Historical researcher Graham Phillips claims to have discovered the long-lost remains of King Alfred the Great buried under a car park in Winchester, ending a 13-year hunt. The finding is set to be revealed in a new episode of the British television series Weird Britain on Blaze TV this Wednesday (July 8).
Alfred's Historical Significance
Alfred the Great, who died in 899, is recognized as one of England's most important rulers, being the first king of a united England. His grave location has been a mystery for centuries. Phillips now asserts that the remains lie 20 yards from a stone slab marking the former burial site.
"Bizarrely, like Richard III, the bones are under a car park," Phillips said.
The Journey of Alfred's Bones
Alfred's bones were moved multiple times after his death. Initially buried in Winchester Cathedral, they were transferred to Hyde Abbey in 1110, where they were interred before the high altar alongside his wife and son. The abbey was demolished after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.
In 1866, during workhouse construction, antiquarian John Mellor excavated the site and believed he had found Alfred's bones, reburying them at St Bartholomew's Church. However, in 2013, carbon dating revealed those bones were over 200 years too young, prompting Phillips' investigation.
"Whoever's bones they were, they weren't Alfred's. So, I decided to discover what happened to them. The quest has taken me 13 years," Phillips explained.
New Evidence from Historical Records
Phillips found that a prison built in 1788 led to the relocation of bones. The site became a garden for the warden's house, and he believes the original bones were moved then. While searching Cambridge University archives, he discovered an 1800 article by historian Henry Howard, who documented prisoners unearthing bones during landscaping, including a map of the reburial location.
"Howard had written an article about Hyde Abbey published in Volume 13 of Archaeologia, the journal of the London Society of Antiquaries, in 1800. In it, he refers to prisoners employed to landscape the warden's new garden unearthing bones which were reburied nearby, even including a map," Phillips said.
The exact location is now under a car park, 20 yards from the stone slab marking Alfred's original grave. Winchester City Council had turned the Hyde Abbey site into a scenic garden, with slabs marking the graves of Alfred, his wife, and son.
