When Lord Fairfax, the Parliamentary commander, was informed that the Royalist army was marching in the direction of Bradford, he made the decision to assemble his army of 7,500 men, leave the unfortified city of Bradford, and confront the Royalists in the open country. On 30 June, the two armies met on the Old Roman Road at Adwalton. In their respective histories of the battle, each side claimed that the other side was drawn up and positioned when they arrived. As so, it seems that neither side chose the location leading to an encounter battle which occurred where the two armies by chance happened to meet.
