The “lost” site of a Civil War battle, where the Royalists inflicted their biggest defeat on the Parliamentarians, has been added to English Heritage’s register of battlefields following new research.
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.