Visit to Towton Battlefield

We managed to visit North Yorkshire this summer, during the lulls between lock-downs. The first day trip was to Towton battlefield.

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.

The Vavasour coat of arm. And possibly the Gascoigne one it was impaled with.

 

 

 

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.

Visiting the site did solidify the geography, especially the ascents, descents and plateau, in my mind. The long, wet slog up from Ferrybridge to the Towton plateau in snow and cold weather must have been tiring, grim and anxious for the Yorkists. And the short, sharp drop from the salient to the beck and the routes north  for the Lancastarians in rout even worse. Even on a summer day, the plateau is noticeably higher and exposed. I imagine it was less open and uniform at the time, however. 

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.