In last month’s column, I touched on two medieval monasteries with known but lost royal burials: Hyde Abbey in Winchester and Reading Abbey in Berkshire, the purported resting places of Alfred the Great (849-899) and Henry I (1068-1135) respectively. Here I will follow up on this theme with the story of the search for, and discovery of, the remains of Richard III (1452-1485) at Greyfriars in Leicester. This is one of the most famous archaeological projects in recent memory, one that captured international media attention, and a story that Current Archaeology was involved in reporting on from the outset.
Act I
Current Archaeology first reported on Richard III in issue 272 (November 2012), when the Greyfriars project team had announced the discovery of a skeleton thought to be the lost king (based on its physical condition, evidence of battlefield injury, and location in the friary remains), but at that time his identity was not proven. For anyone interested in the comprehensive backstory of this investigation without the hyperbole of some of the mainstream media reporting, this is the place to start. The magazine’s cover feature puts both the site and the research into their full context, including Richard’s death at Bosworth some 16 miles west of Leicester; his hasty transfer and modest burial in the Franciscan Friary of Greyfriars in the city centre; that site’s subsequent loss to the Dissolution; and the search for his burial at the instigation of Philippa Langley and the Richard III Society, a group that is itself examined in CA 274’s ‘Odd Socs’ column (January 2013).
The pace of this work was brisk; the next mention of the project, and its second cover-story, came in CA 277 (April 2013), less than six months after initial reports of the likely discovery of the king’s remains. This issue covered the news that everyone was waiting for but which many – including the project’s lead archaeologist, Richard Buckley of University of Leicester Archaeological Services (see CA 425, August 2025, for more on the history of ULAS) – never imagined they would see. Previously, Buckley had stated that he would ‘eat his hat’ if they ever found the missing monarch, but DNA and osteoarchaeological analyses confirmed ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that the burial found in the Leicester car park was that of Richard III. The reporting in CA 277 is fascinating, but not for the light-hearted, as it delves into the extensive osteoarchaeological evidence for Richard’s brutal battlefield death, as well as his experience of living with the scoliosis that might have inspired later portrayals of his twisted posture. Deservedly, the next mention of the project, in CA 278 (May 2013), came when the investigation won ‘Research Project of the Year’ in the 2013 Current Archaeology Awards. Issues across the remainder of that year then feature regular mentions not of Richard III himself, but the debate about where to rebury him, with York, Lichfield, and Leicester all in contention among the readership, until a final resting place – Leicester Cathedral – was agreed with the Ministry of Justice, as reported in CA 293 (August 2014). Further insights into the king’s remains had come in CA 289 (April 2014), with a report on genome sequencing that would allow ongoing studies of his entire genetic sequence after reburial.
