English Heritage acquires film of first re-enactment, ‘a lot of pushing and shoving’ between Kent and Sussex students

At the top of a hill in a field near Hastings, a group of defiant English combatants awaited the invading army of William the Conqueror, brandishing their spears and shouting “Harold! Harold!”.

Unfortunately, the Norman army had been held up in traffic on the A27 from Brighton, meaning the most significant battle in English history had to be delayed by 20 minutes while the French got into their costumes.

Initiative aims to keep alive age-old skill, and at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset improve habitat for rare shrill carder bee

It sounds like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel: a merry band of men and women roaming the West Country cutting meadows by hand in exchange for hunks of bread and cheese.

But the conservation charity English Heritage is recruiting a team of volunteer scythers to maintain 21st-century meadowland in the old-fashioned way.

Exclusive: campaigners warn 600-year-old New Barn at Harmondsworth could be ‘shaken to pieces’ by vibrations

Six hundred years after it was built, England’s largest surviving medieval timber-framed barn could now be “shaken to pieces” by aircraft vibrations, campaigners warn.

The public has until 1 September to submit objections to the Heathrow airport expansion, which could threaten the survival of the New Barn at Harmondsworth, considered a remarkable example of medieval architecture.

Handful of ticketholders will be selected at random for up-close visits to ancient site throughout August

Trips to Stonehenge can be a little hectic. Tens of thousands of people turn up to celebrate summer and winter solstices and most other days the site is a place of bustle, excited conversation and selfie action.

But throughout August, English Heritage is offering visitors the chance to win some guaranteed solitude within the hulking stones.

Author argues symbols such as daisy wheels are no more than the working marks of stonemasons

Over the years, English Heritage and Historic England have claimed to have identified large numbers of “witches’ marks” or “ritual protection symbols” on the walls of historic buildings, including medieval churches and houses.

Now a leading architectural historian has said there is “absolutely no evidence” that these marks have anything to do with witches or any “mystical meanings”.

The Kusuma Neolithic Hall, based on Durrington 68 site, will allow visitors to ‘step back in time’ into the lives of those who built the stone circle

It may have been a place for ceremony or a barn for pack animals. It could have been a place for weary labourers to rest their heads. Or perhaps there was no building at all.

English Heritage has unveiled a 7-metre-high reconstruction of what a 4,500-year-old Neolithic hall may have looked like at Stonehenge, offering visitors a glimpse into the lives of the prehistoric builders who raised the world’s most famous stone circle.

Simon White comes clean after finding clay pieces in toffee tin, saying he took them as souvenir from Wenlock Priory

Fragments of a priory’s medieval tiled floor that spent almost 60 years stashed in a toffee tin after being pocketed by a nine-year-old boy during a family outing have finally been handed back.

The three pieces of decorative clay tiles, dating from the late 13th to early 14th century, were taken as a souvenir by Simon White during a family visit to Wenlock Priory in Shropshire in the late 1960s.