The royal tombs of England’s kings and queens are scattered throughout the country’s historic abbeys, churches and cathedrals. The tombs of the most notable monarchs are in Windsor Castle in Berkshire and in Westminster Abbey in London. Most of the graves of all monarchs are counted except Richard III, who died at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 from a blow to the head with a heavy axe. He was buried in an abbey 20 miles from Leicester, England, which was eventually converted into a parking lot.
Why would a King of England, made famous and infamous by William Shakespeare’s play that bears his name, be buried in a parking lot instead of in a famous English cathedral or abbey? Surely no English monarch would be intentionally buried in an area where cars would drive over him and park over one of his corpses. Of course, Richard III was not; he was buried in a place that was converted into a parking lot.
The king’s body was buried the same year he was assassinated, but the location of his body has been lost over time. His body lay in Gray Friars Church, near his altar in Leicester. Unfortunately, the church was destroyed in the 1530s when Henry VIII ordered the dissolution and destruction of the English monasteries. Then, in 1600, a mansion with a garden was built over the demolished Church of the Gray Friars; however, in 1612, Christopher Wren, a famous English architect, places a memorial stone over Richard’s corpse in the garden. In 1711, houses began to be built around the mansion. The land and gardens were converted to office buildings in 1914. Parking lots for office buildings were built in the 1930s and 1940s.
Between 2004 and 2005, an investigation was launched to locate Richard’s body and search for his current relatives. The search for his remains became a trial and error situation until 2012, when two exhumations were carried out in the parking lot, using sophisticated ground penetrating radar (GPR). At the end of 2012, his skeletal remains were thoroughly analyzed. Using a forensic facial reconstruction in which putty is painstakingly placed around the skull, revealed an exact likeness of Richard’s paintings. Furthermore, complicated DNA testing of Richard’s closest female ancestor from long-lost relatives proved to be a positive match to that of the king’s skeleton.
After further analysis of the skeleton, the spine was curved, confirming what Shakespeare described as a hunchback. However, the scientists who analyzed the bones claimed that Richard suffered from scoliosis, a lateral or lateral curvature of the spine, which must have caused him a great deal of pain. The skull reveals a large hole in the back, which was the fatal blow from a large shaft cracking it.
Fortunately, Richard’s remains have been duly interred in the modern Leicester Cathedral in England. Perhaps Richard III can finally rest in peace.
More interesting information can be found in the 2013 edition of “The King’s Grave” by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, St. Martin Press.
