The present paper aims to motivate the usage of three spatial prepositions, namely in, on, and at in Old English by relying on the examination of The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (EH). The interchangeability of the prepositions in and on in the sentence I will not allow my soldiers to fight in/on this terrain can be explained by means of the notion of visual distance, i.e. the separation between the speaker and the scene referred to. In the first case the commander is standing in the place where the battle may take place whereas in the second case the speaker is not on the battlefield but in a different location, pointing at the terrain on a map. In the EH the preposition in is used in connection with a detailed narrative account of facts which highlights a close vantage point.