Bosworth-Open Country

Marie

I was lucky enough to hear part of this. The 'crumbling' skeleton and
armour story may refer to the Stoke Lodge skeleton of 1936 at SP412 972.
It was dug out from under a peat layer in a spinney. There was another
similar find in c1900 (possibly at SP411 972). Peter Foss' Field of
Redemore has a brief discussion of these in an appendix.

Curiously there was no direct mention of the 'Atherstone alternative'
suggested in Jones' book.

Bill

In message <[email protected]>,
writes
>Message: 7
> Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 14:11:37 -0000
> From: "marie walsh" <marie@...>
>Subject: Bosworth
>
>
>
>Just been listening to Radio 4 in the car. They've just had an edition of
>Country File from Bosworth.
>
>The smart money among the local frmers seems to be on the action having
>taken place close to Dadlington. This is the area where things get found in
>the fields. Nothing apparently around Ambien Hill or the Battlefield Centre.
>
>One farmer was interviewed who recounted how, many years ago, his father had
>found what looked to be a bit of metal sticking up from the ground in a
>copse. The experts were called in. It turned out to belong to a suit of
>armour which was still intact with remains of skeleton - mostly decayed -
>inside it. However, the armour turned out to be pretty well all rust and
>collapsed to dust when it was exposed. So was this a knight of Richard's who
>had crawled, probably wounded, into the copse in order to hide, and died
>there?
> This man also saw a group of 10 or 12 skeletons unearthed by the local
>gravedigger in Dadlington churchyard in the 1930s.
>
>There seems to be a lot of work going on now to establish where things
>really happened, and the man from the visitor's centre says they're hoping
>that ewithin 5 years they'll have a proper picture.
>
>A fascinating programme, and the reporter was a Ricardian.
>
>Marie

--
Bill Braham

--- In , Bill Braham
<bill@w...> wrote:
>
> Marie
>
> I was lucky enough to hear part of this. The 'crumbling' skeleton
and
> armour story may refer to the Stoke Lodge skeleton of 1936 at SP412
972.
> It was dug out from under a peat layer in a spinney. There was
another
> similar find in c1900 (possibly at SP411 972). Peter Foss' Field of
> Redemore has a brief discussion of these in an appendix.
>
> Curiously there was no direct mention of the 'Atherstone
alternative'
> suggested in Jones' book.
>
> Bill

Just shows you, doesn't it! I've got Peter Foss' book, but I haven't
read it in so long.

I have a suspicion that Jones' site is going to turn out to be a red
herring, but a very useful one if it has prompted a proper
investigation. Also, it all looked a bit built up to me when I drove
up that way this summer, so it may be harder to do the archaeology.

Marie




>
> In message <[email protected]>,
> writes
> >Message: 7
> > Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 14:11:37 -0000
> > From: "marie walsh" <marie@r...>
> >Subject: Bosworth
> >
> >
> >
> >Just been listening to Radio 4 in the car. They've just had an
edition of
> >Country File from Bosworth.
> >
> >The smart money among the local frmers seems to be on the action
having
> >taken place close to Dadlington. This is the area where things get
found in
> >the fields. Nothing apparently around Ambien Hill or the
Battlefield Centre.
> >
> >One farmer was interviewed who recounted how, many years ago, his
father had
> >found what looked to be a bit of metal sticking up from the ground
in a
> >copse. The experts were called in. It turned out to belong to a
suit of
> >armour which was still intact with remains of skeleton - mostly
decayed -
> >inside it. However, the armour turned out to be pretty well all
rust and
> >collapsed to dust when it was exposed. So was this a knight of
Richard's who
> >had crawled, probably wounded, into the copse in order to hide,
and died
> >there?
> > This man also saw a group of 10 or 12 skeletons unearthed by the
local
> >gravedigger in Dadlington churchyard in the 1930s.
> >
> >There seems to be a lot of work going on now to establish where
things
> >really happened, and the man from the visitor's centre says
they're hoping
> >that ewithin 5 years they'll have a proper picture.
> >
> >A fascinating programme, and the reporter was a Ricardian.
> >
> >Marie
>
> --
> Bill Braham

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

Go down to Open Country - you have one week to listen. :)


--
Cheers
Jan Scott
Yorkshire

Marie
>
>Just shows you, doesn't it! I've got Peter Foss' book, but I haven't
>read it in so long.
I had just finished reading it again after having read Jones' book so I
was just lucky that the Bosworth Open Country programme was on. I like
Foss's book because he discusses his evidence in detail. That is the
frustration of Jones' book, he glosses over much detail/refrains from
discussing the sources. True Jones was not writing the same kind of book
as Foss but it is annoying when trying to evaluate his ideas.
>
>I have a suspicion that Jones' site is going to turn out to be a red
>herring, but a very useful one if it has prompted a proper
>investigation. Also, it all looked a bit built up to me when I drove
>up that way this summer, so it may be harder to do the archaeology.

I think that Jones' book has been very useful in prompting discussion
and investigation in several directions. I too suspect the Atherstone
Bosworth will prove to be a red herring. On the scenario presented by
Jones the bit where the Stanley's are supposed to have been is built up
but the putative sites of Richard's camp and the field of battle are
still farmland (at least on the edition of the OS map I have admittedly
not the most recent). There is as a consequence the possibility of some
archaeology (assuming no development/invasive farming techniques), the
main site I would head for initially is the Fenny Drayton tumulus
followed by extensive field walking over the 'battle site'.

The archaeological work mentioned in the programme seems to be in the
Dadlington - Sutton Cheney area which to be honest makes sense. I would
only be inclined to test Jones's site archaeologically once the
traditional areas have been investigated and discounted.

Bill
--
Bill Braham

very interesting, thank you for sharing


>From: Jan Scott <jscott@...>
>Reply-To:
>To:
>Subject: Re: Bosworth-Open Country
>Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 01:06:16 +0000
>

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from the desk of Paul Trevor Bale

> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml
>
> Go down to Open Country - you have one week to listen. :)
>
Listened to the programme, thanks to the BBC online service. Are we leading
the world again?
This is what the website page says.


PROGRAMME DETAILS
Saturday 17 January 2004
Bosworth Field

Richard Uridge visits Bosworth Field, the site of the decisive battle in the
War of the Roses. According to legend, the Battle of Bosworth was believed
to have been fought around the heights of Ambion Hill, south of Market
Bosworth. Leicester County Council were convinced and leased a farm on the
site and set up the Battlefield Centre with laid out trails and signs
explaining the progress of the battle. But some historians and locals take a
different view, claiming that the real site of the battle was much closer to
Stoke Golding and Dadlington, meaning the present English
Heritage-registered battlefield is in the wrong place.
Richard Uridge meets Richard Mackinder, one of four Countryside Rangers
based at the Bosworth Field Centre which is on a site seven miles square
that has been registered by English Heritage. Mackinder is part of the team
working to produce a conservation management plan for the battlefield site
and looking at all the possible locations for the battle. To this end the
team have been undertaking a systematic survey of 50km sq of land in the
Bosworth-Stoke Golding area.


Richard III
Ray Gosling, was born on Manor farm in Dadlington. He farms a mixture of
sheep and arable. His brother Phil runs a neighbouring farm and between them
their fields cover an area where many believe the Battle of Bosworth
actually took place. The land owned by Ray and his brother has been turning
up reminders of the past for generations. A skeleton was found in a wood
with the remains of armour, and he has ploughed up cannon balls and other
historical items on his fields.
Richard goes to the nearby village of Stoke Golding where, legend has it,
the villagers climbed the Church Tower and watched the Battle of Bosworth
being fought out from the battlements. On Crown Hill, where it's believed
the battle ended, he meets Jill Bourne, expert on Leicestershire place names
and the history of landscape. She has written a book on the subject:
Understanding Leicestershire & Rutland Place-Names published by:
Heart of Albion Press
The area is filled with places such as Sheepy Magna (a name that hints at
the former marshy nature of the region), Sutton Cheney, Barton in the Beans,
Far Coton and Market Bosworth. She explains how the area was named for its
geography and for the people who inhabited it ­ from the Vikings to the
Anglo Saxons.

Richard comes down off Crown Hill to take shelter from the cold in the Tom
Hare¹s workshop. Tom has been working with willow, hazel and ash for about
five years. Historically willow has been used for thousands of years and
although a green man or figure might have been made annually in many parts
of the UK, sculpting in willow is a contemporary form that uses traditional
skills and techniques. Tom does a lot of public sculpture commissions and
works with schools (teaching them traditional techniques). He shows Richard
some of his work.
Finally, Richard crosses the Leicestershire border into Northamptonshire to
meet Glenn Foard, Project Officer for the Battlefields Trust. Glenn has been
working on Naseby Battlefield using modern scientific techniques to find out
exactly how and where the battle was fought. Glenn hopes to apply the same
techniques to Bosworth and to settle the argument over exactly where the
battle took place once and for all.

P.T.Bale said:
> from the desk of Paul Trevor Bale
>
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml
>>
>> Go down to Open Country - you have one week to listen. :)
>>
> Listened to the programme, thanks to the BBC online service. Are we
> leading the world again?
>

No, you're not. Over here, not only do we put them up, we leave them up
for longer than a week. Today was the first time I had time to go listen
to this, and it's gone.

--
Laura Blanchard
lblanchard@...
(sent from my backup account, backup@...)

I take back what I said. I should have looked at the right of the webpage.
We have more than a week to listen -- the BBC, like NPR, archives its back
programs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/opencountry_20040117.shtml

And looky what they used as a Richard III web link! I'm so proud!

Laura Blanchard said:
>
> P.T.Bale said:
>> from the desk of Paul Trevor Bale
>>
>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml
>>>
>>> Go down to Open Country - you have one week to listen. :)
>>>
>> Listened to the programme, thanks to the BBC online service. Are we
>> leading the world again?
>>
>
> No, you're not. Over here, not only do we put them up, we leave them up
> for longer than a week. Today was the first time I had time to go listen
> to this, and it's gone.
>
> --
> Laura Blanchard
> lblanchard@...
> (sent from my backup account, backup@...)
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> To visit your group on the web, go to:
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>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> [email protected]
>
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> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/


--
Laura Blanchard
lblanchard@...
(sent from my backup account, backup@...)

from the desk of Paul Trevor Bale


I listened to it again only two hours ago Laura!
Did you not see previous week button:-)
Paul

> P.T.Bale said:
>> from the desk of Paul Trevor Bale
>>
>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml
>>>
>>> Go down to Open Country - you have one week to listen. :)
>>>
>> Listened to the programme, thanks to the BBC online service. Are we
>> leading the world again?
>>
>
> No, you're not. Over here, not only do we put them up, we leave them up
> for longer than a week. Today was the first time I had time to go listen
> to this, and it's gone.

P.T.Bale said:
> from the desk of Paul Trevor Bale
>
>
> I listened to it again only two hours ago Laura!
> Did you not see previous week button:-)
> Paul
>
I imagine by now you've seen my correction.

And guess what? You're only three links away from the BBC, via the
r3.org/bosworth website! Anyone who clicks on the "Richard III" link on
the BBC's page about the broadcast comes there, and from there it's only
two clicks to Bosworth According to Bale.

--
Laura Blanchard
lblanchard@...
(sent from my backup account, backup@...)