In search of Reading Abbey and Henry I’s tomb
Henry I was buried in his own abbey. The site of his tomb and monument was lost after the Dissolution, but Tim Tatton-Brown thinks he knows exactly where it is – beside a prison carpark
The abbey of Reading was dissolved by Henry viii in 1539, and the great church quarried for its stone. Today, after further demolition, landscaping and over-building, we have to imagine its glory from ruins, historical records, and antiquarian and archaeological researches. However, it was once one of the ten richest Benedictine houses in medieval England.
This wealth was entirely due to King Henry i (1100–35), who endowed the abbey with many important estates all over England. He founded it in 1121, beside the River Kennett near its entry into the Thames. Cluniac monks came to what was then a small town with Anglo-Saxon origins: eight from the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny itself in eastern France, then the largest and most important abbey in Europe, and others from Lewes Priory, East Sussex, the largest and oldest Cluniac Priory in England.
The monks arrived on June 18, and at once started to observe the Cluniac order – presumably in a temporary building. But very large new buildings were quickly being erected by a great labour force, using flints from the nearby Upper Chalk, and cut, squared stone carried down the Thames from quarries to the west in the Windrush valley beyond Burford. Ships were also bringing Caen stone up the Thames from Normandy for elaborate new carved work in the Romanesque style, a speciality of Cluniac monasteries. Within two years, the Prior of Lewes had been appointed the first abbot, and by 1125 Henry i had legally created a completely autonomous monastery in Reading in which he and his family would be buried.
An abbey mausoleum was a new development for the Norman kings in England. William the Conqueror was buried in his own abbey in Caen (in 1087), while his son William Rufus was only hurriedly buried in Winchester Cathedral, after his accidental death in the New Forest (1100). Henry i’s successor, Stephen, copied his predecessor, and created another brand new Cluniac abbey, from 1147, at Faversham in Kent. He was buried there in 1154, while Henry i’s second queen, Adeliza of Louvain (died 1151), was buried in Reading Abbey just to the north of her husband.
From greatness to ruin
The principal monastic buildings – the chapter house, the dormitory, latrine block, refectory, kitchen and cellarers range around a square cloister – were all probably completed by the time of Henry’s death in late 1135, as was the large eastern arm of the fine new abbey church. This had the monks’ choir (with stalls for up to 100 monks) under a central crossing tower, with, to the east, a presbytery within a semi-circular ambulatory, all focusing on the high altar (a similar arrangement can be seen at Gloucester Abbey – now cathedral – and Tewkesbury today). On January 5 1136 the putrefying body of Henry i was buried (probably in a large stone coffin) in front of this altar, with a decorated stone lid on top; the sarcophagus may have looked like Henry of Blois’ tomb in Winchester Cathedral. Sometime later this was replaced by a carved stone effigy, perhaps of Purbeck marble like that on King John’s tomb in Worcester Cathedral.
The abbey church, with a long western nave, must have been finished by 1164, when the Archbishop of Canterbury (Thomas Becket no less!) performed an elaborate consecration ceremony on April 19. By the end of the 12th century the Pope had allowed the abbot to wear a mitre, and hence in the later middle ages he attended parliament with the bishops. The abbot also built himself, probably from the later 13th century, a fine new residence, immediately to the west of the abbey cloister. This was much used by the kings of England right up to the Dissolution of the abbey in 1539, and even afterwards, when the church and other monastic buildings were being taken apart.
The Abbot’s Place, as it had been called, was retained as the King’s Place until the early 17th century – as also happened at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, as well as at Rochester and Dartford priories. The large frater (refectory) where a parliament was held in 1453, was also probably kept as the “great hall” of the palace. All this came to an end in the Civil War, when Reading was much fought over, and in the winter of 1642–43 the royal palace was surrounded on the north and the east by large defences around Forbury Hill. Earthworks were also made all around the town of Reading, of which there is a near-contemporary plan (John Speed had made the earliest rough plan of Reading, with the royal palace crudely shown, in 1610).
The first antiquarian interest in the site was from Sir Henry Englefield, who had a survey of the ruins made in 1779. However, William Stukeley had already made an important but earlier record of the then ruins around the cloister in 1721, from the top of the Civil War rampart on the west. From the early 19th century there are annotated sketch plans of the ruins by JC Buckler, but the most useful record of the whole abbey precinct is the 1879 Ordnance Survey 1:500 map, on which all the later reconstructed abbey plans are based. At the end of the 19th century, much work was done on the documented history of Reading Abbey by Dr Jamieson Hurry, published in his important book in 1901. For the ast half century or so Brian Kemp, now emeritus professor at Reading University, has studied and published most of the surviving medieval documents relating to the abbey. Thanks to his painstaking work we can study the meagre surviving evidence for the Henry i and Queen Adeliza tombs, and where they were situated.
Buried apart
Until the early 19th century most of the abbey grounds still belonged to the Crown. After much neglect, the remaining ruins on the east side of the cloister were acquired by Reading Borough in 1859. Not long afterwards the Forbury defences were landscaped and laid out as pleasure gardens. The hill in the centre is all that remains of the Civil War defences, though it could conceal the site of a mid-12th-century castle motte, built and then destroyed by King Stephen in the Anarchy period. There must also be thousands of burials here in the abbey’s lay cemetery. Unfortunately, the area immediately to the east was built on for the Roman Catholic church in 1837 (Augustus Pugin’s only Romanesque church), followed by the priest’s house and school to the south, which most regrettably were constructed within the ruins of the abbey’s north transept and choir.
In 1964 Cecil Slade, head of Reading
Uniiversity’sArchaeol University’s Archaeology D Department and president of the Berkshire Archaeological Society, carried out small-scale excavations in the southwest cloister area, finding wall fragments and sections of fine glazed tile pavements. Alas, this western area of the cloister and the Abbott’s Place (later the royal palace) were totally destroyed when a very large office block with huge basements was built on the site in 1982. It is now, ironically, called Abbot’s House, and just behind it is Reading’s brand new tallest office block, The Blade (Abbey Mill House), dwarfing the forlorn-looking remains of the old mill alongside.
The whole of the area to the east was most unfortunately built on in 1843, for the greatly enlarged Reading Gaol – now famous for Oscar Wilde’s time there. This must have destroyed much of the below-ground archaeology of the eastern Lady chapel, the monks’ cemetery and the infirmary hall and chapel. Worse was to follow in 1971, when the original corner turrets on the outer wall of the gaol were destroyed. On the north-west, some difficult rescue excavations were undertaken by Cecil Slade and Reading Museum, with very little funding. Slade’s brief report on this work is an important record of what still survived in 1971 of the northeast side of the sanctuary area of the abbey church. As David Harrison explains in the next article, the Ministry of Justice is selling off the site for redevelopment, and mola (Museum of London Archaeology) excavated there in 2016–17.
Cecil Slade’s teasing plan of what he and the museum excavated around the abbey’s high altar seems to show that all the evidence fo for th the royal burials at Reading had disappeared completely. However, on the inner semi-circular arcade foundations he recorded various “steps” and “flagstones” between the “column base” rubble cores. These could be the last traces of fixings for tomb-chests, and that to the north-west of the high altar could, just possibly, be Queen Adeliza’s tomb fixing, immediately west of a “column base”. Tantalisingly, Henry i’s tomb must have been just to the south of this, on the central axis of the church. This area lies beneath the modern brick boundary wall between the prison carpark and the Nursery School.
The key documentary evidence was found by Kemp in a 13th-century Reading document, now at Lambeth Palace library. It tells us (in Latin) that:
William earl of Lincoln married Queen Adeliza, wife of our founder… Accordingly the king’s council would not permit her to lie with him in the middle of the presbytery before the [high] altar. She lies buried, however, on the north side of the choir, between two columns, apart from King Henry i, our founder and her husband…
The western section as published in Slade’s report seems to show that the medieval floor-levels were still intact in 1971. It seems probable that immediately west of the modern northsouth boundary wall a proper excavation would find the evidence for where Henry’s large stone coffin lay.
What traces remain?
Meanwhile, the massive ruins of the south transept and the east claustral range belong to the borough and are open to the public, connected to the
Forbury Gardens by a tunnel passage. They have had a very chequered history over the last century or so. They were scheduled as an ancient monument in 1915, and in 1967 a “comprehensive repair programme” was started, but soon discontinued. By 1982 the ruins were in such a dangerous condition that they were closed to the public. This led to the formation of the Friends of Reading Abbey, and between 1985 and 1991 large-scale consolidatory capping works took place using unsuitable flints and hard Portland cement. This work was done in conjunction with the Public Buildings & Works department of the then Department of the Environment, and allowed the public to be readmitted.
Heritage Lottery money supported the restoration of the Forbury Gardens in 2003 – but not the ruins. Three years later English Heritage funded a conservation survey of the ruins, which were now in very poor condition, due to the breaking up of the cement and flints from frost damage. They were closed off in 2009, as they were obviously dangerous, and remained inaccessible for almost ten years – though I remember on one occasion seeing a group of wives and girlfriends in them shouting up to their loved ones behind the barred windows of the gaol’s west wing!
Reading Borough Council, seeing a key role in the city’s future for the historic “Abbey Quarter”, launched the Reading Abbey Revealed project, which in 2015 secured £1.77m from the Heritage Lottery Fund. With further help from the borough (through development contributions) and Historic England, the ruins were
treated to a comprehensive programme of conservation and repair, using appropriate lime mortar and a turf and Sedum soft-capping to the tops of the walls. They were re-opened to acclaim in 2018.
Including the restoration of the partly medieval inner gatehouse, this cost £3.15m and is a fine piece of work. A conservation record of the ruins was presumably made, and Stuart Harrison, a skilled buildings archaeologist, was on site for several days at a time to write short reports on masonry that was being conserved. No detailed archaeological study was carried out, but mola was called in to observe and record any small holes and pipe trenches that were dug, and they kindly sent me a copy of their report (see opposite).
Ron Baxter’s large book, The Royal Abbey of Reading (2016), covers in detail all the many fragments which are now in Reading Museum. Most famously, these include large areas of the reconstructed Romanesque cloister arcades. Amazingly many of these finely carved stones were dug out from a river wall at
Borough Marsh near the Thames, some miles north-east of Reading. This was done by art history students in 1948 under the direction of the late George Zarnecki, the great Romanesque scholar who was for many years deputy director of the Courtauld Institute
under Anthony Blunt. This was the Courtauld’s only archaeological dig!
Now the ruins are fully open again, and display lots of excellent new educational boards, it is surely time for a new archaeological programme. There should be careful research excavations, not “keyhole” trenches, carried out in full view of the public in the summer. What better way to celebrate the 900th anniversary of Henry i’s foundation than by fully re-excavating what is left of the east end of the great abbey church, to find what traces remain of the king’s and queen’s graves?
SeeReading Abbey Records, a New Miscellany, ed Brian Kemp (2018); “Excavations at Reading Abbey, 1971–73, by CF Slade (Berks Archaeological Journal 68, 1976); Reading Abbey Ruins & Gateway: Report on an Archaeological Watching Brief, by S Porter ( mola 2018). Tim Tatton-Brown was consultant archaeologist for the Oracle Shopping Centre redevelopment in Reading, 1995–97; he is a freelance archaeologist and architectural historian, and former consultant archaeologist to Westminster Abbey, Lambeth Palace, St George's Chapel, Windsor, and several cathedrals