What is more straightforwardly documented is that Langley read Ashdown-Hill’s published research and found it persuasive. She began working with him and with the historian Annette Carson, who had reached independent conclusions pointing to the car park site. Together, they formed the Looking for Richard project, launched in February 2009, with the aim of locating and reburying the king’s remains.
The project approached the University of Leicester to conduct the archaeological work. Leicester City Council, which owned the car park, agreed to allow the excavation. A ground-penetrating radar survey conducted in August 2011 produced inconclusive results — the accumulated urban debris made the subsurface difficult to read — but did not rule out the presence of buried structures.
The dig was scheduled for August 2012. The archaeologist leading the excavation, Richard Buckley of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services, later recalled that he had put the odds of finding the church itself at roughly even — the documentary research was strong enough to make that plausible — but the odds of finding Richard’s actual grave at something like nine to one against.
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## The First Morning
The dig began on August 25, 2012. The archaeology team opened two trenches in the car park, guided by the historical documentary research and the radar survey. Almost immediately, they began finding medieval remains: tiles, architectural fragments, evidence of the friary’s stone floors.
About four hours into the dig, two parallel leg bones appeared at the base of the first trench, about 1.5 meters below the surface. The bones were in a position consistent with an in-situ burial — they had not been disturbed by later construction. The presence of medieval remains in the former friary’s choir position was consistent with the historical records.