Stone Medieval Coffin as seen on BBC's "The One Show". View more information on the BBC Website.
As Bosworth was such an important battle, it is surprising to many people that no-one really knows where it was fought.
Only a handful of Medieval and Tudor records of the Battle survive. They give conflicting views, including the numbers of soldiers involved, the positions and actions of the Commanders, the number of people who died, and the location of the Battle.
The names Redemoor and Sandeford are both used in early descriptions of the Battle, but we do not know for certain, the location of either of them.
Some documents that were written about the Battle have been destroyed and others may still lie unread in unknown collections.
To find a lost Battle a wide range of expertise is needed. After reviewing the previous theories and determining their likelihood, fresh research is required. Detailed study of the current and Medieval landscapes, geographical references in surviving Medieval and Tudor manuscripts and military tactics of the period, would be expected to reveal likely locations for the Battle.
Once likely sites for the Battle have been placed within the reconstructed Medieval landscape, a systematic metal detecting survey is undertaken to locate artefacts lost in the Battle. If a concentration of Battle artefacts is recovered, geophysical survey and exploratory trenches can be used to locate evidence of grave pits nearby.
(Due to the conflicting and fragmentary evidence, Bosworth is a very complicated and difficult Battle to reconstruct. It is possible that none of these theories are correct.)
