For once this headline does not refer to the battle of the cities, but a historical research, revealing the last resting place of King Richard III.
 
Contrary to the fight between cities and cathedrals, this news is not about the human remains of King Richard III, but where he stayed last in his life and where he presumable had his last time of rest before the Battle of Bosworth in the year 1485.
Coming down from Nottingham to meet his enemy Henry Tudor in battle, King Richard III stayed in Leicester at the rather newly built and spectacular timber framed building of the
 
Blue Boar Inn, Leicester
 
This is the inn, where King Richard III stayed the night of the 20th of August, 1485, before he went on and camped out in the field directly before the Battle of Bosworth.
 
King Richard III had his own bed carried along on this journey, which had remaind in the inn, even after the Battle of Bosworth and where rumours have it, that a great gold treasure was found inside in a secret compartment in a hidden bottom.
Perhaps the gold was connected with bad luck, as legend has it, that the person who seems to have found the treasure more than 100 years after King Richard III’s death, the landlady of the Blue Boar Inn at the time, was murdered for the gold coins from the time of King Richard’s reign.
 
That King Richard III had left his bed at the Blue Boar Inn lets us presume, that King Richard III had intended to either return to Leicester after the battle or at least make further arrangements for his valuables and treasure he had left there.
 
Richard Buckley, whom we already know for leading the archaeological research at the Greyfriars Church in Leicester, found the documents and detailed information about its construction in the archive of the Goddard family in Leicester, who were famous architects in the area.
The found documents meticulously note the measurements and construction of the building and even allow conclusions about the room, where King Richard III stayed during his visit of the inn and where he left his bed.
This now allowed the University of Leicester, to reconstruct the building in a CAD model (computer-aided design) and build a 3D model of it with the 3D printer of the University of Leicester:
 

Creator of the CAD model Steffan Davies (left), Richard Buckley (centre) and Dave Thompson (right) who produced the physical model using the University’s rapid prototyping machine – Credit: University of Leicester

♛ Blue Boar Inn in the Press ♛

• The Guardian: King Richard III’s medieval inn recreated by archaeologists – by Maev Kennedy (18.12.2012)

 

• BBC News Leicester: Model of Richard III’s Blue Boar Inn made in Leicester (18.12.2012)