For the first time since it was made nearly 1,000 years ago, the Bayeux Tapestry has returned to Britain. The 70-metre-long tapestry, depicting events leading up to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, will be loaned to the British Museum from France from September 2026 to July 2027.
Though it has ‘tapestry’ in the title, the world’s most famous textile work in fact, an embroidery, made of dyed wool stitched onto a bleached linen background fabric. It tells the story of events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. This battle was between the invading forces of the Normans, from what is now Northern France, and the Anglo-Saxons who were the main inhabitants of the Kingdom of England. The defeat of the English brought forth a new era in the country’s early medieval history.
As partner in the year-long celebration of the Bayeux Tapestry’s arrival to the British Museum, Dovecot is answering the question of what it would look like if it was a hand-woven tapestry. The Dovecot weavers are portraying the panel of the tapestry in which William the Conqueror and his Norman army cross the English channel in a fleet of ships. The Latin inscription on this panel reads: ‘Here Duke William in a great ship crossed the sea and came to Pevensey’. To emulate some of the embroidery stitches, the weavers are using knots and double warp weaving. They not only are replicating the colour of the wool embroidery on the tapestry, but the linen backing itself in yarns of cotton and linen. Unlike embroidery, which applies threads to an existing material, tapestry creates both the image and the textile in unison.