Northallerton

	An unassuming monument to a momentous battle

No doubt Northallerton is a charming and busy market town, but its chief claim to fame - for me, at any case - is a couple of miles out of town where a low ridge marks the site of the Battle of the Standard. If, like most people, you have never heard of this battle, then you ought to watch the film. It is horrible to think that such a beautiful quiet spot could have been the scene of such wholesale slaughter.

To contemporaries, however, the battle and the massacre which followed was richly merited divine judgement on the Scots, who carried off women and older children to be sold as slaves, murdering babies, pregnant women and the unsaleable elderly of both sexes. No doubt the disorder during England's civil war gave them confidence, and it took a vigorous archbishop to rally the northerners with a distinctive standard and put an end to the Scottish threat.