Richard III: The Case For Leicester

2012 is likely to be one of the more memorable years of the early 21^st century. It was an American election year, the Higgs boson particle was confirmed to exist, and an Austrian sky-diver leapt to Earth from space. Closer to home were the Olympic Games in London as well as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, which enabled me to stand on the banks of the Thames and watch my father and his crew row past the Royal Family in the pouring rain. But elsewhere in the country, another British monarch was making headlines as a team of academics and archaeologists successfully located the remains of Richard III, some 527 years after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. Due to the nature of the end of his reign, and the low key nature of his burial, the discovery of a lost king’s remains is almost certainly a once in a lifetime event. And this event happened in Leicester.

I was born and raised in Leicester, so I can imagine just how excited sections of the local community were at the very public investigation into the possible location of Greyfriars church, which was demolished during the English Reformation. Of course, present day Leicester is most famous for its large multicultural community, its mighty rugby union side and its association with crisps, as championed by one of our most famous sons. But the Wars of the Roses continue to loom large over Leicestershire, as the location of the definitive 1485 battle outside of Market Bosworth and the final resting place of one of the most interesting and notorious of England’s kings.

As I write this, no final decision has been made on how to lay Richard’s remains to rest – as I’ll get to in a moment – but previously, his unofficial grave was marked with a slab in Leicester Cathedral. I know this as an alumnus of Leicester Grammar School, which, prior to its move to a greenfield site in 2008, would hold assemblies in the cathedral and owned the nearby St Martin’s building. The yard of said building was dug up during the summer archaeological excavations and has subsequently been purchased by the city council for the purposes of a forthcoming museum dedicated to Richard III. I’m not quite sure what pleases me more: seeing my old school being turned into a museum, or the thought of my 10 year old self being yards away from playing football over the grave of a king! As it happened, the grave was being parked upon instead on the other side of the wall.

Though my parents now live in Derby, I made a point of stopping by Leicester when I was visiting them a couple of weeks ago. The St Martin’s building will not be opening its doors any time soon, but tourists will be able to find an exhibition relating to both the life and times of Richard III and the archaeological process throughout 2012. Its location is the city’s medieval Guildhall, situated directly opposite the cathedral and connected to the main building of the former grammar school, which is now utilised by the cathedral’s staff as an office/conference centre complex. The exhibition, entitled ‘Richard III: Leicester’s Search for a King’, is housed within the modern side building which sits alongside the original Guildhall structure.

 

Both halves of the site are available to the public free of charge, although donations boxes with suggested amounts for visitors to consider are prominently placed by the entrance. It was telling that I had to queue to get around the exhibition whilst very few of them continued on into the Guildhall proper.  But this shouldn’t be taken as a slight on the latter; the exhibition is just that damn popular. I asked the museum assistant operating the clicker about how many visitors had been in between the exhibition opening its doors at 11am and the time of my enquiry, which was 12:45pm. She replied that she’d clicked through 196 visitors, and apparently this constituted a relatively slow day in terms of footfall! I felt ready to regale her with tales of visitor numbers from when I used to volunteer in local museums, but I thought better of it when remembering that there was a queue behind me and that I shouldn’t be bothering total strangers with anecdotes whilst they’re trying to work.

I can see why the exhibition is so popular: visitors come to find out the facts of last year’s excavation, and are treated to dual narratives, with the wall-lined displays focusing upon Richard’s life and times whilst the interactive central display focuses upon the archaeological process. It isn’t a large exhibition but it says all that it needs to say based upon the results of the dig. In short, it is one of the most enticing reasons to visit Leicester that the outside world has been offered.

Now all this may sound wonderful, particularly as provincial cities don’t often have major finds land in their lap in such a way. However, with an uncanny similarity to the Wars of the Roses, the House of York have thrown conflict into the mix by staking their own claim to the king’s remains. Richard was, of course, the Duke of York following the death of his father Richard, who was the primary antagonist to the Lancastrian King Henry VI. The younger Richard was known for his loyal Northern power base and even despite his turbulent two year reign and his subsequent treatment at the quills of writers during the Tudor era, Richard continues to receive support from Yorkshire to this day. Online petitions to have the Last Plantagenet’s remains repatriated to York have been doing the rounds, whilst local politicians have been lobbying for Richard to be returned to God’s own county and a group calling themselves “The Plantagenet Alliance” have instructed solicitors to seek a judicial review into the Ministry of Justice allowing the University of Leicester to have the final say on Richard’s resting place.

It’s hard to overlook the fact that the deceased king is so popular in York that the city already has its own Richard III museum, housed within the Monk Bar gatehouse of the city walls. That, in its own right, is pretty darn awesome! The museum not only gives its visitors a full overview of Richard’s life but also uses the mystery of the Princes in the Tower as a means of looking at historical bias and the importance of source work, via a hypothetical trial of the museum’s namesake. This concept has been taken further by the museum’s curator Michael S Bennett, who has physically portrayed the king in front of visiting audiences prior to his retirement from performing. It is fair to say that the claim to Richard by the city, county and house of York is one with distinct foundation. But is a strong local desire for his remains a good enough reason for the city of Leicester to comply with such a wish? Is this dispute really comparable to Greece’s claim to the Parthenon marbles?

Though I am a sentimental Leicestrian, as well as an alumnus of Lancaster University, York does hold a place in my heart. From my childhood memories of daffodils growing along the city walls to my MA thesis being based upon four prominent visitor attractions within York, there are few cities that I have kept coming back to for the purpose of filling my museum journals. The Richard III Museum aside, there are hidden gems in Barley Hall and the Merchant Adventurer’s Hall. I have seen the city’s skyline atop Clifford’s Tower; I have been guided around its reconstructed Viking heyday at Jorvik, and brushed around rubber soil at its Dig sister site. York Castle Museum boasts studios, dungeons and the fantastic Kirkgate street. Not forgetting the National Railway Museum or the Yorkshire Museum, I could also name-check places that I have yet to visit and write up, from the York Minster cathedral to the York Dungeon and the Quilt Museum, and I haven’t even mentioned the art galleries. York is quite simply a tourism powerhouse, dripping with history from every pore. You would be hard-pressed to walk 200 metres within the city limits without stumbling across a cultural venue.

Leicester, bless it, isn’t quite in the same league. This is not to say there’s nothing there for museum fans to take in though. Aside from the Guildhall, Leicester is home to the New Walk Museum, the Roman heritage site Jewry Wall and the Newarke Houses Museum. Outside the city limits is the National Space Centre – as Leicester is obviously the home of space travel – with Abbey Pumping Station right next door and Belgrave Hall a relative stone’s throw away. I also found out recently that the city has a gas museum, and that it is only a few neighbourhoods away from where I grew up. There are other cultural venues within the city, but wearing my Museum Walker hat, Leicester simply doesn’t have the same tourism clout that York does.

And in the grand scheme of things, that’s fine. Few British cities do, outside of London, Edinburgh and maybe Manchester. But what managed to get my gander up was when the leader of Scarborough Borough Council stated that “the people of Leicester misplaced him for 500 years. Would we really entrust his remains to them again? I think not”. I shouldn’t get het up about a deeply partisan shot from a politician taking a time-out from serving the needs of his constituents – I somehow doubt Richard III is a major topic of conversation in Scarborough, although I accept that may be projection on my part – but it is a comment made without bothering to worry about the concepts of feasibility or historical realism.

Following the ruination of Greyfriars church during the Reformation, I wonder who would dare to reveal publically their appetite to try and locate a monarch non grata under the Tudor dynasty, which ended in 1603, 118 years after Richard’s death. It arguably wasn’t an urgent priority during the Stuart era either, which ended 229 years later in 1714, by which point the city of Leicester was growing. I don’t want to be overly defensive, but if potshots must be fired at Leicester, at least denigrate the aspects that deserve scorn. Personally, I’d nominate the price of parking or the council’s decision to replace the trees in the city centre with multi-coloured lighting poles. With that being said, I’d prefer the level of discourse to be polite and civilised when thrashing out some kind of agreement because politics, on all levels, is at its ugliest when co-operation is thwarted out of pettiness or partisanship.

I don’t know where Richard III will ultimately be laid to rest, be it Leicester, York, or, as I discovered during my research, Barnard Castle in County Durham, as another politician enters into the debate with a claim for his interment. It is a political matter at the end of the day, and requires more research than I am prepared to undergo, as the minutiae of repatriation is multi-faceted, delicate and very complicated. What I can say is that ‘Richard III: Leicester’s Search for a King’ is well worth seeking out as an exploration of how it came to be that a group of academics managed to unearth a lost monarch. It is free to visit, backs on to a well-preserved medieval building and gives you a reason to visit Leicester, if, like me, you enjoy seeking out places in Britain that you have never been to before. Considering he was once one of the most reviled kings in English history, Richard III has never been as popular as he is today!