Bradgate Park is located 10km north-west of the City of Leicester and covers an 830-acre recreational park which attracts c. 400,000 visitors each year. The landscape is designated as a SSSI and is described by Natural England as “one of the finest remaining examples of ancient parkland in Leicestershire” containing some of the “last remaining fragments of wet heathland in the County”.
The park is first documented in 1241 (as a deer park) but is best known as the location of one of the first unfortified brick-built aristocratic houses in England (c. 1520), which was later the birth place and childhood home of Lady Jane Grey: the ‘nine days queen’. Despite this historical significance, very little is known about the changing use of this landscape despite the richness of the archaeological evidence. The aim of the Bradgate Park Fieldschool is to better understand changing human interactions within this upland landscape, provide students with training in archaeology and promote public engagement. Our third season of excavations concluded in July 2018 and included some major new discoveries: a late Mesolithic flint scatter, a Bronze Age enclosure and a revision of our understanding of Lady Jane Grey's home. In this talk, project co-director Dr. Richard Thomas will summarise the findings of the first three seasons of work and describe the plans for future seasons.
Richard read Ancient History and Archaeology at Birmingham University (1995-1998) and embarked on a PhD at Birmingham, studying diet, agriculture, and humananimal relations in late medieval and early modern England.
He joined the School as Lecturer in Archaeology in September 2003 and was promoted to Reader in 2014.
Teaching and research interests focus on the study of animal bones as a means of understanding past humananimal relationships (see the Bone Laboratory website).
Richard's research has two main strands:
- the reconstruction of past human-animal relationships, predominantly in the historic period
- palaeopathology – the study of animal health and disease in the past.
