Even without the high resolution provided by open field terriers, important conclusions can still be drawn from the distribution of place names. This is most clearly seen with regard to marginal land – heath, moor, fen, bog, and wold (anciently open woodland or wood pasture). Mapping these names provided key evidence which guided our investigation as to where the marsh and thus the battlefield might lie (Figure 4.12).

Firstly there is the absence of significant fen, heath or moor names on or around Ambion Hill. This is not simply a case of names having been lost at enclosure, for in the case for Sutton Cheney we were also able to assess the furlong and meadow names using the open field terrier of 1788.³⁰ This confirmed the conclusion already reached from the soils and open field mapping, that the battlefield could not lie in this area. Similar conclusions can be drawn with regard to the site suggested by Wright. Instead these three data sets draw attention firmly to the low lying ground at the junction of townships of Stoke, Dadlington, Shenton and Upton. Towards the eastern periphery of this zone is where Foss located the battle.

Just beyond the south-western boundary of the original survey area the mapping also reveals heath names extending into Higham on the Hill and Rowden (which is the northern part of Lindley township). Woodland names also lie in the eastern tip of Atterton township (wold), while Lindley itself has a ley name element. Hartley’s sketch maps of ridge and furrow show most of the area of wold names had been cultivated in the medieval period, while the gaps are likely just to be where ridge and furrow had been destroyed by the 1940s. In Rowden, on the other hand, a small area of wood still existed in 1777 and 1814, within what had been a deer park.³¹ The latter is well beyond the south western periphery of the battlefield, as currently understood, so is not discussed further. However, should the battle archaeology prove to extend further to the south west then this issue will need to be revisited. What the woodland names do confirm, along with the fen, heath and moor, is the marginal nature of this whole tract of land. The one piece ground lacking such place name evidence is the southern tip of Upton, where the battle archaeology is concentrated, and this certainly calls for further research on the written sources.

Table 4.1: Selected place names from the Dadlington court rolls, based on the translations/transcriptions by Page

It has not been possible to accurately locate most of the place names collected from written sources of the late fifteenth to early seventeenth century, particularly those from the court rolls for Dadlington. However they still provide valuable insights when considered in the light of the other place name evidence, so selected names are listed in Table 4.1.³²

First we must examine the evidence for the wetland, for although Holinshed says that the ‘marsh’ around which the armies manoeuvred had been drained at some time between 1485 and 1576, wetland related names persisted well into the early modern period. Isolated examples of mire, bog and rush names are found in various locations across the five townships. To this list one might also add Segewelle Hamm, immediately to the west of Dadlington village, which is noted by Foss. In contrast, the fen name element is restricted to a very small part of Dadlington, Stoke Golding, Shenton and Upton, and it is this which is most likely to represent the ‘marsh’ reported in the original accounts of the battle.

Fen names are comparatively few in Leicestershire, where they can refer to relatively narrow strips of wetland, which is exactly what the palaeo-environmental evidence suggests for Fen Hole. While Le fens and le fenes recorded in Dadlington in 1547 and 1555 may relate directly to the wetland itself, ‘the cattle pasture called The Fens’ in 1559 may, based on the evidence of the seventeenth century deeds, relate principally to slightly higher land immediately to the east of Fen Hole. While Hall has shown this had once been arable furlongs, by the mid-sixteenth century and perhaps considerably earlier, it had been put down to pasture.

In almost every case where we can locate fen names that lack a qualifier they lie on either side of the Fen Hole stream. They concentrate around the point where the Roman Road, known here as the Fenn Lane, crosses that stream. While Foss noted the presence of Fen Hole and the other names, he did not give particular attention to this area.³³ Instead he focused on the fen names further to the east, where they are qualified by other land use types, particularly Fen Meadow and Fen Moor. But, in 1621 we find record of Le Fenne field, as one of the great fields of Dadlington’s open field system. This is likely to have covered well over a square kilometre and thus the spread of fen names eastward may, in part, result from the naming of the great field in which they lay.

To the north and south of the core of fen names the evidence is even more equivocal. On the north is the name Fomer, recorded in 1578 and located on the 1726 maps of Upton and Shenton. This was Fowlismere in 1307, indicating a pond, pool or lake frequented by wild fowl.³⁴ The name relates to a shallow oval basin which has a very narrow neck leading north eastward into the Sence brook. While the soils here are alluvial, the palaeo-environmental survey failed to reveal any evidence of peat deposits, as one might expect if it was open water. The combined evidence of alluvial soils, open field furlongs and the digital terrain model suggest an area of about 15 hectares in extent. What is not clear at present is whether this mere remained as open water in the late fifteenth century, but it is possible that it was not lost until the period of drainage reported by Holinshed. This accords with other evidence for enclosure and drainage, particularly in 1555, which is discussed below. If it was drained at this time then that would fit with the first reference to Fowlismere as an area of meadow in 1587. If the mere did still exist in 1485 then it will have formed a key terrain feature on the northern edge of the battlefield with high tactical potential, even though it is not mentioned in the battle accounts. This is therefore an issue which demands further research on the documentary sources for Upton.

On the south side of the zone of fen names is an area called the Plash, which denotes a marshy pool. Before drainage, in recent centuries, this seems to have acted as a great sump, which was a relatively rare feature in Leicestershire. Indeed, even today, when there is heavy rain a wide area floods for several days to create a large pool extending over part of the adjacent furlongs – something noted more than once during the survey. If it was only flooded occasionally then this would explain why there are no peat deposits and why furlongs appear to cover almost the whole area. Hence, in contrast to Fowlismere, during the summer of 1485 it is unlikely that the Plash will have represented a feature of tactical significance.

The loss of the medieval fen, and perhaps also Fowlismere, probably began when Upton township was enclosed, beginning in the early sixteenth century. Certainly by 1511 dykes are being recorded in Dadlington, with the most significantly reference being to Redmore dyke in 1530. It is possible that the principal phase of drainage and enclosure took place around 1555, for in that year the Dadlington court rolls specify that new hedges and ditches were to be made in ‘le fener’ between Dadlington, Upton and Shenton.³⁵ This may even indicate an area of intercommoned land was being subdivided for the first time. Yet it is clear that not all trace of wetland was removed at that time for, as we have seen, when Taylor visited in the mid seventeenth century he still found the area to be low lying ground that was both ‘boggy and moory’. The process of drainage may only have been finally completed by land drainage in the nineteenth century, though local farmers report farm machinery becoming deeply bogged down in at least two locations in the Fen zone late in the twentieth century.³⁶

At first sight the name ‘Fen Hole’ seems to support the interpretation, from the palaeo-environmental work, of small discontinuous patches of fen. But the name appears in only one location, at the junction of Dadlington, Stoke and Upton townships, and as yet only in the post-enclosure period. In the late fifteenth century, in Stoke at least, the adjacent name is simply Fen furlong. Its transformation by 1605 to Fen Hole may reflect the impact of sixteenth-century drainage discussed above, turning a more extensive area of wetland into just one or two small patches, which Taylor then saw in the mid-seventeenth century. What seems clear, from the combined documentary and palaeo-environmental evidence, is that we still do not fully understand the extent and character of fen and mere on the battlefield in 1485. As a guide to where the fen may have lain, until further work can be undertaken, we provide a map highlighting just the alluvial areas which lie within fields or adjacent to furlongs which bear fen names.

While the fen is important in locating the battle, the key place name is Redemore, after which the battle was first named, which typically means low-lying, damp moorland. It is later recorded as Redmore, leading various authors to suggest it meant ‘red moor’, from the redness of the local clay soils. But Hutton and Nichols placed Redmore in the general area of Greenhill Farm in Sutton Cheney, where the geology is largely boulder clay – which does not normally produce a reddish soil.³⁷ In contrast, the core of the battlefield as it is now understood, in Upton township, is one of the few parts of the study area which has a surface geology comprising mudstone. These clays are of an exceptionally deep red colour which produces a reddish ploughsoil, as was noted during metal detecting survey on the battlefield (Figure 5.2). But this association is likely to be spurious. Based on the early form of the name, Cox supports the case made by Foss, that the name is much more likely to be ‘reed’ moor, from the presence of reeds. This, he argues, is supported by the fact that, until the ploughing of some of this marginal land for arable, which probably did not take place until the post conquest period, the reddish clays would not have been widely visible.

Foss noted that in the thirteenth century Redemore meadow lay in Dadlington open fields, and in our survey Redmore dyke has been identified in Dadlington manor in 1530.³⁸ While this evidence does not allow Redmore to be located, the Dadlington court rolls demonstrate that it cannot be the area later recorded as Fenmore closes, because both names appear in contemporary sixteenth century court rolls.³⁹ Where then was Redmore? The most likely solution is that it is represented by Moorey Leys, the ley here meaning arable strips put down to pasture. In 1727 this name encompassed much of the low ridge extending south from Shenton village almost to Fenn Lane – and area which Hutton claimed was Whitemoor. Where the ridge enters Dadlington the land was called the Fenns in 1661, although there were Gorse field names here in 1843.

There may however be an alternative location. Firstly there is the fact, discussed above, that Dadlington manor had land and detached rights in several adjacent townships. But, the reference to Redemore meadow being in the open fields of Dadlington suggests this is not the solution.⁴⁰ Another possibility is that prior to enclosure there was intercommoning in the adjacent part of Upton and that Redemore lay here, but again the medieval reference argues against this. The most likely alternative is that Redmore meadow lay on the edge of Dadlington but that the moor from which it took its name lay on the other side of the township boundary in Upton. This would be possible if Redmore dyke, recorded in 1530, was the drain which now forms the parish boundary between Dadlington, Upton and Shenton. Cox has noted the presence of the place name ‘la More’ in Upton in 1307, but there are other moor names recorded in the north part of Upton township in the eighteenth century which may accord with this. Until the records for Upton are exhaustively studied all such options should be kept open.

The other significant battle names are those which record heathland – Bosworth heath, Redemore heath and Brown heath. The identification of a substantial grouping of heath names, extending right across the western periphery of Stoke Golding and Higham on the Hill, was an unexpected discovery during the survey (Figure 4.13). They concentrate immediately to the south west of the fen names. Heath is typically an area of dry, barren raised land overgrown with scrub and heather. Then there is the presence of two, seemingly separate, Brown Heath place names. This is a remarkable discovery, given that previously this name for the battle had been dismissed as a translation error of Redemore from the Welsh.⁴¹ One lay at the south-west end of the heathland zone, straddling the township boundary between Higham and Lindley. The other lay in Garbrod field in the north-western part of Stoke Golding.

Hall’s furlong plan shows that part of the heathland recorded on the historic maps and documents of the early modern period had reverted from arable in the late medieval. However, there is an area in the north-western part of the heathland zone which was apparently never ploughed in the medieval period, presumably remaining as heath throughout. It is in this heath, in Higham on the Hill, that Dadlington manor held detached land in the sixteenth century, perhaps formerly part of a wider area of common rights shared by surrounding settlements.

The settlements adjacent to the battlefield have a twofold significance. Firstly the extent of their ancient enclosures, typically a tight grouping of hedged closes immediately adjacent to the tenements, could have provided a constraint on military action. However none, as we can now see, is sufficiently close to the battlefield to have had any tactical significance. Other settlement related enclosures might have played a role if they lay in the path of fleeing royal troops, or if they formed the focus for the Yorkist camp or baggage train. Unfortunately our documentary research has not enabled the extent of ancient enclosures in the fifteenth century to be defined. Indeed, only in Sutton Cheney, including Ambion, has it been possible to produce an accurate map of ancient enclosure, as that was recorded at parliamentary enclosure in 1789.

Though not strictly settlements, the other structures of potential significance are the windmills. While several medieval windmills undoubtedly existed within the study area, Foss has already pointed out the approximate location of the Dadlington windmill, which he has demonstrated was in existence in 1485. The field names recorded in the mid-nineteenth century show it lay on Greenhill, immediately to the north of Apple Orchard Farm. Although the exact site has not been established, as archaeological evidence typical of medieval windmills has not been identified on aerial photographs or on the ground, it is possible that an extensive geophysical survey may enable the site to be pinpointed.

In the 1840s the tithe map of Shenton records a windmill beside Mill Lane, which leads south from Shenton towards Fenn Lane, but this mill was not present on the 1727 map. Another mill lay on the hilltop to the east of Stoke Golding village, where there was an open field known as Mill Hill field in 1605, though as yet no medieval record of its existence has been identified. Another lay to the east of Dadlington village, while Mill Field lay in the open fields of Sutton Cheney. However, the Dadlington windmill beside Shenton is the only mill known to have existed in 1485 which lies in close proximity to the battlefield.⁴³