Get up! You are supposed to die three miles from here.
I had always wanted to see Bosworth Field, in the heart of the English Midlands. A while ago, I was researching the remnants of the Roman occupation of Britain, and saw on a map marking a Roman garrison that the 15th century battlefield was nearby. However, more research revealed that maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t: The best authorities seemed unable to agree exactly where, with the death of Richard III, the Tudor dynasty began and, with it, a recognizably modern British state emerged.
The list of battlefields attended by the British across the world is
extensive. There is hardly a spot on the planet where British arms have
not been deployed. It is not so well known, however, that Britain
itself is sodden with the blood spent in conflicts of every kind, from
the sacred to the secular, from the obscurely tribal to the ambitiously
territorial and frequently involving uprisings by those equally
barbarous peoples, the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh. (The Romans, in
fact, got so fed up with the unquiet Scots that they built a wall,
Hadrian’s Wall, between them and the fiends to the north).
So it was particularly frustrating that a battlefield as salient to the destiny of the British as Bosworth Field could not, with any assurance, be found and that, listening to the historians argue, it seemed to be wandering about all over the place with at least four contenders vying for the visitors’ business.
Now, it seems, we are at last close to being able to visit the real Bosworth Field. After five centuries, a three-year search by Britain’s Battlefield Trust led them to announce that they are sure they have the spot - two miles from where anyone looked before. Moreover, the discovery has implications for all those on other continents who have felt the fire of British guns. Metal fragments suggest that Bosworth saw the first outing of massed artillery, not the old and more intimate carnage of the arrow and the sword, as Shakespeare (and Olivier) had it.
The travel business has a big stake in battlefields…you can expect a rush to open new visitor centers. But the researchers won’t reveal the exact location until next year. In the meantime the four villages nearest the discovery, Dadlington, Shenton, Upton and Stoke Golding, are standing ready to cash in. Which leaves another village that has long lived off its supposed proximity to the battlefield, Sutton Cheney (not him, surely?) with the blues.
One more thing. The Bosworth Field in the Olivier movie was in Spain. They didn’t think the English weather would collaborate.
So it was particularly frustrating that a battlefield as salient to the destiny of the British as Bosworth Field could not, with any assurance, be found and that, listening to the historians argue, it seemed to be wandering about all over the place with at least four contenders vying for the visitors’ business.
Now, it seems, we are at last close to being able to visit the real Bosworth Field. After five centuries, a three-year search by Britain’s Battlefield Trust led them to announce that they are sure they have the spot - two miles from where anyone looked before. Moreover, the discovery has implications for all those on other continents who have felt the fire of British guns. Metal fragments suggest that Bosworth saw the first outing of massed artillery, not the old and more intimate carnage of the arrow and the sword, as Shakespeare (and Olivier) had it.
The travel business has a big stake in battlefields…you can expect a rush to open new visitor centers. But the researchers won’t reveal the exact location until next year. In the meantime the four villages nearest the discovery, Dadlington, Shenton, Upton and Stoke Golding, are standing ready to cash in. Which leaves another village that has long lived off its supposed proximity to the battlefield, Sutton Cheney (not him, surely?) with the blues.
One more thing. The Bosworth Field in the Olivier movie was in Spain. They didn’t think the English weather would collaborate.
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