Human remains found in Leicester car park DO belong to Richard III...

Human remains found in Leicester car park DO belong to Richard III... but scientists are holding back findings until Channel Four documentary is aired, claims insider 

 The skeleton found in the resting place of Richard III has been confirmed as belonging to the king - but scientists are holding the news back for greater publicity, it has been claimed. The human remains were uncovered in September in what is now the car park of Leicester City Council’s social services department. Since then, a number of tests have been taking place to determine if the bones belong to the Plantagenet king, including DNA tests.

But, according to The Daily Telegraph, even if long-awaited DNA results prove inconclusive, the archeologists will still announce that the remains belong to Richard III. A source, who has knowledge of the excavation, told the newspaper that additional evidence which was not revealed at a press conference following the discovery of the remains demonstrates beyond doubt that the skeleton is Richard III.

Another source said that new evidence will not be revealed until a Channel Four documentary is shown in January. It is believed a number of people working on the project have become frustrated that emerging evidence has not been revealed to the public. 'Unfortunately, an awful lot of stuff is being kept from the public', the source told the newspaper.

Click here to read this article from the Daily Mail

See also this video about the search for Richard III

Search for Richard III confirms discovery of the Church of the Grey Friars

The University of Leicester team has confirmed that they have found the medieval Grey Friars Church – the burial place of Richard III.

The first two trenches dug by Leicester’s archaeologists revealed tiled passageway floors at right angles to each other which are probably the remains of a cloister. A cloister is a rectangular open space, surrounded by covered walkways, often built alongside a church that has a monastic community. Friars would walk around the cloister, deep in thought or prayer, whilst remaining dry.


If the floors revealed by the first two trenches represented two sides of the cloister, then it was believed that the large wall on the third side of the potential cloister could be the church itself. Over the weekend the team dug a third trench to the east of the first two trenches to see if the wall extended.

The archaeologists also discovered a solid mortar floor between the two walls. The third trench not only confirmed that the wall extended but also the presence of a second similar thick wall, around 7.5 metres to the north. This is the width one would expect in a medieval friary church.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Judgement Day is on the way: Leicester historian on Medieval ‘end of days’ research

The English scholar Bede (c.673-735) is often regarded as the father of English history, principally because of his five-volume epic Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. But a new volume by Dr Peter Darby from our School of Historical Studies concentrates on a less well known aspect of Bede’s multi-faceted career.

Using his extensive Biblical knowledge and the impressive library of the monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow where he spent his life, Bede wrote many works of theology and exegesis (the interpretation of biblical texts). Within these volumes Bede dealt at length with eschatology, the study of the end of days, and this is the subject of Dr Darby’s new book, Bede and the End of Time.

At this point, the Bible (still in Latin and copied by hand of course) was regarded as the definitive, literal work of God which, as well as describing history – the Old Testament period (from the Garden of Eden onwards) and the New Testament accounts of Christ’s life and times – also provided a framework for what was going to happen before, during and after Judgement Day. Bede was able to use his detailed memory of scripture to pick references to future events from throughout the Old and New Testaments and then sought to correlate them into a workable whole, including resolutions of the contradictions and paradoxes which he encountered.

Click here to read this article from the University of Leicester

From hagiography to Hitler: Medieval Research Centre public lectures at the University of Leicester

A series of public lectures on a wide variety of medieval topics this term presents a fine example of ‘Middle Ages spread’.

The Medieval Research Centre here at Leicester is an interdepartmental collaboration between four Departments within our College of Arts, Humanities and Law. In February and March the Centre presents a series of four public lectures by visiting speakers on topics that range from the influence of medieval thought on the Third Reich to the hagiographic work of Caesarius of Heisterbach.

Click here to read this article from the University of Leicester

Early medieval manuscripts give new view of English life under the Normans

A new study of early medieval manuscripts written in the English language has revealed that the Normans, who conquered England in 1066, were not the destructive force of popular belief. The project, ‘The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060-1220′ was funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) and provides contextual information and a catalogue of all the surviving books that were written between 1060 and 1220 that contain text written in the English language. This descriptive catalogue is freely available to other scholars in the field.

The new story shows English people living under Norman rule continued to write, read and preach in the English language as they had done under the Anglo-Saxon kings in earlier centuries, in the new social and political climate.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Roots of the British, 1000 BC – AD 1000

Historians, archaeologists, linguists, geneticists and IT experts at the University of Leicester are collaborating in new ways to provide a clearer picture of the population history of Britain.

There have been many different interpretations of the roots of the Welsh, Scots and English, and the legacies of peoples such as Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons and Vikings, who supposedly or certainly migrated here.

Combining data and expertise in a truly interdisciplinary collaboration promises to throw new light on these issues. Dr Jo Story, of the School of History, said: “To do this, the University of Leicester is exploiting its unique combination of a world-class Genetics Department studying the messages encoded in our genes, and Schools of History, English, Archaeology and Ancient History with international reputations for their research into the different legacy of texts, language and objects. We have built a collaborative group called ‘Roots of the British’ to bring these strands together.”

A new grant of £100,000, awarded by JISC as part of the 'Managing Research Data' Programme, will allow the development of a novel database, HALOGEN, to support the Roots of the British collaboration. David Carter and Mary Visser of IT Services prepared the successful grant application, and Jonathan Tedds will coordinate multi-disciplinary IT research expertise. Jonathan said: “The database will contain data on landscapes and artefacts, surnames and place-names, dialect and linguistic patterns, censuses, as well as genetic variation in the population. Combining such diverse data will present new challenges, which is why JISC is interested in funding these initiatives, and will also allow researchers to seek informative patterns about the past.”

At the same time a PhD student, Hayley Dunn, will begin her studies as part of the Roots of the British project. Normally, students spend their time in only one Department, but Hayley will be supervised both in the Department of Genetics (by Professor Mark Jobling) and in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History (by Dr Simon James). Dr James said: “We plan to combat the traditional separatism of different disciplines, in which experts from one field just cherry-pick ideas from another, by training a new generation of truly cross-disciplinary researchers for the future.”

Professor Jobling hopes that the new initiatives will lead to really new insights, for example: “Place-names in counties like Leicestershire show the massive influence the Vikings had on our culture, while in Warwickshire there are no Viking names. But can we see a difference in the proportions of ‘Viking’ genes in these places? Comparing different kinds of evidence for past Viking influence will help us understand how these key cultural changes in Britain’s past came about.”

Click here to go to the Roots of the British website