A WAR GRAVE found near Chester has helped to locate the earliest firmly identified battlefield site in England. About 120 corpses, many with horrendous wounds, can be attributed by radiocarbon dating and historical records to the Battle of Chester in AD 616, when the Venerable Bede records that King Aethelfrith of Northumbria defeated a scratch army accompanied by many monks from the nearby monastery at Bangor-on-Dee.