Historic England Blog on the Register of Historic Battlefields

The battlefield of Edgcote in Northamptonshire, fought on 24 July 1469 between forces loyal to the Yorkist king Edward IV and northern rebels allied to the earl of Warwick.

2025 marks the 30^th anniversary of the establishment of Historic England’s Register of Historic Battlefields. David Grummitt, a Staff Tutor in History and a member of the Battlefields Trust’s Advistory Panel on Historic Battlefields, was asked to contribute a piece to the Historic England Blog on the battlefields of the Wars of the Roses. The Register, established in 1995, lists 47 English battlefields from the Battle of Maldon in AD 991 to the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685. Eight battlefields from the intermittent period of civil war and rebellion between 1455 and 1487, known as the Wars of the Roses, are included on the Register:

Blore Heath (1459)
Northampton (1460)
Towton (1461)
Edgcote (1469)
Barnet (1471)
Tewkesbury (1471)
Bosworth (1485)
Stoke Field (1487)

Although these sites of conflict include some of the most recognisable names in English history, their history and what happened there is often obscured by later myths and legends. Dr Grummitt explains, “within a couple of generations, the battles of the Wars of the Roses became associated with various stories that perpetuated a certain view of the past, crafted by Tudor chroniclers and, of course William Shakespeare, and which often rewrote their history.” The two most misrepresented battles in the Tudor accounts were Towton in Yorkshire (fought between the Yorkists and Lancastrians on Palm Sunday 1461 and often, wrongly, said to be the largest and bloodiest battle fought on British soil) and Bosworth in Leicestershire (where Henry Tudor defeated and killed Richard III). Shakespeare’s notorious demonisation of Margaret of Anjou, the last Lancastrian queen, and of Richard III, the last Plantagent king of England, have cast a long shadow over our understanding of these pivotal moments in English history.

The Tudor stories were often embroidered and new ones told in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and it is only now, through careful research and archaeological investigation, that we are beginning to properly understand what happened in these landscapes. Dr Grummitt concludes, “the rich and complex history of these landscapes is as much about myth and memory as it is about recovering the facts of what happened over 5 centuries ago.’”

The blog also publicises the work of the Battlefields Trust, a charitable organisation dedicated to preserving historic battlefields through a programme of research and community engagement. The Battlefields Trust has also launched the Wars of the Roses Memorial Database, a crowd-sourced, open-access database that captures the memorials, stories, and myths associated with the battles of the Wars of the Roses and other sites linked to the 15th-century civil wars. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Register of Historic Battlefields in England, The Battlefields Trust is also offering opportunities in September 2025 to explore England’s battlefields, including those involved in the Wars of the Roses at Northampton, Edgcote and Tewkesbury, in a series of free, expert-led walks. Find out details of how to book a ticket for the Big Battlefield Walks Weekends.