TheBattle of Hehil was a battle won by a force ofBritons, probably against theAnglo-Saxons ofWessex around the year 720. The location is unknown, except that it wasapud Cornuenses ("among theCornish").

The only direct reference to the battle appears in theAnnales Cambriae. A translation from the original Latin is as follows:

The battle of Hehil among theCornish, the battle of Garth Maelog, thebattle of Pencon among the South Britons, and theBritons were the victors in those three battles.^[1][2]

TheAnnales Cambriae are undated butEgerton Phillimore placed the entry in the year 722.^[3]

Although the source does not name the Anglo-Saxons as the enemy in any of the three battles, it has been claimed that the failure to specify the enemy was simply because this was so obvious to all, and that any other opponents would have been clearly named.^[4]

The battle is not mentioned in theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, andH. P. R. Finberg has speculated that this is because Wessex was defeated.^[5]

The location of Hehil is not known, but many scholars have tried to identify it. In 1916 the Celtic scholarDonald MacKinnon was not willing to say more than that it was on "the Devonian peninsula".^[6] In 2003Christopher Snyder simply stated that "722 TheAnnales Cambriae record a British victory at Hehil in Cornwall".^[7]

Based simply on the place name,Frank Stenton suggested that the battle was atHayle in west Cornwall.^[8] In 1987Leslie Alcock noted that the most obvious interpretation of 'Hehil among the Cornish' is theRiver Hayle in west Cornwall, but referred toEkwall's identification of the name with theRiver Camel, previously known as theHeil, and concluded that this "more easterly attribution may be preferable".^[9]Other scholars preferring the River Camel includeW. G. Hoskins, who put Hehil atEgloshayle on that river;^[8] Leonard Dutton, who suggested in 1993 "at or near the spot where the fifteenth century bridge atWadebridge crosses the Camel";^[10] andPhilip Payton who in 2004 located it "probably [at] the strategically important Camel estuary".^[11]

Malcolm Todd took the view in 1987 that these sites were "too far west to be taken seriously", and made two suggestions. The first was Hele atJacobstow in north Cornwall,^[12] a place which had been mentioned as a possibility in 1931 in the introduction toThe Place-Names of Devon,^[13] and was also supported by the landscape archaeologistDella Hooke in 1994.^[14] Todd's other suggestion wasHele in theCulm Valley in east Devon.^[12]

In 2022 John Fletcher explained why he thought that the village ofMerton, north of Okehampton, has "potentially excellent credentials as the site for the historic Hehil".^[15]

The British victory at Hehil in 722 may have proved decisive in the history of theWest Britons: it was not until almost a hundred years later (in 814) that further battles are recorded in the area, a period whichNicholas Orme sees as probably consolidating the division between Cornwall and Devon.^[16]

In 2013 T. M. Charles-Edwards, noting that the battle came "not long afterGeraint was last attested as king of Dumnonia", suggested that it might indicate that Dumnonia had fallen by 722 and that the victory of Hehil had secured the survival of the kingdom of Cornwall for another 150 years.^[17]

• 720s conflicts
• Battles involving the Cornish
• Battles involving Wessex
• Battles involving the Britons
• 8th century in England

• Articles with Latin-language sources (la)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from April 2022
• Use Oxford spelling from December 2013
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