A seven-year search has identified the "lost" site of an English civil war battlefield, solving one of the conflict's enduring mysteries. The discovery shows the Battle of Stow in Gloucestershire was fought nearly a mile from where Historic England, the heritage watchdog responsible for protecting battlefield sites, believed the fighting took place. It follows five separate archaeological surveys by the Battlefields Trust charity and the re-examination of contemporary accounts of the struggle between Roundheads and Cavaliers. The trust had long suspected that a stone monument put up by locals in 2002 to commemorate the battle near the Cotswold town of Stow-on-the-Wold was in the wrong place because of the lack of civil war relics at the site. Its latest survey by archaeologists and metal detectorists, details of which have just been released, unearthed dozens of 17th century musket balls and powder caps from infantry and cavalry weapons in farmland half a mile from the town, proving the battle was not fought at the site registered by Historic England, says the trust. Historic England is now facing calls to change its battlefield register to take account of the findings. Trust research co-ordinator Simon Marsh said: "We've told them this is where we think the battle was fought based on the evidence we're providing. We recognise it's a big change to the current registration. If we are in the business of protecting these sites, it's important the change is done soon." The fighting, in March 1646, was the last major battle of the first civil war between Charles I and parliament. Roundhead forces caught up with the king's last remaining army as it tried to link up with Charles 30 miles away in Oxford. The hour-long battle ended with the outnumbered royalist infantry retreating into the centre of Stow where the fighting continued. One of the main streets "ran red with royalist blood", according to local legend, before their commander, Lord Jacob Astley, was forced to surrender in the market square. Charles realised that the end was in sight and gave himself up soon afterwards to the Scottish army at Newark, Nottinghamshire, in May 1646. It is not the first time Britain's battlefield maps have been redrawn. In 2016, a memorial stone at Battle Abbey in East Sussex marking the spot where King Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 was moved 20ft after experts decided it was in the wrong place. Seven years earlier, the "official" site of the 1485 Battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire was relocated after archaeologists found medieval weapons in fields two miles away. Since the 18th century, the Battle of Stow was thought to have been fought at a ridge known as Horsington Hill, about a mile and a half north-west of the town. But in recent years historians have questioned this theory. They argued the monument site is too small for two armies fighting a pitched battle and too far from Stow for the retreating royalists to have reached it without being cut down by Roundhead cavalry. Between 2015 and 2022, the Battlefields Trust obtained permission to search fields on both sides of what is now the A424 around a nearby farm as well as the "official" site at Horsington Hill. The oldest object recovered during the latest survey of Horsington Hill was a badly worn ha'penny dating from the 1770s. Mr Marsh added: "We were essentially looking for lead shot near the monument but we didn't find anything. All the evidence suggests the battle took place at a different location about a mile away." Historic England said: "We have received an application requesting an amendment to the registered battlefield and are in the early stages of considering the information that has been submitted."