Battle of Raith 596
Marker: recorded battle location (no official boundary).
Key facts
| Date (year) | 596 | Wikidata P585 point in time |
|---|---|---|
| Century | 6th century | derived |
| Period | Early medieval, Anglo-Saxon & Viking | derived |
| Country | Scotland | derived |
| Participants | Angles | Wikidata |
About the battle
The Battle of Raith was the theory of E. W. B. Nicholson, librarian at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. He was aware of the poem Y Gododdin in the Book of Aneirin and was aware that no-one had identified the location "Catraeth". He parsed the name as "cat" Gaelic for battle or fight, and "Raeth" and he recalled that there was a place in Scotland called Raith.
Nicholson's claim was that this battle was fought in 596 AD to the west of present-day Kirkcaldy. An invading force of Angles landed on the Fife coast near Raith and defeated an alliance of Scots, Britons and Picts under King Áedán mac Gabráin of Dál Riata.
Today the location of the Battle of Catraeth is usually recognised instead as Catterick.
Visiting the battlefield
Location
- Recorded location (Wikidata; may be approximate): 56.1172, -3.1934
Battlefields are often on private farmland: please keep to public rights of way and respect landowners.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Raith (revision 1370587091), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations removed. No text added.
Battle location from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby battlefields
- Battle of Wester Kinghorn 1332 · 7 km
- Battle of Inverkeithing 1651 · 17 km
- Cleanse the Causeway 1520 · 19 km
- Battle of Boroughmuir 1335 · 20 km
- Battle of Pinkie 1547 · 23 km
- Battle of Prestonpans 1745 · 23 km
Browse more: battles in Scotland · Early medieval, Anglo-Saxon & Viking · 6th century battles