Events

Battlefields Trust Online Talk: The Battle of Wakefield?

Tuesday 13th January 2026

A battle is its ground. Since the 1850's historians have been certain that they knew where the battle of Wakefield was fought, the date of the battle and it was one of the largest clashes of the Wars of the Roses.

New research reliant not on chronicle evidence, but on legal documents, manorial records and land charters written within weeks of the battle question everything we think we know that happened. Archive documents and landscape survey show the traditional battlefield site at Manygates, in Sandal, in December 1460 was dominated by a 4-acre fishpond.

The truth is, the battle of Wakefield as we understand it, like that battle of Towton, is an invention crafted in the 1470's. The truth of what happened at Wakefield has, at last, been discerned.

Paul L Dawson is a postgraduate of the University of Leeds, holding the degree of Master of Arts by Research. He is a professional archaeologist, internationally respected historian of the Napoleonic wars, horse man, musician and Unitarian Lay Minister. He has recently completed a groundbreaking biography of Richard duke of York and is working on a revisionary history of the first five years of Edward IVs reign. Using legal documents and unseen (at least by English researchers) letters and other documents housed in archives across Europe, Dawson hopes to bring new sources and a fresh perspective to the study of the Wars of the Roses.

 

 
 

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