We Brits have a thing about our kings being found in car parks. Richard III was found under one in Leicester, while theories are currently being discussed that King Alfred currently lies under another one in Winchester. In Reading, talk is all about King Henry I, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, who was buried in the town’s abbey in 1136. The abbey has since fallen into ruin and Henry’s remains have never been found, despite academics, press and others attempting to pinpoint its possible location. However in the early nineteenth century workers claimed to have found the royal sarcophagus, right where it was thought to have been buried.
Reading Abbey was founded in 1121, with construction taking many years. It was a huge network of buildings and private chambers, but was dissolved by Henry’s descendant, Henry VIII in the mid-1500s. The building fell into disrepair, parts of it were used to build structures elsewhere and locals ransacked what was left for their own homes. The later Tudors and early Stuarts enjoyed what was left of the abbey lodgings as a royal palace and convenient stabling when they were visiting the town. There was more chaos on the site however when the abbey was turned into a battlefield when Reading was under attack in the seventeenth-century Civil War. By 1800, there were no floors, tiles, stained windows or structurally complete walls and the building had been left open to the elements for more than three hundred years.
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| Remains of Reading Abbey's Church |
With all these disturbances, it seemed that Henry I’s grave, which had been solemnly interred under the tiles of the abbey’s church altar in 1136, was lost forever, along with those of other medieval royals buried there. But on 24 November 1816 workmen dug into the earth to make a footpath through the site and hit a slab of stone. The panel, they recorded, was ‘not three feet below the surface’, and formed the shape of a coffin, or sarcophagus. It was broken into two large pieces, with only the bottom of it surviving. What struck the men was the elaborate carving and depiction of columns on the panel, leading them to believe that the sarcophagus had been used for the burial of someone very significant. The stone slab was seven feet long and seven and a half inches thick. Iron rings had been attached, that would have once helped to lower a body into the ground.
The devastating news was, that no other fragments of the coffin were ever found, nor were there any remains of the person who had been buried within. The discovery of the object so near to Henry’s burial place – the choir of the abbey church – raised hopes, but they were soon dashed. It may have held a royal body, but they were not the first to discover it. In fact the evidence points to the sarcophagus being abandoned after having been dug up in a previous century. The workmen noted the shallow amount of soil found over the stone, suggesting that it had been left at ground level with earth gradually covering it over the centuries. There was obviously evidence of movement at the site, likely historical raids on wealthy burials for any grave goods they might contain. A lead coffin had previously been found in 1785, but there was never any evidence that this was Henry’s.
We can imagine the excitement as workmen unearthed this exciting find, and immediately hoped they’d found the long-lost tomb of Henry I. The jury's out as to whether the king's remains are still in the soil of the abbey grounds somewhere. Due to the significant building that has been carried out on the site (a school, church and Reading Gaol occupy parts of Reading Abbey's ground), Henry's tomb may still lie buried. However it's equally likely that the tomb was ransacked by post-Reformation residents looking for grave goods, the broken sarcophagus discarded on the ground afterwards. A mystery that the Georgians thought they’d solved minutes after their metal shovel pinged into barely covered stone is still a mystery today. Did the Georgians find Henry’s tomb? Maybe a bit of it, but as far as we know the abbey ruins haven’t given up all of their secrets yet.
You might also like: Don't Be Fooled, Reading Abbey is a Big Deal, Reading's Lost King: Henry I, and Meet the Residents of Fifteenth Century Reading.
Find out more about the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries in my book Power Couples of the Renaissance. It features relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period and power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website.
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Source:
Archaeologia, Society of Antiquaries, London, Volume 18
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