It may be surprising, but the actual location of Bosworth Field, “one of the four most important battles in English history” was only definitely identifed this year:
Just after midday yesterday, Glenn Foard stood on Ambion Hill in Leicestershire, next to the award-winning Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre, pointed at the distant church spire of Stoke Golding and declared an end to 500 years of arguments over the location.
“It’s over there, two miles away,” he said, beyond and below the church, off to the right a bit and spread over 250 acres of what is now flat farmland, crisscrossed by hedgerows, pasture and autumnal trees.
Mr Foard, a battlefield archaeologist who has led a four-year, £1.3 million investigation into the whereabouts of the fighting, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Leicestershire County Council, is convinced that he has unearthed the proof.
In an unexpected and thrilling development for the archaeologists, that proof is in the form of 22 lead cannon and musket balls that dramatically reshape thinking about late medieval combat.