Richard III The Road to Bosworth

​​Richard III The Road to Bosworth 20th August 1485

It has been said that Richard III spent his last evening in an inn at Leicester known as The Blue Boar, although why the king chose to stay at a local hostelry rather than the cities castle is unknown. As was the norm for medieval royalty, Richard brought his own bed, supposedly stating it was because he “slept ill in strange beds.” The room in which he stayed was described as a “large gloomy chamber.” ​

The following morning, the 21st of August, Richard set off for Bosworth but after the battle of had gone the way of the Lancastrians the inn keeper of the Blue Boar supposedly had the quickness of mind to rename the inn. What was the White Boar became the Blue Boar for obvious reasons.

Of the inn today nothing remains, fortunately there are plans still in existence so we know what the inn looked like as it once stood on Leicesters High Street in 1485. The site on which the inn now stands is a modern Travel Lodge, where visitors have been known to ask to spend the night in the room in which the king slept. ​

Two of the images you see here are of the inn as Richard would have seen it. The first is 'Richards room' taken from the nineteenth century notebook in which the above mentioned plans were found, the second, an 1850 representation of the Blue Boar, and the last standing on the site of the original site is the new hotel.

The architectures gone downhill a bit don't you think?