The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds Read Online Free PDF Page B

disturbance, together with the location of gas mains and electric and fibre-optic cables. The DBA would provide me, as the client, with the necessary professional green light to enable the dig to go ahead. I gave ULAS what information I had on the Leicester Greyfriars site. The cost of the DBA was £1,140, so I called Phil Stone because the Richard III Society had a bursary fund for original research to which I could apply. The joint secretaries, Sue and David Wells, helped prepare the request document, which Phil Stone gave to the Executive Committee who passed it immediately.
    In April 2011, with the DBA completed, I asked ULAS where it intended to dig the first trenches. Richard Buckley explained that in order to pick up any trace of the east–west church walls beneath the surface, two overlapping thirty-metre trenches would run north–south which he hoped would bisect the walls. The trenches would also have to be positioned to maximize the remaining parking on site to help with costs. I pressed again for the northern end of the car park and Buckley confirmed that Trench One would cover the exact area I wanted; it ran right over the letter ‘R’.
    The greatest expense of the dig was going to be the reinstatement work, turning the site back into a car park. I also had to find, and fund, interim parking for the Social Services for the duration of the dig, which we agreed would last for two weeks. Richard Buckley assured me it would be possible to dig three trial trenches in that time. I proposed the dig should take place over the Easter holiday period, April–May 2012, as this would give me time to get the funding, and broadcaster, on board. It would also reduce the cost of the off-site car parking. But in the meantime I had to raise an estimated £35,000.
    Sarah Levitt told me that I would need permission from the team at the Greyfriars Social Services for the dig and the disruption it would cause. Their consent was vital; Levitt would not be able to overrule them if they refused. I was tense for my meeting with Mick Bowers, Head of Greyfriars Property Services. Bowers understood the dig would cause major headaches, but he’d spoken to his team, who were willing to take on the extra work-load involved because, they said, the search for Richard was a worthy one. Bowers would be in charge of matters at their end. It was a huge relief, and I thanked him. ‘Not a problem,’ he said, and smiled. I later discovered his wife was a Ricardian.
    The next priority was to finalize the TV programme. The first-ever search for the grave of an anointed King of England was a good story, so someone would bite. It just so happened I had a certain someone in mind.
    I had been a big fan of the documentary filmmaker Julian Ware for many years. He insisted on meticulous research, a sensitive approach and top production values. He was joint creative director of the award-winning Darlow Smithson Productions (DSP), which had just made WW1: Finding the Lost Battalions (July 2010), about amateur historian Lambis Englezos’s search for the lost graves of the 1916 Battle of Fromelles in France. Ware confirmed his interest in the Looking for Richard project, to be headed up by DSP’s Acting Head of Development, Simon Young, an archaeologist who had produced Finding the Lost Battalions.
    A few weeks later, however, the project’s future was up in the air again. Sheila Lock (CEO of LCC) was ill, Chris Wardle, the City Archaeologist, was not convinced of its viability, and to cap it all Leicester was about to vote for its first elected mayor, the person who would then run LCC and therefore be able to kill the project stone dead.
    Or not. In May 2011 Sir Peter Soulsby was elected Leicester’s mayor. He valued history and heritage (it was in his manifesto), so it was with some relief that a few weeks later Sarah Levitt confirmed he’d given the Looking for Richard project the green light. We were back on.
    At the cathedral, the dean, the Very