Battle of Hehil

Location

The location of Hehil is not known, but many scholars have tried to identify it. In 1916, Celtic scholar Donald MacKinnon was not willing to say more than that it was on "the Devonian peninsula", and Christopher Snyder simply stated in 2003: "722 The Annales Cambriae record a British victory at Hehil in Cornwall".

Frank Stenton thought it was at Hayle in west Cornwall, but Leslie Alcock (in 1987) notes that although the most obvious interpretation of 'Hehil among the Cornish' is the river Hayle in west Cornwall, he refers to Ekwall's identification of the name with the River Camel (previously known as the Heil) and he concludes that this "more easterly attribution may be preferable". Other scholars preferring the River Camel include W. G. Hoskins, who put Hehil at Egloshayle on that river; Leonard Dutton who suggested in 1993 "at or near the spot where the fifteenth century bridge at Wadebridge crosses the Camel"; and Philip Payton who in 2004 located it "probably [at] the strategically important Camel estuary".

Malcolm Todd stated in 1987 that these sites are "too far west to be taken seriously", and made two suggestions, firstly Hele at Jacobstow in north Cornwall, which had been mentioned as a possibility in 1931 in the introduction to the Place-names of Devon, and which was supported by the landscape archaeologist Della Hooke in 1994. Todd's other suggestion was Hele in the Culm Valley in east Devon.

Significance

The British victory at Hehil in 722 may have proved decisive in the history of the West Britons: it was not until almost a hundred years later (in 814) that further battles are recorded in the area, a period which Nicholas Orme sees as probably consolidating the division between Cornwall and Devon.