Secret tomb discovered under London museum contains archbishops of Canterbury
A London museum closed up shop last year to do a little renovating when they made a grisly and historic discovery.
"The site manager Craig rang up and said, 'You better come quickly,' and I felt it would be alarming news. I thought something bad had happened," Christopher Woodward, director of London's Garden Museum, told As It Happens host Carol Off.
Workers had been removing concrete slabs in order to improve accessibility at the museum. It sits on a site that used to house the former St. Mary-at-Lambeth Church
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"He was standing in the chancel of what is a medieval church, pointing to a hole in the floor and, he said, 'Look down there,'" Woodward said.
So Woodward got down on his belly and stuck his head through the opening in the floor and peered down a flight of old stairs into the darkness.
"And in darkness was a golden crown placed on top of a coffin," he said.
Once his eyes adjusted, he saw there were more coffins, maybe 20 or 30 of them all together.
"They're piled up at the back — like left luggage at a railway station," he said.
The museum brought in a team of archeologists, who have been using camera equipment to get a closer look at the findings from a distance. It's not safe to go down and poke around, Woodward said.
"What also happens over time is ... that they begin to expand, the coffins, because people's bodies — and some people have been buried there, we think, for over 400 years — basically become a kind of fluid, which expands," he said. "So you don't want to touch these coffins because if they burst you would be covered from head to foot in what archeologists like calling 'coffin liquor.'"
They believe there may be five archbishops of Canterbury buried in the tomb.
So far, they have discovered name plates on four coffins. The name plates indicate these coffins belong to John Bettesworth, Dean of Arches, Archbishop John Moore and his wife Catherine, and perhaps most famous, Archbishop Richard Bancroft, who played a major role in production of the King James Bible.
"What I like about that is it's those words that ring out from pulpits across the world every Sunday," Woodworth said.
The building is located next to Lambeth Palace, the archbishop of Canterbury's London residence.
The museum plans to gather as much information as they can about the findings, so they can make a documentary film and a small exhibition.
"It gives you an incredible sense of a very precious cargo in your hold. And these people have been dead for a very long time, but you're suddenly confronted by the presence of them," Woodward said,
"London is a historic city but it's changing so quickly ... so it's good to feel that heritage has reappeared from beneath our feet and something we didn't know existed is there."
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The Garden Museum is also going to install a small window so visitors can see the dark stairwell leading down into the crypt.
As for the coffins, they're going to leave them exactly where they found them.
"That's where they expected to be. They're safe there. They've been there for hundreds of years."
With files from Associated Press