The Battle Of Otterburn
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The Battle of Otterburn was fought in August 1388 between the English and Scottish armies, led by the young Harry ‘Hotspur’ Percy and the Earl of Douglas respectively. Today the believed site of the battlefield is marked by Percy’s Cross and is designated by Historic England as a Registered Battlefield. Further details on the battle can be found on this link to the Battlefields Trust website: The Battle of Otterburn
The project
The Battle of Otterburn is one of the best documented medieval battles thanks to the accounts of the medieval historian Jean Froissart. As part of this project, volunteers have carried out historic document research to piece together what the sources written at the time can tell us about the battle. We have also worked with landscape and battlefield archaeologists to reconstruct the medieval landscape and answer some of the questions as to the location and action of the battle. You can read the final project report by clicking on the link below.
The landscape archaeology report details our findings about the medieval landscape, and you can read it by clicking on the link below.
Following the landscape archaeology research, fieldwork was carried out in summer 2021, which involved targeted areas of metal detecting, trial trenching and geophysical survey to see if any physical evidence of the battle could be found. A report covering the results of the fieldwork has now been produced and can be viewed and downloaded on the link below.
We worked in partnership with the Battlefields Trust to create an education pack which will be available to download as a free resource from their website.
We have also worked in partnership with the Battlefields Trust and Otterburn Parish Council to develop high quality interpretation at the Percy Cross picnic site – the visitor area for the battlefield. We carried out improvements to the parking and picnic tables and have created new footpaths up to the battlefield viewing area. New interpretive panels telling the story of the battle were installed in the summer of 2022 and we undertook a training session for local walk leaders to inform them about the site, project and our findings in July 22.
An end of project celebration event was held in April 2022, where the project findings were presented through a series of talks, a guided walk, partner stands and information and demonstrations of armour and swordsmanship. A short video of the day can be seen here.
A 3 mile/5km walk starts from Percy’s Cross car park and can be found in the Revitalising Redesdale Otterburn Walk leaflet as published in early 2023 and available as a pdf download link from our Walking Around Redesdale page.
