This is Leicestershire --Here are a few more musings on Richard's monument-to-be.
I was just wondering if there would be any possibility of obtaining a sufficiently-sized slab of Leicestershire's glorious Swithland Slate.
I know that the famous quarries are now disused and reverting to nature, but the material would be so appropriate for his monument.
It was much used in the 18th and 19th centuries, not only for a superior roofing material, but also for thousands of beautifully-engraved monuments in the city and numerous Leicestershire churchyards.
I even seem to remember a story my mother told me of a Leicestershire saying: "You can pay for your funeral by selling your grandmother's gravestone", so highly was Swithland slate prized!
It was, of course, used to roof the vast St Pancras Hotel at the entrance to St Pancras Station, so next time your readers are exiting from there, just look up and think of Leicestershire!
Richard's slab could be engraved with an image of Richard, perhaps in battle armour wearing his lost crown, or image and legend could be inlaid in the slate in latten or steel. Memorials such as this were common in medieval times and although many were destroyed in the Reformation we still have more than 10,000 in existence in England, (more than the rest of Europe put together).
I notice that there are Victorian versions around the cathedral floors.
The details of Richard's birth, death and so on could be carved or inlaid around the border, perhaps interspersed with Leicester's quatrefoil, regnant (an abstracted form of rose) and Richard's white rose of York. Richard's image could be resting his feet on a white boar.
The memorial, whatever form it finally takes, must hold the attention of the visitor and I feel the design presented by The Richard III Society is rather bland as well as being impractical for such a small building.
I think that this will be the only chance the city will have to receive the body of a king, although there are stories about Shakespeare's King Lear being buried in the city near to the Soar.
Leicester's only other royal, Queen Jane, regnant, of Bradgate Park fame, who is now generally accepted to be in the royal line, is buried somewhere in the chapel at The Tower of London.
I have taken a photo of one of my brass rubbings from about the time of Bosworth to give some idea of the image which could be used on the stone.
Looking at the cathedral website on details for the design brief, I notice they have included photographs of royal ledger stones already in existence.
Perhaps the most famous one, which they have not included, is the black marble one in St George's Chapel at Windsor which is laid over the graves of King Henry VIII, his queen, Jane Seymour, and King Charles I, reunited with his severed head, as well as a child of Queen Anne, (all in the same grave!)
Leicester will obviously be making sure that Richard III will be interred in a much more fitting way!
Robert Parker, Wolverhampton. Reported by This is 2 hours ago.