The Rose Garden Mystery Meet the Ancestors

Last summer, the peace of this quiet English garden was shattered

by the discovery of a huge grave.

Who lies in it, and why were they buried here?

It's an archaeological mystery which has brought me to the Cotswolds, to Malmesbury.

In the medieval period, it had some important inhabitants -

a local gardener may well have dug one of them up!

It's all happened in the shadow of Malmesbury's imposing abbey, in the grounds of Abbey House.

Martin Roberts, the gardener, was planting when his spade struck something hard.

How did you find a coffin in the garden?!

I were digging a rose bed - and looking out for a pipe...

'The garden is in the grounds of the original abbey,

'which Henry VIII disbanded in 1539.

'At the end, a magnificent medieval stone coffin - at least 6-700 years old.'

-Beautiful, isn't it?

-Mm!

'A second, simpler burial suggests the coffin may be part of a cemetery.'

-What was your first reaction when you found it?

-Shock, amazement.

I wasn't sure what I'd found -

I cleared that area, there.

I was clearing it away with my hands, then I saw a row of teeth.

And you realised it was occupied!

It's so fine, so beautifully made.

It suggests it's somebody quite important.

'Whoever lies in the coffin had qualified for a grand send-off.

'I was struck by the size - over seven foot long.

'Inside, it's 6ft4 from head to toe.

'By medieval standards, this person must have been a giant!

'Excavation will give us more clues about this extraordinary person.'

Abbey House and the gardens belong to postmodernist architect Ian Pollard

and his wife Barbara, a former model.

They're not the most orthodox pair, but a giant amongst the roses was, even for them, a bit surreal.

After the initial shock, the coffin seemed unusually large.

All I could think of was, "Gosh, the person must have been enormous."

I was astounded they were so large.

It's always been the abbot's garden,

so the fact there is an enormous stone coffin in it seems most peculiar -

who on earth could it be?!

One thing's likely - the person was probably connected with the abbey.

I began to look for clues in the abbey church - all that remains of the original buildings.

1,300 years ago, the abbey was founded by Benedictine monks.

Its history's packed with people who would warrant such a burial.

There's the first abbot, St Aldhelm,

legendary worker of miracles.

He looks like quite a tall man!

It could be my hero, Brother Elmer, the monk who thought he could fly -

and famously jumped from the abbey's 430ft spire to prove it!

REPORTER: Stuntman Colin Skeeping

leapt off the abbey to recall the day in the year 1000

when Brother Elmer, a Benedictine monk, decided to take to the air.

Despite no safety wire, Elmer flew 200yds and survived - but broke both legs.

Perhaps the most tantalising possibility of all is Athelstan,

the first Saxon King of all England.

His tomb lies in the abbey, but it's empty.

It is rumoured his bones were removed, to avoid relic hunters,

and buried in the abbot's garden - which now belongs to the Pollards.

Could the coffin Martin discovered really contain King Athelstan?

The problem is, Athelstan died in 939, and the coffin in the garden looks 300 years later -

so I'm not convinced it's him.

Many people would disagree.

The feverish speculation of the press

puts Athelstan or a giant monk as hot favourites.

The Pollards share their find with locals.

By now, everyone's an expert - even before the bones are uncovered!

"Seven foot long." Very tall!

When Henry closed the monasteries down - about 1530 - what happened then...?

"Was it King Athelstan, St Aldhelm...?"

-From a romantic point of view, we hope it's Athelstan.

-You never know.

Gosh, Hale-Bopp comet, and then this...?!

I imagine it's a monk from the abbey.

-It's a Saxon bishop... Was it the bishop of the abbey?

-Something to do with King Athelstan.

King Athelstan might have been buried around about there -

what evidence there is, I don't know.

It must have been very unusual to have somebody so tall in that age.

We need archaeologists.

Archaeologist John Humble's first job is to remove the exposed skull.

The whole garden is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument -

it's been disturbed, so English Heritage must now decide what to do.

After Martin the gardener found the coffin,

the decision was made to excavate the burial that lies within it.

So John, an English Heritage archaeologist, is working on it.

The first stage is to create an accurate plan.

I'm taking out the upper levels of soil -

there's six inches to go before we see any bones.

I'm eager to see the skeleton.

I hope we'll find the evidence we need to identify him - or her.

After a couple of days, our first clue -

the bones are emerging as a complete skeleton.

They don't look like Athelstan's reburied bones,

so we'll definitely have to rule him out.

Sadly, we eliminate another character -

the skeleton doesn't quite fill the coffin.

I never expected Athelstan, but I WAS hoping for a giant.

But this skeleton doesn't fill the coffin, so that idea's out, too.

We're going to have to look harder to find out who this was.

I'm quite sure the skeleton still has a lot more to tell us -

but not here.

It has to be carefully taken apart,

then bagged and sent to the lab.

I can tell you there are no signs the legs have ever been broken -

at least not until John started to lift them!

So another potential candidate has to go - Elmer the flying monk!

Is that another piece?

But I'm still convinced this is someone important -

perhaps a senior monk, or even an abbot.

Before the bones can be examined, we need to clean them up.

Whoever this is had some serious dental problems!

Look at the state of this side!

Oh, that really IS in a bad way!

That root's all rotted away -

right deep down in the jaw.

Very painful!

-With such rotten teeth, they must have had appalling breath!

-Yes.

The last time I saw this...

'For a more definitive opinion,

'I've come to top bone expert, Dr Simon Maze.'

The first question is, is it a male?

-We assumed it was a monk, and was therefore male. Were we right?

-Yes.

We can be fairly sure it's a male from the pelvis -

from this notch here.

-It's fairly narrow - that indicates it's a male.

-That's a relief.

We had everybody saying this person was enormously tall - a 6ft4 giant!

How tall did he turn out to be?

We estimate height in skeletons by measuring the leg bones.

This individual turned out to be

about 5ft-10.

No giant, then?

Not by medieval standards -

he's a few inches above medieval average for men.

So still pretty tall. And his age?

The best way of estimating age is by looking at the wear on the teeth.

-They look pretty worn!

-Yes, and the crowns of these two have worn away.

That suggests that he was about perhaps in his fifties when he died.

-Quite a good age!

-Yeah.

So we've got a picture of a man - about 5ft10 tall, late middle age...

-Can you get any idea of his health from the bones?

-Yes. If we look at the teeth,

there are dental problems here.

The pulp cavity had actually been exposed because of the extreme wear,

and infection has passed into the pulp cavity, down the root canal,

and has set up an abscess in the jaw.

So, dreadful toothache. Any other problems?

In the bones that make up the instep of the foot,

we can see there is new bone formation on there.

This growth...?

If we compare it to a normal bone,

normally, they have a smooth surface.

This has new bone formation.

-Why?

-There are a number of possibilities.

Initially, I thought it may be leprosy -

as well as destroying the bones of the feet and hands,

it can also cause new bone formation.

But signs of leprosy were absent in the skull,

so we're left with a localised infection that's affecting the left foot - it's hard to say what.

-So the poor chap probably had toothache and a limp, then?!

-Yes.

-We're getting more of a picture of the person, aren't we?

-Yes.

'But are there any signs he lived a privileged life?

'Simon has studied hundreds of skeletons of medieval people who didn't.

'Many suffered from acute sinusitis, the killer disease TB was rife,

'and osteoporosis was just as common then as it is now.

'Many children died shortly after birth -

'those who survived into infancy, ravaged by hunger and disease, often suffered stunted growth.'

These are some x-rays of femurs from child skeletons.

A great number of them show these white Harris lines going the width of the bone.

They're not just cracks?

Oh, no, they're lines which form in the bone when growth stops for a while, then starts again.

In contrast, our medieval monk is taller than average, he has no signs of TB,

no signs of sinusitis.

The picture I get is of somebody who's privileged, well fed -

perhaps even a bit over-fed!

Is this going too far?

I think it is - from just one individual, we can't come to those conclusions.

I X-rayed his leg bones - he, too, had Harris lines.

Harris lines on his bones show his growth stopped five times between the ages of four and nine,

perhaps due to illness, or starvation during the winters.

If he was a monk, he may not have been from a privileged background,

like many of his brothers.

Maybe his parents sent him to the abbey at a young age - one less mouth to feed.

The next step is to find out when he died.

At Oxford's radiocarbon dating laboratory, a tiny sample taken from a bone could tell us.

THE MACHINE WHIRRS

Living things contain radioactive carbon,

but at death, radioactivity steadily starts to fall.

Measuring this decrease tells you how long ago something died.

The dating process only works if enough pure carbon is extracted from the bone collagen.

To do this, the ground-up sample will be left to dissolve in acid -

but it will be several weeks until we get the results.

Before any decision is made about what should be done with the coffin,

we've invited two very different experts to tell us more about it.

-Where's the stone from?

-It's a fine oolite.

It's from this region - probably not Malmesbury itself.

It was carefully selected to be one of the better stones, I would think.

Tony, you're the stonemason.

How do you chop it out from a block?

Firstly, it would be drawn out with a thing called a drag.

A mason would mark the whole caboodle out using that.

Then, using an axe similar to this,

he would very carefully chip away from that drag line.

-So none of it's sawn, then?

-Nope.

But this is terribly flat.

What about these marks over here? Are they the same instrument?

There were various types of axe. I found this one near a medieval wall.

I actually dug it up.

It would appear that it's a similar tool,

and probably contemporary to this coffin.

There's a vague possibility

that this was the tool that did this job.

Was that used to do the head recess?

Yeah - it's not actually difficult to form those...

What's also interesting is that whoever did this was right-handed

because, as a right-handed person, it's easy for me to chop this way.

But, working left-handed, I have to work this way.

See how the axe goes into these...erm...recessions here?

So that side is completely different.

What about the craftsmanship, David?

A lot of work went into it - it was destined for somebody important.

The medieval man's bones are now spread all round the country.

While his right fibula is being carbon dated in Oxford,

his skull is at University College,

where Dr Robin Richards will use it to rebuild the face.

The skull is scanned with a laser

to produce a three-dimensional image.

The missing bits of bone have been built up with wax to aid the laser.

Now the contours of the skull have been captured,

we've got the foundation of his face.

Robin's programme works out where the muscles and soft tissues go.

We look at it from different viewpoints - that's fine.

Now I just find a suitable prototype face.

We know he died aged about 50,

so we need a selection of 50-year-old male faces, which we blend to make an average face -

free from any unusual features.

Now Robin can stretch the face of Mr Average over the computerised skull.

What emerges

is our first glimpse of the medieval man buried in the coffin.

Illustrator Jane Brayne will use this image as the basis for a portrait.

This chap, I think, has got an incredibly strong face.

First thing to point out is, the nose is actually genuinely broken -

that's not something that the computer's done.

It looks as though his cheeks might be quite hollow.

-Yes, goodness, look at this - it's really quite pitted almost.

-Yeah.

So that, again, is real.

Erm...not a very prominent chin.

You don't get an idea of the nose being crooked from the profile.

'But we need to know for certain whether or not he was a monk - I need to turn the clock back.'

What's left of the abbey is just a fraction

of what was here before Henry VIII sacked the monasteries 500 years ago.

This is how the abbey looks today - our burial seems a long way away.

At its height, the abbey was twice as big.

Add back the missing bits and the burial's position becomes clear -

it lies right next to the abbey's Lady Chapel.

This is what the abbey would have looked like.

This is a further clue to the man's identity.

Buried so close, he must have been a powerful member of the abbey -

but not an abbot, as then, he would have been buried inside.

In Oxford, carbon atoms from his bones

have been shooting around the accelerator, to give Dr Ramsay a date for us.

The date has come out at between 1150 and 1300. Does that make sense?

It fits with what we're expecting, but can't you narrow it down more?

I'm afraid we can't in this case, as it's been quite a complicated case for us - interestingly so.

We've done other tests, as well as the radiocarbon measurement,

and it looks as though the diet of this man had quite a big marine component - he ate fish.

That's strange - Malmesbury's quite a distance from the sea.

It IS surprising - and quite unusual.

They were definitely smoking fish in that period -

there's a fish house at Glastonbury.

So it's possible they transported fish...

-It has to be sea fish?

-Yes, from this evidence.

It was well worth the trip to Oxford.

Shame the date wasn't more precise, but I'm amazed they knew his diet -

that really points to him being a monk.

CHATTER

Now the investigation is over, English Heritage want the coffin to be reburied -

but Ian and Barbara have other ideas.

If there was a way of not disturbing the archaeological information,

and sort of...lifting... There may be masses of information under there.

It would be nice to take it out.

I wouldn't like the coffin to be lifted and exposed

because to do that, we'd have to do yet more archaeological investigation - in a keyhole way.

We have uncovered it - for whatever reason.

I think the value that it has to all of us is quite considerable -

far more than if it is reburied.

The Pollards would like to put the coffin on permanent display, but Amanda isn't convinced.

The coffin would suffer if it was exposed to the elements.

If we can find a way to protect it, and if you'll go along with that...

-And if we fail, then we'll...

-Failure, what's that?!

..then we'll protect it the only other way that we can -

backfill it.

Yes, but let's work on it on a positive basis.

I think we can, at a pinch, accept that, but I don't think it will work.

Jane has now added in the details of our monk's clothing and haircut,

to make him a black-habited Benedictine.

'We've come to the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital.

'Surgeon Gus Alusi has a way of visualising the skull and the face in three dimensions.'

Have you managed

-to put Jane's painting and Robin's reconstruction together?

-Yes.

We put the painting around the reconstruction.

He looks great! There's his broken nose.

And it helps once you get the flesh tones back onto it -

-for the first time, it starts to look like a person.

-Absolutely.

We used all the evidence we could find to create this picture.

Although he ended up as a respected member of a religious community,

his bones tell us starvation and disease featured in his childhood.

We can sympathise, too, with his suffering - toothache was as bad then as it is today!

But we can't be sure how he died.

We can, though, be fairly certain he died in the abbey,

spending his last days in its infirmary.

Before his burial in the coffin, in a ceremony unchanged for centuries,

his fellow monks would have placed his body in a temporary coffin - for an all-night vigil.

THEY SING A RELIGIOUS CHANT

At dawn, he would have been carried to a plot next to the Lady Chapel

and buried wearing only the coarse hair shirt he wore underneath his black habit.

THE LAWNMOWER'S ENGINE SHUDDERS

Ian and Barbara haven't managed to come up with a solution to displaying the coffin,

so it has to be filled in.

Amanda's agreed to it being opened up for display in warm weather.

..the logical way.

The bones are still in a box in the Ancient Monuments Laboratory,

pending removal to a local museum.

This is very different from the ceremony carried out here 700 years ago.

You might think the monk's bones should be put back in the grave,

or that they're better off in a museum, where perhaps in a few years science will tell us more.

I feel I've got to know the person over the months - this is where I say goodbye.

Subtitles by Stephanie Donohue, BBC - 1997