Gift') as it was such a common name amongst the Saxon and Scandinavian nobility at the time. However the simple fact that she is specifically depicted and named (in total there are only twenty people mentioned by name on the tapestry) surely indicates that this lady Aelfgyva, whoever she might have been, was important to the overall tapestry's narrative. And the official narrative, at least from the victorious Norman point of view, was simply that Duke William had the divine right to take, by force if necessary, the crown of England because it had been promised to him under holy oath. But yes, who is the lady Aelfgyva and what is her significance?



The Aelfgyva scene is intriguing. It occurs immediately after the part where Harald, having arrived in Normandy, is taken to William's palace at Rouen, and there the two men are depicted discussing the earl’s reason for his visit.



William is seated and holding a sword (he's very much in control here) while Harald, standing, appears to be attempting to negotiate the release of his younger brother, Wulfnoth, generally presumed to be the man that Harold is pointing towards. This man, though not identified, is depicted with a beard in the English style, not the Norman clean-shaven manner as are all the others in the scene (apart from the mustachioed Harald) and so he is usually taken to be Wulfnoth, the principal hostage whose release Harald had come to negotiate. In this he failed as Wulfnoth remained a hostage of William but Harald did secure the release of his nephew, Hakon, and eventually they returned to England together. If the bearded fellow is Harald's brother Wulfnoth, then where in the tapestry is Hakon? Is he perhaps the naked chap in the margin below and about whom Wulfnoth appears to be almost saying: 'should William only agree to release one of us, then take Hakon and not me'. In the event Harald did manage to secure the release of Hakon who returned with him to England, but Wulfnoth remained in Normandy and took no part in any of the subsequent events: in particular he doesn't seem to have been present at the Battle of Hastings, on either side. Alternatively the bearded fellow could be Hakon and it's Wulfnoth that has been left out of the tapestry, but as his brother it was Wulfnoth, not Hakon, who was Harald's closer kin and indeed one who had his own legitimate claim to the English crown.

The scene in which Ælfgyva and the priest are portrayed follows immediately after but seems out of place in the narrative and so is likely a back-story relevant to the conversation between Harald and William. The inscription above the states simply and enigmatically "UBI UNUS CLERICUS ET AELFGYVA" — "Here a certain clerk and Aelfgyva". The clerk seems to be reaching out and touching the ladies face, an act that is rarely acceptable even today except in certain specific circumstances. If the lady is not actually being assaulted by the priest, the gesture implies either affection or some other formal collaboration between them. The priest may be giving her a blessing, absolution, forgiveness or formally acknowledging a promise, sworn statement or oath of homage as the gesture is very similar to the way William is later shown touching Harald's head when he knights him and accepts his oath of fealty. The text reads "HIC WILLELM[US] DEDIT ARMA HAROLDO" - "Here William gave arms to Harold".



Now to the cheeky chappie immediately below the mysterious lady Aelfgyva. I do not think he can be just a bit of whimsical decoration but rather that he is an integral part of the overall meaning. Note how his hand gesture exactly mirrors that of the priest touching Aelfgyva. Moreover the fact that he is not just naked, but very explicitly so, surely means his presence must be significant. And he is not alone as just to his left is another nude man; this one, rather rashly given has naked state, is depicted chopping wood with a large axe. At the very least these two chaps would appear to allude to rampant masculine virility, albeit perhaps coupled with some sinful shame - in contrast to the apparently demure, pious and literally 'up-standing' figures of Aelfgyva and the cleric. When read alongside the depiction of Aelfgyva apparently making a confession or swearing an oath, might they together be alluding to some sort of scandal, perhaps concerning illicit sexual relations, infidelity or the illegitimacy of offspring?

In 11th century England there were several rumours and scandals involving prominent ladies named Aelfgyva/Ælfgifu. Firstly king Cnut’s consort and the mother of his sons, Harald Harefoot (later Harald I) and Sven Knutsson, was known as Ælfgifu of Northampton. She became the subject of a scandal when she was accused of presenting Cnut with the two boys that were supposedly neither his nor hers. One was rumoured to be the son of a workman and a serving maid and the other the son of a priest and the same serving maid, or maybe of Ælfgifu herself. And then there was Harald's nephew, Sweyn Godwinson, who had once abducted Ælfgifu, the Abbess of Leominster, apparently intending to marry her and gain control of Leominster's vast estate. King Edward the Confessor however had refused to permit the marriage so Ælfgifu returned to her abbey while Sweyn went into exile abroad. Sweyn eventually had one son, Hakon, who ended up the hostage of Duke William of Normandy and this was the one brought back by Harold in 1064. As suggested above Hakon might be the naked man chopping wood, naked to allude to his father's scandal perhaps, and with his action of hacking wood with an axe (un hache in Norman-French, when I believe the 'ch' was pronounced with a hard 'tch' sound unlike the softer 'sh' sound of modern French) might tenduously be a pun on Hakon's name.

I readily admit it is easy to get carried away with all the symbolism and so infer meaning when none was originally intended. Similar naked figures do appear elsewhere in the borders where there seems to be no connection with the main action, such as this amorous couple who would most likely be simply Adam and Eve.



There are also numerous mythical beasts and heraldic emblems in the margins throughout the tapestry and I note that immediately to the right of the cheekie chappie and still under the image of Ælfgifu and the priest, there is a wyvern (a two-legged dragon). The wyvern was an English royal emblem and as such is depicted later on during the battle where it is clearly shown as Harald's royal standard, for example as depicted here, where King Harald makes his final stand and is killed.



Furthermore I note that the wyvern depicted under the scene with Ælfgifu and the priest has its tail tied in a knot. Is this perhaps an allusion to King Cnut. The name Cnut derives from the Old Norse word, knutr, which means a knot (whether the name referred to a knot as a small hill/knoll, or knot as a tied cord is uncertain, but either way in Old English the pun would still have worked). Then there are the birds in the upper margin. Are they cockerels, symbolic of strutting machismo, or perhaps hawks, symbolising a predator ready to pounce on some unsuspecting prey (Ælfgifu herself)? I also note what are clearly two peacocks - commonly a symbol of pride - in the margin directly above where Harold is in conferance with William. Furthermore at the risk of reading yet more meanings where it's likely none were ever intended, might the lion-headed columns framing the lady Aelfgyva be a punning allusion to her being Ælfgifu of Leominster, who Sweyn Godwinson attempted to seduce?

However despite all this speculation I still fail to see what relevance the old rumours of scandal have to the narrative of the Bayeux tapestry. Edward the Confessor (still king of England when Harald was in Normandy) had succeeded to the throne through a line from Cnut's second marriage to King Æthelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy. After her marriage to Cnut, Emma of Normandy was also often known as Ælfgifu, which is particularly confusing as Cnut continued to remain married to Ælfgifu of Northampton (at the time and having two wives/concubines was not uncommon) and indeed Emma/Ælfgifu of Normandy has herself been suggested as a candidate for the mysterious woman in the tapestry.

Emma of Normandy was the mother of Edward the Confessor who was aged about sixty years old at the time the tapestry starts its narration. Edward had no children or any clear successor although at that time succession to the English throne was not by strict primogeniture (the usual Norman method) but was decided jointly by the king and an assembly of nobility, the Witenagemot. Emma/Ælfgifu of Normandy was also William's great aunt so whether the old asperstions about Ælfgifu of Northampton were true or not, they neither promote nor diminsh William's claim to the English throne. William had no more inherited right to the throne than Harold, which in any case was not based solely on primogeniture. Besides as the tapestry makes clear, the important thing from the Norman point of view was Harald's oath sworn on the holy relicts to support William's claim to the English crown. It was Harald breaking his sacred oath that prompted William's invasion.


UBI HAROLD SACRAMENTUM FECIT WILLELMO DUCI - Where Harold made an oath to Duke William.

However after all that wittering I'm still no closer to identifying the mysterious lady, although that's not really surprising as the question has been occupying minds far greater than mine for many years.

I've only just heard of this ...

In 2023 a three-slab triptych owned by the aristocratic Italian Tirelli family came to light when they hired experts to assess various heirlooms and relics. The triptych is believed to have been made by a Norman artist in about 1100 and tells in three painted panels the story of Walter Tirel, or Gaultier Tyrrell (the Tirelli's ancestor), who was involved in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and whose son of the same name killed William II, the son of William the Conqueror, either deliberately or accidentally during a hunting expedition in the New Forest. In a style very similar to the Bayeux Tapestry, the first slab features a group of warriors, led by "Tirelli" and "his brother Hrolfre", who travelled from the Orkney islands to Normandy and who converted to Christianity along the way. The next panel depicts the Battle of Hastings and refers to the later death of William II, while the third refer's to Tirel's attempt to seek pardon and then his escape from Langham near Colchester to Normandy to escape justice. 







From a report in The Guardian: Descendants of King William II’s killer keen to donate triptych depicting death to British museum, Alexandro Tirelli, a representative of the Tirelli foundation, said, "The family really doesn’t care about the money," adding that it was more important to bring the works back to the places it depicts. "So we would like to find an agreement with a public authority and donate it to a museum in Colchester or Scotland", or as The Guardian suggests, the British Museum.