31 
Winmoor and Seacroft, where, according to tradition, 
previous engagements of the Britons and Mercians had 
taken place, it is quite as likely for the forces to have moved 
by the barren moorland across the country to Meanwood and 
Weetwood, en route to the British villages at Ilkley and 
other districts to the north and north-east, or to attack Leeds 
from that direction. Presuming this to have been the 
course taken by the rival armies, and that having met at 
Meanwood great slaughter ensued, and the kings of the 
Mercians and East Angles, together with thirty of the 
principal commanders, are recorded to have been defeated 
and left dead on the field, upon which the routed Mercians 
fled, and, in seeking the nearest ford, which proved so 
disastrous to them, they would pass by Horsforth or Head- 
ingley to Kirkstall, and there attempt to cross the Winet , 
Wynnet , or Vinwed, the name by which the river Aire was 
anciently known. 
Gale, in a letter to Thoresby, says : “ Search if the name 
of that river Aire may not have been several times changed 
betwixt its head and mouth at Kirkstall. I think it was 
called Winet” Vide Bede, anno 665, “ In regione Leedis, 
juxta flumen Win wed/ 5 * 
Bede says the battle was fought near the river Yinwed, 
which then, with the great rains, had not only filled its 
Mercian kings. I am satisfied now that the battle on the river Winwsed, in 
which Penda was defeated, was at Kirkstall. St. Oswald’s victory over Cadwalla 
was twenty years earlier than this, and its scene is clearly marked by Yen. Bede. 
In his time it was named Hefenfeltli , and a stream ran by it called Denisesburn ; 
it was close to the wall, north of it, and it was near to Hexham ; circumstances 
which leave no doubt as to its identity with St. Oswald’s Chapel, three miles from 
Hexham, and a stone’s throw north of the wall. It is wrong to say that St. 
Oswald vowed to build a church on the spot. He simply raised a cross before the 
battle, and this cross remained long afterwards. Eventually a church was built 
where the cross had stood ; but the time of the erection of this church was not 
long before a.d. 731, when Yen. Bede wrote his history. Methley has no more 
to do with the personal history of St. Oswald than any other parish where a 
church was consecrated to his memory.” 
* Thoresby’s Correspondence , vol. i. , p. 233. 
