Winning the Battle of Bosworth

A miss is as good as two miles for British archaeologists. They've finally found the location of the Battle of Bosworth Field – two miles away from where it’s always been claimed.

Who cares about Bosworth Field? Well, it’s where Richard III died, making way for the Tudor dynasty, including Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. Fought on Aug. 22, 1485, the battle marked the end of the War of the Roses, the 30-year civil war between the houses of York and Lancaster. (It also gave Shakespeare one of his best known quotations: "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" Richard III cries in the play that bears his name.)

Five hundred years after one of British history's most important battles, archaeologists finally have pinpointed the field thanks to some serious detective work – and £154,000 (about $254,483 US) from the UK's Heritage Lottery Fund. Over the past four years, experts have combed three square miles of fields with metal detectors, taking dozens of soil samples. What they found: the remains of swords and buckles, lead cannonballs and shots fired from handguns. (To see some of the finds, click here.)

The evidence is compelling, the experts say, that the site is in Leicestershire, two miles southwest of the Bosworth heritage center and memorial on Ambion Hill, near Market Bosworth. Experts are not releasing the new site's exact location yet due to fears of illicit treasure-hunting.

What brought on the sudden need to confirm Bosworth's location? It wasn't sudden – for decades, historians have questioned whether they'd gotten it right, particularly as new documents came to light with more and better details.

Though the investigation went on for four years, it was literally not until the last minute that the location was nailed. Archaeologist Glenn Foard of the Battlefields Trust told the UK's The Independent: "For more than a year we had hints we were close to the action but it was only in the last week of planned field work, in the last possible area, that the critical evidence was found."

Bet they're glad they went the extra mile.

Photo courtesy Tancread via Flickr.