The Search for Alfred the Great's Tomb

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Alfred the Great (r. 871-899) is without a doubt one of the best-known and most admired kings of early medieval England. We know quite a lot about his life, not least because he had a biography written about himself while he was still alive. However, we know very little about what happened to his remains after he died. The search for King Alfred's remains has involved some highly dubious antiquarians and quite a bit of detective work. Now, modern methods may have made a breakthrough. In this episode Cat discusses what may have become of Alfred's bones with Dr Katie Tucker, the osteoarchaeologist who has led a new search for the tomb of Alfred the Great.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever wondered why one of Ruan Cathedral's towers is called the Tower of Butter, or what
0:06.2	animals have faced trials in courts for, or even how the black country got its name?
0:12.4	Well, you can find the answers to questions like these and hundreds more in our new book,
0:18.4	The History Hit Misscellanie. It's the perfect present for any history fan.
0:23.3	It's available to buy now from your favourite bookshop or by visiting historyhit.com forward slash
0:29.9	book.
0:34.7	Hello and welcome to today's episode of Gone Medieval by History Hit. My name is Dr. Cat Jarman.
0:41.9	Alfred the Great is, without a doubt, one of the best known kings of early medieval England.
0:48.1	We know quite a lot about his life, not least because he had a biography written about him
0:53.2	during his lifetime. However, we know very little about what happened to him or rather what happened
0:59.4	to his body after he died. The search for his remains has involved some highly dubious antiquarians
1:06.5	and quite a bit of detective work, and now modern methods may well have made a breakthrough.
1:12.8	In this episode, I'm very excited to find out more about this, so I've invited along Dr. Katie
1:18.7	Tucker. Katie is an osteoarchaeologist, so a specialist in the study of human skeletons.
1:24.4	She's a research associate at Sores at the University of London and was formerly with a
1:29.3	university of Winchester, where she led a new search into some graves that may just contain
1:36.0	the body of Alfred the Great. Thank you so much for joining me today, Katie.
1:41.0	Thank you very much for having me on. So very brief, and then we're not really going to go into
1:45.2	Alfred and his career because that's a different episode from a different story. What I really want
1:49.5	to get to is your detective work, really, to try and find out what happened to him, but it's a very
1:55.3	briefly, just in case some of my listeners aren't that familiar, and you sort of in very simple terms,
1:59.6	tell me who was Alfred the Great and what happened to him? Okay, yeah, because this is always something
	...

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