Actor fights to save Tewkesbury site

The actor Robert Hardy is making a last-minute appeal to stop houses being built on one of Britain's most famous battlefields.

Mr Hardy CBE,who is an authority on medieval history, is backing a campaign by the Battlefields Trust to halt planned development on part of Tewkesbury battlefield in Gloucestershire, site of a 15th-century clash during the Wars of the Roses. English Heritage says the houses would seriously affect the appearance of the battlefield, where the victorious House of York executed King Henry VI.

Mr Hardy, in Swindon for a Battlefields Trust conference, said: "I will suggest a direct approach by fax, a last-minute appeal to the borough council to think again, or at the very least to postpone its final decision. If it can be of any help, I will certainly do it personally as well as through the Battlefields Trust."