Archaeologists Find Richard III Under a Car Park

On 25 August 2012, archaeologists in Leicester, England, opened an excavation in a municipal staff car park to resolve a centuries-old historical mystery. King Richard III had perished on 22 August 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth Field, the decisive engagement that brought the Tudor dynasty to the English throne. Following his defeat, his corpse was brought to Leicester and given a modest interment in the church of the Greyfriars friary. When King Henry VIII dissolved the religious house in 1538, the buildings were demolished, and the site became private urban property. Over time, physical memory of the exact location vanished, leaving room for unsubstantiated local legends claiming that the monarch's bones had been exhumed and dumped into the River Soar.

The initiative to recover the lost tomb emerged from the Looking for Richard project, launched by independent researchers and backed by the Richard III Society. Collaborating with the University of Leicester Archaeological Services and local municipal authorities, the team focused on land formerly occupied by friary gardens and outbuildings that had later been converted into a council car park. Ground-penetrating radar surveys had yielded inconclusive structural evidence, leaving researchers doubtful about locating the precise church foundations. Nevertheless, on the very first day of digging a test trench, excavators struck articulated human lower leg bones. As work expanded, evidence revealed that the burial lay directly within the eastern precincts of the medieval friary church.