These photos are presented in the same style as Kirby Muxloe Castle, each photo is a thumbnail and each opens up bigger to reveal full captions.
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The main text is below…
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The really great thing about being born in the 20th century (I turned 65 this month) was that back then we all 'knew' just where everything was. The Battle of Bosworth was fought at Ambion Hill, King Richard III charged down this hill and got stuck in a marsh and was killed. He was hastily buried in Leicester but ignominiously dug up during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and his bones were thrown into the nearby river. All this had to be true, there is even a Victorian plaque on the 19th century bridge which says so…!
Then came the 21st century and all this changed. Growing doubt about the position of the battlefield had been building for years, given that everyone was playing 'hunt the thimble' for the missing marsh and countless historians had tried twisting the few historical facts to fit the supposed map of the battle around Ambion Hill and they all came up with zip. Then, just as they started a scientific search for the missing battlefield, more clever dicks started to postulate that King Dick might not have been tossed in the river after all. There was just an outside chance that he might still be in Leicester.
I well remember seeing the woman leading the hunt for King Dick on television, standing on a large letter 'R' (for reserved) painted on the tarmac in a council car park, gushing to the camera that she just KNEW she was near him. Near him? She was bloody standing on him! What no-one has ever mentioned since then is that the Indiana Jones quote about "X never marks the spot" had finally been proved wrong. On English coins 'R' is cursive Latin for 'Rex' (king) meaning that – on this one occasion – 'Rex marked the spot'.
Yes, they call me Attila the Pun.
For my 65th birthday I did a 'Wars of the Roses' pilgrimage starting at Kirby Muxloe castle – see posting on this board earlier – and then moving on to Bosworth, Warwick and Tewkesbury. More of that will come later. You have been warned!
The actual battlefield was eventually found by metal detectorists roughly one and a half kilometres away from where it ‘should' be, leaving Leicestershire County Council with the rather tricky problem of a battlefield visitor centre which is now no longer on the battlefield but rather off it. The footpath which formerly circled the battlefield has now been converted to a path which offers views over the battlefield but you need a good set of binoculars to see very little.
Ambion Hill is now regarded as where King Richard III camped the night before the battle but the thing which struck me is that – for a paranoid or suspicious monarch unsure about the loyalties of his men – the prominent hill is a good choice. Today it still offers good views in all directions and could have been easily defended whichever way an attack came. If a friend rolled up and turned into an enemy (as the Stanleys eventually did) then Richard would have had a chance on the defensive. However his impulsive nature got the better of him and he attacked. Seeing Henry's party moving away from their main force to speak to the Stanleys, Richard resolved to 'cut the head off the snake' figuring that with Henry dead the rebellion would collapse. Someone died but it was not Henry.
Metal-detecting finds from the battlefield are now on display in the visitor centre but all of these are non-ferrous as there is so much Victorian and modern junk strewn across the battlefield that the detectorists had to screen out iron or steel to save time. So iron or stone cannon balls may yet remain in the ground but the collection of lead or lead covered stone balls recovered from the 1485 battlefield now outnumbers all the medieval shot ever found on all the rest of the battlefields of Europe. They are THAT rare.
Other finds include non-ferrous buckles and harness torn from men or horses but the most intriguing find was a silver gilt badge of a white boar, Richard III's personal livery badge. This was found south of Fenn Lanes in what would have been marshy ground in 1485 and probably indicates – within 50 metres or so – where King Richard 'bought it'. It was probably dropped by one of his household men in the last desperate few minutes of the fighting.
Richard's body revealed that he had been fatally hacked across the back of the skull, probably after his helmet had either been torn off or had fallen off. His post mortem also revealed he had been stabbed in the backside and may even have ridden into Leicester slung over a horse with a dagger sticking out of his rear end in a bizarre parody of King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone. This was King Dick and the dagger up the a***. King Richard also had intestinal worms but probably most of the population did.
I toured the visitor centre trying to fault it and I could not. Apart from the fact it is off the field, the presentations are excellent and include plenty of reproduction arms and armour and a large number of visuals, many culled from the pages of Osprey Men-At-Arms publications. There is even a wargames table and a chance to re-fight the battle with counters. It fair warmed the cockles of my heart.
Visitors are also given a plastic coin to vote for the 'best' king and it was interesting to note that, when I went past there were six votes in each box. The choices were: on one hand King Richard III with spinal scoliosis, intestinal worms and the heavy suspicion that he murdered his two nephews, the two Little Princes in the Tower. On the other hand you had King Henry VII who had a wonky eye, the most tangential claim to the throne via a b*stardised bloodline and the grasping nature of a tax collector or accountant. Not great choices!
Richard got my coin but it was a near-run thing. I have never liked Henry VII. When I saw the movie Jurassic Park I instantly recognised that the 'blood sucking lawyer' in the film looked just like King Henry's images and death mask. How I cheered when he was eaten by the T-Rex, while sitting on the toilet.
I returned through the Bosworth area five days later and visited the battlefield site again and made another brief stop at Leicester Cathedral to revisit Richard's tomb and statue.