If ever you find yourself in rural Devon, somewhere roughly at the midpoint between where Exmoor ends and Dartmoor begins, cleave a path to Coldridge, a tiny village at the very top of a boggy hill. 

There is no quaint country store, no off the beaten track Michelin-starred pub or local art gallery; just a few thatched cottages and bungalows. Why go out of your way to make the journey here? For the chance to step inside the village’s pearl of a 15th century church, the spire of which you can just see peeking out of the mist as you make your way up to the village on a grey winter’s morning. You might want to go soon; Coldridge has just been revealed to be the site of a historical mystery that would rival the sort found in a Dan Brown novel, and it could see this small Devon enclave become a hotspot for history buffs. 

If you didn’t catch the remarkable story of the Princes in the Tower this week, let me bring you up to speed. More than five centuries ago, two young princes were supposedly murdered by their uncle, Richard III; he declared them illegitimate, killed them and took the throne. Now, it seems he may have been innocent. 

Researchers led by Phillippa Langley, whose team discovered the remains of the last of the Plantagenet kings under a Leicester car park, claim to have uncovered evidence that one of the boys (Edward, the elder of the two), may not have been killed. Rather, he may have been allowed to live under an alias on land owned by his half brother in a remote part of Devon as part of a deal struck between his mother and the King and later with Henry Tudor. 

It’s a story that people in Coldridge have known of for some time, but until recently, that’s all it was – a story, albeit a good one. Now, thanks to clues that have been pored over for the past five years by one dedicated villager and a team of experts around the world, it seems the story may have merit after all. A man called John Evans, who managed the deer park behind the church and whose tomb lies inside it, may in fact have been the lost boy who for two and a half months in 1483 was King Edward V of England. 

It would be easy to assume that the person behind this extraordinary discovery might be a sort of Indiana Jones type with a hat and an archaeologist’s brush, or a Harvard professor of the likes of Robert Langdon in the Da Vinci Code. The man behind these latest discoveries is John Dike, a grandfather and retired electrical engineer who has lived in Coldridge for 22 years, has a passion for history and a keen eye for a clue. He was writing a book about the history of the village five years ago when he began to wonder more seriously about some of the unusual features in the church. “It became obvious that there were things which shouldn’t have been there,” explains Dike, showing me around on a dismal December day.

He began researching and was soon contacted by Langley, who had formed the Missing Princes Project. “There’s somebody in Texas, there are two or three in Devon, someone in Gloucestershire,” says Dike, who at 79 seems to have become the project’s man on the ground in Coldridge, where locals are tickled by the idea the findings could put their village on the map. “It’s caused a lot of excitement,” says Chris Allard, 70, who lives a stone’s throw from the church and rather likes the idea of a steady stream of tourists. “We’ve got no pubs or shops or anything so it’s quite nice to see some people.”

“I should open a tea shack,” jokes neighbour Rob Bonsor.

Dike takes me through the team’s discoveries, at pains to stress that this has been a joint effort. On one window in the chantry, which was built by John Evans in 1511, is a picture of Edward V himself, the missing prince. Below him, a man with a disfigured face gazes up at him. Above his head floats a large crown with what is believed to be the Yorkist symbol of the Falcon and Fetterlock in the centre of the crown, and an ermine lining dotted with pictures of 41 tiny deer. “This was made in 1511, take 41 off that and it takes you back to 1470 which is the birth of Edward V. Another little message.” 

There are only two other glass portraits of Edward – one in Worcestershire, the other in Canterbury Cathedral. Dike discovered that over 100 years ago, a Devon historian called Beatrix Cresswell noted the unlikely presence of the stained glass depiction. “[She] said this is a place that’s isolated and it’s very small, how does it justify a church this size? And it’s a most unusual place to find one of the only portraits of Edward V.

“That made me think oh well it’s not just me wondering what’s going on.” 

He started digging, poring over the patent rolls of Richard III and spending hours looking in every crevice of the church, realising there were Rose of York motifs on the floor tiles, the Yorkist emblems on the wooden roof (the Sunne in Splendour, the symbol of Edward’s father, Edward IV), and tiny carvings of a Tudor woman with a long tongue (possibly a reference to Henry Tudor’s mother Margaret Beaufort) hidden in among the carvings on a large screen that splits the church in two. Things like the screen, it’s so detailed that you could look all day long and you might miss things, says Dike, who lives just down the hill with his wife Jo.  

One of the most exciting discoveries, he says, came while examining the rolls. “In 1484, on March 1, the mother of the princes and her daughters were in sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, hiding from Richard III in fear of their lives.

“Richard III said I will find husbands for your daughters, you have nothing to worry about, come back to court, and within two days of that, I find that he sent someone called Robert Markenfield here.” 

Markenfield was sent on an unknown mission from Yorkshire. Some time afterwards, a man called John Evans arrived and was granted the titles Lord of the Manor and ‘Parker’ of the deer park behind the church. No record has yet been found of Evans’ life before he arrived in Devon. “That was a little bit of a lightbulb moment.” 

Another was noticing a scar carved on the face of John Evans’ tomb. “I hadn’t really looked at it in that way before, but we were looking for some clue […] I was sat in front of the computer comparing images. I’d taken another photograph of the face and I was looking at it and I saw a similarity between the faces,” says Dike, pointing to the disfigured man in the stained glass window, gazing up at Edward V.