Ten years ago today …

… it was announced that the remains discovered on the site of the Leicester Greyfriars were indeed those of Richard III. On this page you can see both mitochodrial DNA lines: the first by John Ashdown-Hill and the back-up by Leicester University, both to collateral descendants in Commonwealth nations. Here you can see how easy it…

Five interesting archaeological discoveries….

  According to this article there have been five interesting archaeological discoveries in the past decade. First among them, of course, is the finding of Richard III’s remains:- “….When King Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, he was buried in the church of the Grey Friars. In 2012, The Richard III Society…

Richard III university team now find a Roman mosaic….

  “….This undated photo issued on Thursday Nov. 25, 2021 by the University of Leicester Archaeological Services shows a Roman mosaic unique to Britain and depicting one of the most famous battles of the Trojan War. Nearly a decade on from uncovering the remains of King Richard III under a car park near Leicester Cathedral,…

The forensic genealogy that identified Richard III moves on apace

Almost six years ago now, it was confirmed that the remains identified under a car park in Leicester were those of Richard III. One of the principal components of this identification was that the remains shared the mtDNA of Michael Ibsen, a maternal line relative traced by John Ashdown-Hill, as was Wendy Duldig by the…

Richard III WASN’T buried under a car park….!

A list of ten facts that were taught at school but are no longer true has been published at this site.  It’s a very interesting list with some things that I really didn’t know about, but at number 8 is the following:- “[Untrue fact} NO-ONE KNOWS WHERE RICHARD III’S BODY IS. “Correction: He was buried…

Two butchers, an archer and a “bourgeois of Tournai”….

“….Consider, for example, the case of John Sperhauk, which came before King’s Bench in April 1402. The plea roll record opens with the memorandum of his confession taken on 13 April by the coroner of King’s Bench, before the king and ‘by [his] authority and command’. In this confession, Sperhauk admitted to publicly repeating allegations…

Richard III had magnificent teeth….!

  “….[Richard’s] teeth, judging by the perfectly preserved skull, are magnificent….” Well, so they are! This article  says so! However, it also mentions hunchbacks and the University of Leicester “leading” the search for Richard’s remains, so there are minuses as well. BUT, his teeth are great! Which is more than can be said of Henry…

Digging for Britain

Just six miles north-west of Leicester was Bradgate House, the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey, ostensibly the subject of the Streatham Portrait. The second episode of this year’s series, presented by Alice Roberts, focused upon the “North”, starting with Leicester University’s investigation into the probable site. Here they found that the most obvious building…

Has mtDNA identified Jack the Ripper?

“Ripperology” is quite a confused subject and at least a dozen suspects have been conclusively “identified as the Whitechapel fiend. Nevertheless, this article and the book detailed within, if taken at face value, uses the scientific techniques that identified Richard III, Jesse James, Nicholas II and others to claim to solve the East London riddle…

Identifying Richard’s remains is one of Sir Alec’s three proudest moments….

Sir Alec Jeffreys, the scientist who revealed the secrets of genetic fingerprinting,  remembers the exact moment of his discovery. “It was 9.05 on the morning of Monday, September 10, 1984 – it’s seared into my memory,” he said. It may not be seared into ours in the same way, but we still marvel at the…