Wider World · c. AD 987–1052 · Westminster Abbey, London, London, United Kingdom
1,000-year-old skeleton in Roman coffin at Westminster Abbey may be an Anglo-Saxon abbot
Radiocarbon dating places the man's remains between AD 987 and 1052, centuries after the stone coffin was carved for a wealthy Roman Briton.
Westminster Abbey, London, United Kingdom A skeleton found inside a Roman stone coffin at Westminster Abbey in London belongs to a man who died around AD 1000. A new study suggests he was one of the abbey's Anglo-Saxon abbots.
Warwick Rodwell, Consultant Archaeologist at Westminster Abbey, published the study this month in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association. It combines archaeological work, scientific analysis and historical records. His most likely candidate is Ælfwig, Abbot of Westminster from 993 until around 1020. The other is Ælfwig's successor, Wulnoth, who died in 1049.
Both men led Westminster when it was a Benedictine monastery, long before the present Gothic abbey was built. Both are thought to have been buried there. Their original graves have not been identified.
A Roman coffin given a Christian cross
The sarcophagus is much older than its occupant. It is made of limestone quarried in what is now Oxfordshire and is just over two metres long. A Latin inscription commemorates Valerius Amandinus, who lived in Britain in the later Roman period.
His two sons, Valerius Superventor and Valerius Marcellus, commissioned it in his memory. The carved lettering and decorated panels suggest a wealthy family. The coffin was probably first displayed in a mausoleum.
In the late Anglo-Saxon period it was reused for a Christian burial. A large Latin cross with splayed arms and a leafy base was carved along almost the full length of the lid. Its style dates to around the 10th or 11th century. Rodwell confirmed that the lid is the Roman original, recarved.
The coffin was probably set into the Anglo-Saxon church with its lid level with the floor. Visitors would have seen the cross. The Roman inscription stayed hidden below ground.
Cleaning the interior revealed a rectangular outline of white lime residue on the floor. Rodwell concludes that it marks a wooden coffin placed inside the stone one. The body had apparently been covered in lime. The timber has completely decayed.
Found twice, lost, then dated
The coffin is usually said to have been found in 1869, but Rodwell shows it turned up earlier. On Easter Monday 1820, workmen digging on the north side of the abbey broke the lid into six pieces. They apparently disturbed the bones, perhaps while searching for valuables. The lid was repaired and the coffin reburied.
Workers found it again in November 1869 while clearing the abbey's North Green. The artist George Scharf drew the skeleton. The scientist Thomas Henry Huxley was among those who examined it. They judged it a young man of probably no more than 30, about 5 feet 7 inches tall.
In 1873 the architect George Gilbert Scott reported the skeleton lost, and scholars accepted this for more than a century. In 2016 the coffin went to a conservation studio before going on display. Pre-Construct Archaeology lifted the lid and found the skeleton still inside, about 90% complete.
James Langthorne, a specialist in human remains, found a man aged 35 to 49 and about 1.75 metres (5 feet 9 inches) tall. He had osteoarthritis in many joints, including his spine, shoulders and wrist. He also had two healed rib fractures and an infection in the lower leg. He may have had gout.
His surviving teeth had very little decay, though they carried deposits of dental calculus. None of this shows how he died.
The Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre carried out radiocarbon dating, which measures the decay of carbon in the bones. It placed the remains between AD 987 and 1052, with 95.4% probability. That is roughly six or seven centuries after the sarcophagus was made.
“We have two viable contenders for the occupant of the sarcophagus. We do not know the date of birth of either. But either would fit equally well if we assume the Abbot was in his early twenties when the appointment was made and close to fifty when he died. The fact Aelfwig was already a monk of Westminster might favour him.”
Warwick Rodwell, Consultant Archaeologist at Westminster Abbey
Rodwell thinks the burial first lay in a prominent place, probably in the eastern part of the Anglo-Saxon church. Henry III began rebuilding the abbey in the 1240s. Rodwell argues that the builders then moved the coffin to the courtyard of the new sacristy, probably around 1258.
Excavations of the former sacristy site, completed in 2025 ahead of the new King Charles III Sacristy, helped reconstruct the burial's medieval setting. The man's identity cannot yet be established with certainty. The sarcophagus is now on display in the abbey's Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries.
Sources (1)
- Mysterious Skeleton at Westminster Abbey May Belong to Medieval Abbot (Medievalists.net)
Paper: Warwick Rodwell, "Westminster Abbey's Roman Sarcophagus and its Afterlife", Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 2026.
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