Battle Of Bosworth :: New Location

I was drawn to an article in today’s Daily Telegraph because it dealt with one of my favourite periods in history: the Wars of the Roses.  It began:

“For hundreds of years history followers have visited Ambion Hill in Leicestershire, believing it to be the site of the Battle of Bosworth ...”

and then reveals that:

“… after an extensive three-year archaeological survey, experts now believe that the proper site was a mile away.”

Sadly the online version doesn’t contain the map of the print article but you can’t have everything. However, the article does contain more detail about the new site which is somewhere within the triangle formed by the villages of Shenton, Stoke Golding and Dadlington. This site was first proposed by the historian Peter Foss in 1990.  There’s more about the views of Peter Foss in the Wikipedia article on Bosworth.

In some ways the fact that it’s not Ambion Hill is old news: it was ruled out by the combined efforts of the Battlefields Trust and the BBC in early 2008.

Tests costing £1 million have been carried out at a third possible site at Atherstone and the results are due to be announced sometime next year.  However reading between the lines I think the researchers haven’t really found anything there.