'Lost' Civil War battlefield added to English Heritage register
The fighting took place at two separate battles, fought around ten days apart, over August and September 1644, near Lostwithiel, Cornwall.
The Royalists had tracked a heavily outnumbered Parliamentarian army to the town and gradually closed in on them. King Charles I himself was present during the campaign and is said to have slept in a hedge. Part of the fighting centred around the ruins of Restormel Castle.
The Parliamentarians had hoped that their navy would be able to navigate into the Fowey estuary to evacuate their troops, but unfavourable weather conditions prevented this. In the end, 6,000 men surrendered and the Parliamentarian leader, the Earl of Essex, was able to escape only after being taken off in a fishing boat.
The two locations are the first new battlefields to be added to English Heritage’s register since it was created in 1995. They take the number on there from 43 to 45....