Ambion Hill is a hill in west

Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ; postal abbreviation Leics.) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, south of the town of

Market Bosworth Market Bosworth is a market town and civil parish in western Leicestershire, England. At the 2001 Census, it had a population of 1,906, increasing to 2,097 at the 2011 census. It is most famously near to the site of the decisive final battle o ...

and lying south of the

Sutton Cheney Sutton Cheney ( ) is a village and civil parish in the borough of Hinckley and Bosworth in the county of Leicestershire, England, near the county border with Warwickshire.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : In addition to the ...

Shenton Shenton is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Sutton Cheney, in the Hinckley and Bosworth district, in the county of Leicestershire, England, situated south-west of Market Bosworth. Shenton was formerly a chapelry and ...

road and north of Dadlington and of Fenn Lanes Roman road. The

Ashby Canal The Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal is a long canal in England which connected the mining district around Moira, just outside the town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, with the Coventry Canal at Bedworth in Warwickshire. It was opened in 1804, ...

passes to the south of the hill. The hill is the site of the deserted medieval village of Anebein. Ambion Hill was long considered to be the site of the

Battle of Bosworth Field The Battle of Bosworth or Bosworth Field was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the houses of Lancaster and York that extended across England in the latter half of the 15th century. Fought on 22 Augu ...

and is where the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre is situated. The chronicler

Raphael Holinshed Raphael Holinshed ( – before 24 April 1582) was an English chronicler, who was most famous for his work on ''The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande'', commonly known as ''Holinshed's Chronicles''. It was the "first complete printe ...

wrote in 1577 that

Richard III Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Bat ...

"pitched his field on a hill called Anne Beame, refreshed his soldiers and took his rest". This was taken by the C18th antiquary William Hutton to mean that Ambion Hill was the site of the battle. Hutton's book ''The Battle of Bosworth Field'', published in 1788, was very influential in causing the hill to be accepted as the site of the battle.

Leicestershire County Council Leicestershire County Council is the county council for the English non-metropolitan county of Leicestershire. It was originally formed in 1889 by the Local Government Act 1888. The county is divided into 52 electoral divisions, which return a to ...

set up the battlefield visitor centre at what was Ambion Hill Farm, in 1974. The work of

Leicester University , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_label ...

historian Daniel Williams was used to interpret the battle. Numerous historians challenged the Ambion Hill location for the battle and this led to a large-scale project (from 2005 to 2009) by the Battlefields Trust, headed by

Glenn Foard Glenn R. Foard (born c.1953) is an English landscape archaeologist, best known for discovering the location of the final phases of the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485). He is Reader in Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Huddersfield.

, to attempt to definitively find the true location of the battlefield. It is now accepted that the core of the battlefield lies either side of Fenn Lanes, about two miles south-west of the visitor centre and that Ambion Hill was Richard III's camp on the night before the battle. The battlefield heritage centre now has a viewing point with the Fenn Lane Farm site and other notable points marked. Ambion Hill remains within the revised registered battlefield. A

cairn A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the gd, càrn (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehi ...

built in 1813 marks the well from which according to tradition Richard III is said to have drunk prior to the battle. The

cortège Many words in the English vocabulary are of French origin, most coming from the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern Engl ...

carrying Richard III's remains visited the hill during the procession before their interment in

Leicester Cathedral The Cathedral Church of Saint Martin, Leicester, commonly known as Leicester Cathedral, is a Church of England cathedral in Leicester, England and the seat of the Bishop of Leicester. The church was elevated to a collegiate church in 192 ...

in 2015.

References

External links

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Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre
{{Authority control Hills of Leicestershire History of Leicestershire Tourist attractions in Leicestershire