Search for battlefield graves
Battle Field: Naseby: Fairfax's Viewpoint from Battle of Naseby across to Prince Rupert's viewpoint. Friday 7th September 2012
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have been using high-tech equipment in a bid to find sites where soldiers were buried after the Battle of Naseby.
Experts from Cranfield University have visited the battlefield with geophysics devices – regularly seen in the television programme Time Team – to fully investigate what was beneath the ground.
Their investigations have centred on two sites identified as mass graves in the 1800s by then landowner Edward Fitzgerald.
The two sites – Dust Hill where Prince Rupert’s Royalist Blue Coats stood against an attack by Sir Thomas Fairfax’s Parliamentarian forces, and Closter Well, where Sergeant-Major General Sir Philip Skippon’s infantry are said to be buried – were the subject of paintings by Fitzgerald.
Now experts are using those paintings in a bid to re-locate the graves.
Peter Burton, of the Naseby Battlefield Turst, said it was too early to say whether the graves had been found.
“We found some very interesting stuff on the geophys,” he told the Mail.
“We’re still waiting for interpretation by the experts. It could be old graves but it could just as easily be something else.”
Mr Burton said the results of the investigation could lead to the creation of a 3D map of the battlefield, with various layers showing troop movements during the battle and comparing how the site looked then to today.
A new documentary looking at the history of the Battle of Naseby, and featuring interviews with Mr Burton as well as Naseby expert Martin Marix Evans, is due to be shown on the Yesterday TV channel in December.
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