Hole in museum floor reveals stairs to tomb
Archibishops’ coffins from 1600s found
LONDON• It is a perfect Easter story except, unlike Jesus’s empty tomb after the Resurrection, this tomb is crammed with the remains of former Archbishops of Canterbury.
Last year, during the refurbishment of the Garden Museum, which is housed in a deconsecrated medieval parish church next to Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’ s official London residence, builders made the discovery of a lifetime: a cache of 30 lead coffins that had lain undisturbed for centuries.
Closer inspection revealed metal plates bearing the names of five former Archbishops of Canterbury, going back to the early 1600s.
Building site managers Karl Patten and Craig Dick made the find by chance, as the former chancel at St. Mary-at-Lambeth was being converted into an exhibition space. Stripping some stone to even out the precarious flooring and enable disabled access to the old altar, they accidentally cut a 15- centimetre diameter hole in the floor and noticed a hidden chamber beneath.
They dropped a mobile phone attached to a stick into the void. What they filmed astonished them — a hidden stairway leading to a bricklined vault. Inside, piled on top of each other, were the coffins. On top of one rested an archbishop’s red and gold mitre. Two had nameplates — one for Richard Bancroft ( in office from 1604 to 1610) and one for John Moore ( in office, 1783- 1805), whose wife, Catherine Moore, also had a coffin plate. Also identified from a coffin plate was Dean of Arches John Bettesworth (who lived from 1677 to 1751), the judge who sits at the ecclesiastical court of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
St. Mary-at-Lambeth’s records have since revealed that a further three archbishops were probably buried in the vault: Frederick Cornwallis (in office from 1768 to 1783), Matthew Hutton ( 1757-1758) and Thomas Tenison ( 16951715). A sixth, Thomas Secker ( 1758-1768), had his viscera buried in a canister in the churchyard.
“It was amazing seeing the coffins,” says Patten. “We’ve come across lots of bones on this job. But we knew this was different when we saw the archbishop’s crown.”
Details of the find were kept secret for months until Easter Day to make the vault safe ahead of the museum’s grand reopening next month. As the tomb had been undisturbed for centuries, there was a fear the roof may have been unstable.
A square manhole has now been set into the chancel floor, with a glazed panel that will offer a glimpse of the steps down to the vault. The coffins — which have been left exactly where they were discovered, undisturbed — will be out of bounds, for good reason. Most lead sarcophagi contain dry remains, but some bodies decompose into a viscous black liquid known as “coffin liquor.” Should the ancient casings crack, it will spray forth.
The jumbled pile of archbishops’ coffins is a spinetingling sight — one that as t ounded Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum when he first heard of the discovery.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” he says. “I knew there had been 20,000 bodies buried in the churchyard. But I thought the burial places had been cleared from the nave and aisles, and the vaults under the church had been filled with earth.”
Woodward was not alone in this. St. Mary’s crucial role in the history of Lambeth Palace’s most prestigious residents had been lost over time. It was originally an Anglo- Saxon church, built in 1062. Lambeth Palace was built later, in the 13th century. As the palace grew in importance, St. Mary’s was overshadowed, literally and metaphorically.
There were records of archbishops being buried in the church, from the 17th to the 19th centuries. But it was thought their coffins had been swept away in 1851, when the ancient church was almost entirely rebuilt, except for its tower. Historians, Woodward included, believed the vaults had been filled in. And so they had been, except for the one beneath the holy altar, the most important spot in the building.
Woodward e mployed archeologists, who photographed the coffin plates and researched burial records. Finally, last month, they came up with their staggering conclusions. Of the identified coffins, the most important belongs to Bancroft, the chief overseer of the publication of the King James Bible. Production began in 1604 and the Bible was finally published in 1611, the year after Bancroft’s death. To find his coffin after all these centuries is astonishing.
“Archbishop Bancroft was chosen by King James I to put together a new English translation of the Bible,” says Woodward. “He didn’t write it, of course, but he made it happen, and the words he forced into print still ring out across a thousand churchyards every Sunday morning. It feels very precious to have his coffin as cargo in our hold.”
Deconsecrated in 1972, St. Mary’s pews and bells were transplanted to churches and houses across the country. It was even due to be demolished before becoming the Museum of Garden History (later renamed the Garden Museum) in 1977.