Matthew Morris
MATHEW MORRIS DIG SUPERVISIOR - UNCOVERING THE FIRST BONE ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE DIG
"We're initially encountering car park gravel, we're initially then underneath the car park gravel, Victorian garden soils and outhouse footings and things like that. Nothing looking too convincing that it's a medieval friary. Go a little bit deeper, and we get to, I mean, in many respects, we get to a point where we can't really safely go any deeper anyway. But at the same time, the digger bucket lifts up, and a fragment of bone appears underneath it that looks sort of proportionally, looks like it's going to be human."
MATHEW MORRIS, DIG SUPERVISOR - THE R IN THE CARPARK AND REFLECTIONS ABOUT PHILIPPA
"They've spotted the R in the car park when it was empty, and it was, I think it was more slightly a light joke at that particular point and the story obviously becomes a lot more significant once you actually find him almost underneath the R. For posterity, he was not under the R, it was the one next door! I mean, Philippa has always talked about her feelings. The way she presents stuff is always about her feelings, but then she also has evidence as well, and she had done her research as well. So, so you get both with her, basically, and that's fine ... It was the type of project that worked for everybody, after all."
PETE HOBSON, REINTERMENT PROJECT DIRECTOR - BEING TOLD BY DEAN VIVIAN FAULL THAT RICHARD III HAD BEEN FOUND
"And I walked into her office, and she said, "We've found Richard". And it took me a moment to work out who Richard was, and why he was missing, because we had an Archdeacon called Richard, and I thought I'd seen him recently!"
JO APPLEBY, OSTEOOLOGIST AT LEICESTER UNIVERSITY – REALISING SHE HAD UNCOVERED RICHARD III'S SKELETON
"So, I started looking a little to the side to see if that was it, and I realised that no, the spine did go to the side, but it went to the side in anatomical alignment, it was still, it was still articulated. And as I followed it round, I began to realise, okay, there's a, there's a curve in this spine. And that was the point where I thought, I think this is Richard. I'd already, when we started uncovering the upper cranium, that we weren't sure if it was part of the body, I'd noticed that there was an unusually square looking hole in the cheek. And I thought, well it's probably just some damage from the ground, but it was very strangely square hole that does look a bit suspicious, I wonder what that is. And that was the point where I put those two things together, and I thought, that square hole actually is genuinely an injury, isn't it."
RICHARD BUCKLEY, DIG DIRECTOR – BEING TOLD BY MATHEW MORRIS WHAT HAD BEEN DISCOVERED
"But then Mathew then whispered a bit slightly more assertedly. "Well, the skeletons got evidence for trauma to the skull and curvature of the spine". And for me, that was when it was... It was like an out of body experience, it was like things were now happening that I had no control over, and I just couldn't believe it, and I couldn't, I can't repeat what I said!
I jumped up and down! You know, nowadays, what's it called... That programme called Detectorists, where they talk about the dance that the detectorists do, where they find some gold. I think I did a bit more of a stamping, I think mine was, because I just couldn't believe it. You know, I really couldn't believe it. What are the odds then, of being successful? So anyway, that's what happened."
