author

Richard Brooke

1791–1861

A Liverpool solicitor with a passion for the past, this 19th-century antiquary spent much of his life tracing old battlefields and testing legend against the landscape itself. His books helped turn local history and archaeology into vivid, on-the-ground storytelling.

1 Audiobook

Visits to Fields of Battle, in England, of the Fifteenth Century

Visits to Fields of Battle, in England, of the Fifteenth Century

by Richard Brooke

About the author

Born in Liverpool in 1791, Richard Brooke worked as a solicitor, but much of his energy went into the history and antiquities of Cheshire and the English battlefields of the Wars of the Roses. He became especially interested in visiting the actual sites of famous conflicts and comparing what he saw there with chronicles, local traditions, and surviving remains.

His best-known works grew from that hands-on approach. In 1825 he published a study of the Battle of Stoke Field, and later gathered further research in Visits to Fields of Battle in England in the Fifteenth Century (1857). His writing ranged beyond battle history into archaeology, family history, church history, and even natural history.

Brooke was also active in learned societies, including the Society of Antiquaries and the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, where he read a number of papers. He died in 1861, leaving behind work that reflects a curious, methodical mind and an early taste for exploring history directly in the field.