Alf Oliver's farm will never be the same.
This is the bloke who has an arable farm just off the old Roman road from Atherstone to Leicester in England. According to today's article in the London Times, to get to Alf's farm:
"...you drive south and west from the Bosworth visitor centre on Ambion Hill, which is now, rather awkwardly, two miles adrift of the true site. Past a farm selling “battlefield beef” you park in a lane, tramp round one small field with a dip, cross a drainage ditch and arrive at a flat, triangular ploughed field exposed to the elements on all sides."
If you will recall from an earilier post on the matter, the exact location of the battle of Bosworth Field where Richard III lost his crown and his life and made way for the reign of the Tudors, was unknown. Archaeologists finally located it last October but were reluctant to give its exact location before they had a chance to dig it up for artifacts. And artifacts they found! Look here.
Oddly enough, it was close to an area called "Crown Hill" which makes extraordinary sense as locals tend to name their landmarks by important events. As the legend goes, Richard's lost crown was found under a hawthorn bush, retrieved, and placed on the head of Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, father of Henry VIII. It is possible that it was on this hill Henry was "crowned."
From the article, Dr. Glenn Foard, the lead archaeologist who found the site, talks to the reporter:
Close to the road behind a bank of earth topped by saplings is Mr Oliver’s Fenn Lane farm, occupying the space where Dr Foard believes that Henry Tudor’s retinue would have been deployed. Dr Foard’s team started to survey the field in September, six months after they found the first hard evidence for the site of the battle half a mile away. By then they had pollen evidence and scientific dating to suggest that the dip in the next-door field was the remains of Bosworth marsh, drained in the 16th century.
It was Carl Dawson, a retired university lecturer with a metal detector, who found the silver boar that Dr Foard now cradled in the palm of his hand. Only 1½in (38mm), it is a thing of beauty: a snarling beast rippling with muscle definition and with gilded highlights on its tusks, tail and bristles. The boar was the emblem of Richard III. Only one similar one is known, in the British Museum.
“If we were looking for any artefact at all and if there’s any location we might want to find that artefact, then it’s the white boar badge of Richard III next to the marsh,” Dr Foard said. “This is almost certainly from a knight in Richard’s retinue, who rode with him to his death on that last charge.”
For the full article, go here and for a bit of video go here.
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