All in a few short hours — An Elegant Sufficiency

Thankfully we woke to a brighter day than yesterday. The rain had passed through and left a clear blue sky under which to drive home. Looking at our route, we decided to add the last piece of the Richard III picture and visit Bosworth Field.

We both remembered the last time we were here, on the way home from friends’ silver wedding party. They celebrated their golden wedding last year, so that makes it twenty six years ago. About right we thought!

There’s a lot more here now than there was then. The increased interest in Richard and his fate has surely brought a greater number of visitors here and there’s now a visitor centre and exhibition here rather than the empty field with a couple of flags we remembered.

That’s good, though the visitor centre was closed today (and tomorrow) so we couldn’t take advantage of it! We headed straight for the flags and enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine as we did.

(sorry about the shadow!) Underneath the flags, a circular monument had been constructed around a sundial, which this morning was a particularly great way of marking the events of the day. We were there shortly before 11am and of course, the first thing we did was to check the accuracy of the timekeeping.

Spot on. Of course.

What I hadn’t appreciated was the short time it took to fight the battle. We hear the stories of the battles of WWI and WWII and learn of the campaigns which went on for days, weeks even. Here, we were learning of an event which changed the course of British history that was over in a morning.

I thought the words inscribed on the sundial were especially well chosen and effectively described the atmosphere and what was happening around breakfast time on August 22nd, 1485.

By mid morning the battle was in progress. Sadly, the words are not so easy to read in my photo due to the shadow of the sundial. I read them and shivered.

Cannons blasting their shot snatching men from

the ranks. storms of arrows finding their prey

The surge of men towards their enemy

the ring of steel on steel and the dull thud

of steel on bone. Spurs rake back in a desperate charge

with victory in sight, treachery is unleashed. A King falls.

By noon, it was over.

That afternoon, the King was taken to Leicester and eventually to Greyfriars, from where we now know the rest of the story. I often joke about “being away from school when they did history” but if it had been told like this and not dictated as a series of dates and dull facts, then surely I would have done better.

We stood a while and appreciated the interpretive signs which were well placed and rather interesting.

We noted how different the landscape looks today - there were far fewer trees in those days for a start.

We made our way back to the car park and felt we’d done Richard III justice.

Time for home then, and having made the decision to avoid the motorways in favour of a slower, more interesting route, we smiled as we saw the road sign. Even though we were still quite some way from home - more than 70 miles - Cirencester was on the road signs, because we were going to drive straight home on the Fosse Way, a typical long, straight Roman road. Perfect!