152 Haesten's Camps at Shoebury and Benfleet, essex.
must have extended eastward once. The waste of land here during
the last thousand years cannot have been less, and was probably
more, than half a mile, perhaps a full mile.
The history of the Camp is given in the Saxon chronicle thus :—
A.D. 894. Haesten had come to Beamfleet [Benfleet] with the band
which before sat at Middleton (Milton, next Sittingbourne), and the
great army was 'also come then which before sat at Apuldre, near
Limenemouth [Appledore, on Romney Marsh]. The fortress at
Beamfleet had before this, while he was at Middleton, been con-
structed by Haesten, and he was at that time gone out to plunder,
when a very strong body of the English, who were sent eastward by
King Alfred, together with the townsmen of London, and also aid
from the west, marched to Benfleet.
Haesten's "great army" was at home in the Camp. Then came
the army from London and put Haesten's army to flight. They
stormed the fortress, and took all that was within it, as well the
property as the women and the children, and carried the whole to
London. They either broke in pieces all the ships or carried them
to London or Rochester.
And they brought the wife of Hasten and his two sons to the
king (Alfred), and he afterwards gave them back again ; one was his
godson and one Ethered's, the Earldorman. But as soon as the
wife and sons were given back, Haesten repaired the Shoebury
fortress. The armies of Haesten after the flight from Benfleet drew
together again at Shoebury, in Essex, and then constructed a fortress.
After which they went up the Thames to the Severn ; when, having
been beaten and dispersed again, they returned to Essex. It is not
stated where they went, though there is little doubt of the spot
being Mersey Island, the great stronghold.
The country about Shoebury had previously been occupied by
the Romans, coins and burials having been met with on the site of
the Camp.
The plan explains itself. The scale of the smaller plan, showing
the probable shore-line in A.D. 894, may approximately be seen by
comparing the existing outline of Camp in the two plans.
Beamfleet is certainly Benfleet. It has been asserted that
on the hill near the railway station, at a considerable elevation,
are situated the remains of Haesten's Camp. But this is not so.
No such remains are to be found on the spot indicated nor in the
country round. At the low spit of land on which the village stands,