Even if you can't recall the particulars of the story it tells, you're likely familiar with the Bayeux Tapestry, which recounts the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. That's when William, Duke of Normandy, challenged Harold Godwinson, England's last Anglo-Saxon King, for the throne—and won. The 230-foot tapestry is jam-packed: with 626 people, 762 animals, 58 inscriptions, and, as an Oxford academic pointed out in 2018, 93 penises, reported Artsy at the time. It also twice contains a residence whose location archaeologists say they've now managed to pinpoint in England.
The coastal village of Bosham, in West Sussex, is one of only four places in England to be named on the tapestry. It's depicted as the place where Harold feasts in a hall before departing for France, and again feasts upon his return. As researchers from Newcastle University and the University of Exeter write in a study published by in the Antiquaries Journal, "the representation of Earl Harold's residence [on the tapestry] lends the exceptional significance as the only visual representation of a lordly center from pre-Conquest England. ... Given this clear importance, it is surprising that little previous effort had been made to understand Bosham's lordly complex, and even its location has not been established for certain."
They set out to rectify that and say they've found evidence that a house in England is the site of Harold's lost residence. A press release explains it had been suggested that a particular house in the village now stands on the site. Archaeologists evaluated the property via a geophysical survey, an assessment of standing remains, by reviewing maps and records, and by poring over details of excavations conducted in 2006 by West Sussex Archaeology. The key to their discovery was something found in 2006: a latrine within a large timber building.
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"The importance of this ... feature could not be fully recognized at the time," per the study. Archaeologists only came to realize in the last decade or so that the homes of the elite in England began to incorporate toilets in the 10th century AD. The latrine's presence now suggests the timber building was one such high-status home, "and almost certainly represents part of Harold's residence illustrated on the Bayeux Tapestry." (More discoveries stories.)
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