Spanish dig closes in on burial site of Irish lord Red Hugh O'Donnell
Valladolid archaeologists find human skull in chapel where Christopher Columbus was also buried
Somewhere beneath a street in north-west Spain – probably between a bank branch and a budget clothes shop – lies the ruined chapel where an eight-toed rebel Irish lord was buried after his final, fatal mission 418 years ago.
Red Hugh O’Donnell, who escaped captivity and led a rebellion that almost expelled the Tudor English forces from Ireland, fled to Spain after the Battle of Kinsale in 1602 when the rebels tried to team up with a beleaguered Spanish expeditionary force.
He came to the country to lobby for a fresh Spanish invasion
