[2][3] Ashdown-Hill taught languages including English, French, Spanish, Italian and modern Greek and also Classical civilisation in the UK, in Tunisia, in Spain and in Turkey, but eventually gave up teaching to focus on his historical research.

He spent a year tracing an all-female line of descent from Richard III's eldest sister, Anne, to Joy Ibsen, a woman living in Canada.

[6] In August 2012, after three years of work persuading the authorities in Leicester, the search for the lost remains of Richard III began with the excavation of the Social Services Department car park.

On the first day of the dig (25 August 2012) bones which proved to be those of Richard III were found in the area predicted by Ashdown-Hill and Langley and several earlier researchers, such as David Baldwin.

[7][8] Subsequent DNA research and analysis by Turi King and her colleagues[9] proved that the mtDNA of the bones matched the sequence from Richard III's mother's female descendants that Ashdown-Hill had identified in 2004.