Finding one dead king under a car park may be deemed a fluke. Discovering two could be seen as a very peculiar habit.
Yet this may prove to be the case for historian Philippa Langley.
Through a combination of careful research and what she calls a strange sensation, in 2012 Philippa Langely famously identified the very location in a Leicester car park beneath which lay the skeleton of the 15th-century king Richard III.
Using the same critical combination of research and analysis that drew her to the final resting place of the last Plantagenet king, she’s convinced that Henry’s earthly remains lie under the grey tarmac of, what for it, a Ministry of Justice-owned car park at Reading Prison.
Somewhat fittingly, she believes he’s buried under a parking spot marked on a survey with the letter ‘K’.
It’s one reason the 60-year-old, whose dedication to finding Richard III’s grave earned her an MBE and led to her actions being portrayed in the 2022 film, The Lost King has formed the ‘Hidden Abbey’ project to help raise funds for the estimated £55,000 cost of a local dig at the site of the prison, which was closed in 2013 and is now awaiting redevelopment.
She told a newspaper outlet that there were powerful arguments for the location of the king’s grave and that it was, therefore, her contention that not only do they have another king in a car park in Reading, but that ‘K’ was for king.
It’s a bold assertion, but as we have seen, Philippa has impressive form, and after becoming intrigued with Richard III in the late 1990s, she spent years endeavouring to pinpoint his actual burial site and became convinced that the location lay within a council-owned car park in Leicester.
Initially unlikely as that seemed, the car park stood on the spot once occupied by the church of the Greyfriars, a 13th-century monastic friary, where Richard was buried following his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.
Philippa’s conviction was strengthened when she visited the site in 2004, and when, standing over an area marked R, for Reserved Parking she found herself shaking and came out in goosebumps.
The documentary filming the discovery actually didn’t give Philippa Langley enough recognition, but I would guess that numerous others hopped in on her glory, but still, it’s remarkable how it was all pieced together by many, including Philippa Langley.
However, what should have happened after the find is that King Richard III should have been given a state funeral because, after all, he was still a king, and it makes you wonder how much of our history has been lost by the destruction on monasteries, archaic records, rolls and literature because it could tell us so much more about those times and before.
And it’s so invigorating to see and read about a smart, intelligent and well-educated woman such as Philippa Langley instead of the superabundance of rubbish that occupies most papers and news stories not worth reading about, and it was her obsession that got the dig underway in the first place, and at least there’s one person out there trying to preserve our history and culture.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 