We walked the battlefield, saw Saxton Church, the Crooked Billet and St Mary's Chapel. And also saw Hazlewood Castle, across the beck, home to Sir Henry Vavasour (1421/30-1499), who according to some sources fought on the Yorkist side with Warwick, even though based in a Lancastrian heartland and possibly a Percy retainer.
Sir Henry is buried in the castle's chapel,
"By the door lyes a blue marble about 2 yards and i long, escocheoned at corners thus: viz. Vavasour and Gascoigne impaled. On the inscription plate this epitaph, viz. + Orate pro animabus domini Henrici Vavasour militis, qui obiit ....die mentis .... anno Domini m0 cccc0 x'cviij0. (?) et [Johanna consortia snce, quce xvij die Septembris, anno Domini m0 cccc" lxij0 (?) decessit;omniumque fidelium defunctorum, ut requiescant in pace." Torre's Archdeaconry of York. c 1754, 218.
According to one story, the family heard the battle, 2/3rds of a mile away whilst at Mass. It was Palm Sunday after all. And another, that Edward IV took quick refreshment in the Castle after the battle before moving on to York.
Thoughts from the visit?
I've always found visiting battlefields and other sites associated with
trauma and death a mixed and tad ghoulish experience and this time no different. But it is a
quiet, still place, with not glorification, and no commercialisation.
And St Mary's Chapel, at Lead, on the left flank, is a hidden gem. It is the only extant remnant of Lead Manor and village, which again, the story goes, Edward may have stayed in the night before the battle.
I hope to create a figure of Vavasour, Lead Chapel and if possible the retreat towards the beck.
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