The horse flies know when I’m coming. They lay in wait to dive bomb me like Nazi Stukas with oily spark plugs, neeeeeeooowwwaaam, spiralling downwards from the deep azure sky to plant themselves around my collar line, my arms, my legs or any bit that’s exposed that will afford them a good meal. There are hardly any rose blooms left to be seen, that’s why I posted the picture of the roses, climbing the lavender tree at the side of my French retreat. It doesn’t matter though, as I can tell whether I have found Rosa Spinosissima, the legendary Towton Rose, just by looking at the stems and the heps (hips). For those of you that have not read my previous blogs, I am on a quest to find the legendary Towton Rose. The one that is meant to only grow in places where the blood of those fallen in battle has enriched the soil.
I am beginning to wonder whether the Rosa Mundis we found from the battle site, might be the ones that ancient records refer to, and have to keep re-visiting them to verify descriptions. Certainly sweet smelling roses like the Rosa Mundi were highly prized in the late medieval and Tudor periods.
Shakespeare wrote:
O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their maskèd buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, my verse distills your truth.
The canker blooms he refers to are the common dog rose of the hedgerow, which have little or no scent, and are therefore of little merit. I have been researching this and scented roses were valued because their petals were used to make rosewater and scattered at special occasions, including funerals, to emit a more pleasant odour than was usually present around the unwashed bodies of the days of yore.
So, that could potentially be another reason why the heavenly scented Rosa Mundis were found around the area, we know there was a garden, with a viewing mound if you please, at the site of Lead church and as I’ve said before there was a chantry in the vicinity of Towton Hall.
According to the expert though, wild Rosa spinosissima is not without a pleasant scent, so I can see these rose petals being put to good use in those days.
All of this is as nothing to the horse flies who torment me endlessly as I wearily trudge the ancient pathways. I shall have to include a fly whisk as part of my accoutrements, as I continue this noble quest.

Is it the Scandinavians that thrash themselves with birch twigs after taking a sauna? It’s meant to have some beneficial effect. Well, I have discovered the Anglo-Saxon version just by hunting for the ever elusive Towton Rose. Just walk through the hedgerows and undergrowth, wearing shorts (pith helmet optional) and you will get stung by so many nettles that you will be on a high all day. I’ve looked it up on the Internet and it really does increase the blood circulation and maybe that’s why I am not entirely exhausted after trudging mile after mile in the early hours of the morning. (There were also some very other dodgy posts on the Internet about nettles so don’t go there unless you’re morbidly curious).
One newspaper recently called my escapades an Indiana Jones style quest. I don’t recall Indie getting stung by nettles and clumsily slipping down river banks into claggy mud.
Peter Boyd, the rose expert, had directed me to the Castle Hill Wood area, as early records indicated that Rosa spinosissima was evident there. This meant crossing and re-crossing Cock Beck to get at the limestone slopes that favour the rose. I traversed the slopes scanning the terrain with my field glasses for any likely looking clumps. I clambered up and down the inclines, from Castle Hill right up to the lynchets, to examine every likely looking thicket but on closer inspection they turned out to be Rosa arvensis, Prunus spinossa, blackthorn or thistle. So, not a thing. Not anything that came close. I did find an old horse shoe on the edge of Castle Hill Woods though. That’s where the Lancastrians hid their cavalry for a surprise attack on the Yorkist flank during the Battle of Towton but I doubt that the horseshoe dates from then. I’ll show it to our resident archeologist though, just in case.
So, the search continues. I may be nettle stung, but not deterred.
Hope you liked the title of this piece. It’s from my favourite poem of all times from Christopher Marlowe – the poem I used to good effect in the novel and the trailer for The Shepherd Lord.

“How will I recognise you” I asked anxiously over the phone. I never like rendezvous’ at train stations – there is always margin for error and parking at the short stay car parks is fine, if the trains turn up on time, but they’re invariably late.
“Well people tell me I look rather like Charles Darwin and, during the festive season, small children mistake me for Father Christmas” bellowed the voice on the other end of the line. I was talking to Peter Boyd, the worldwide expert on Rosa spinosissima, lecturer on the great Charles Darwin and environmental archaeologist for King Henry VIII’s flagship, the Marie Rose.
When I met Peter on a grisling damp morning at Manchester Piccadilly train station, he was right. He was instantly recognisable amongst the regular Friday morning commuters. We were soon whizzing our way over the Pennines in my 4 x 4, heading for Towton Dale, chatting away like old acquaintances. The sun greeted us as soon as we left Manchester’s drizzle and crossed the border into God’s Broad Acres. Ideal conditions for hunting for the elusive Towton Rose, the wild Rosa spinosissima.
At the battlefield, we were met by Towton Battlefield Society Secretary, Graham Darbyshire, our best field man on the terrain twixt Saxton and Towton. “A rose between two thorns” exclaimed Peter as I introduced him to Graham “only that phrase is incorrect as a rose does not have thorns – it has prickles”. He then demonstrated the difference by showing us the “woody” thorn on a blackthorn in the hedgerow, already laden with dusky sloes, and the “prickle” of a rose which is not part of the main stem but is an outgrowth of the epidermis. Well, that was a new one on me. We were going to learn a lot that day.
After a brief stop at Dacres Cross, to examine a Rosa spinosissima cultivar that someone had planted there, we turned our attention to the search for the real thing – the wild variety.
Ancient records mention that the rose grew in abundance in a dry valley. It was not immediately obvious where this was, but Graham was able to deduce the exact spot from his ordnance survey, a tiny contour betraying the smallest of dry valleys. I must admit, I would probably have overlooked this, being more familiar with the spectacular dry valleys in the Yorkshire Dales but if this was where the legendary rose grew, it would have special significance for me.
We had found our valley alright, bang in the middle of Bloody Meadow, but also bang in the middle of the field was a great big Limousin bull, eyeing us malevolently. Graham and I exchanged nervous glances but Peter, true British eccentric that he is, waved his rolled umbrella at the beast and strolled nonchalantly past it, bent on finding the rose. This chap said I was eccentric and there he was, wearing his old school tie, bewhiskered like old Father Christmas and carrying a rolled umbrella whilst pootling past a 2 ton bull. I was mightily impressed.
He was pleased with the terrain, proclaiming it ideal conditions for the rose to flourish in, and 100% sure that we had found the right spot, described by the antiquarians. The search for the rose was not going to be easy though and we combed all the slopes, right down to the meandering Cock Beck, where Peter poked and prodded the lush vegetation with his brolly.
“Ooh” he exclaimed “Oh, my word!” I turned sharply at this, only just preventing myself from falling in the brook. Had he actually found the rose?
No, he hadn’t. What he had seen was a damselfly, skitting around the himalayan balsam and bullrushes, its blue, bejewelled body spangling brilliantly in the bright July sunlight.
We searched long and hard that day but did not find the rose. Graham and I were given lessons on distinguishing the field rose from the dog rose by this great man. In the field rose, Rosa arvensis, the pistil stands out really proud from the stamens whereas in the dog rose, Rosa canina, they are not as nearly distinctive.
But Peter agrees with me the rose is out there somewhere, on the slopes of the battlefield. As he puts it “It has got to have survived somewhere, despite the souvenir hunters and the farmers attempts to grub it up. It may just survive as a plain white rose, all the best red and white species having being collected. If you shoot all the elephants with big tusks, then all you can breed from then on, is elephants with small tusks.”
So, on this planet, where we are losing rare species every other day, it is imperative that we find this rose. I will keep on looking. Maybe when the grass dies down it will be easier to spot the purplish black heps (hips) in the autumn. Having met Peter, I know that he will be just as excited as me, when we eventually find it.