Medieval Archaeologists Hunt For King Arthur's Lost Bones | Myth Hunters | Chronicle

He is Britain's most famous monarch, King Arthur, legendary commander of the Knights of the Round Table, armed with a mighty sword Excalibur. We'll never tire from hearing the stories of King Arthur. His name is a byword for honour and courage. He's a legendary figure, a war leader, par excellence. In the 20th century, two archaeologists set out in search of King Arthur's bones. One was a scientist driven by the facts who risked ridicule and isolation in his quest. Here is a man that flies in the face of received wisdom. The other was obsessed by the supernatural. What Bly was doing was increasingly odd. It was a journey that took them into the darkest part of England's dark Middle Ages. This is the story of the quest for King Arthur's grave. King Arthur is one of the most famous characters in the history of the British Isles. According to legend, his spectacular reign dates to the 6th century AD. The popular image of King Arthur is of a knight in shining armour with a round table, heroic knights who go on quests, especially for the Holy Grail. King Arthur is truly the stuff of legend. There's the famous story of the young Arthur drawing the sword from the stone and his many magical adventures with the wizard Merlin. But the real King Arthur is shrouded in mystery because the 6th century was at the heart of the Dark Ages. Few facts about this period of history are known. The peoples of Britain were under attack by foreign invaders. According to legend, King Arthur was their defender and champion. But his story ends with a valiant death in battle. Arthur wins a whole series of battles before being fatally wounded in a climactic last battle with his archenemy. Arthur is mortally wounded and he's then taken to the Isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds. And that's the last we hear of him. The Isle of Avalon was the greatest mystery of all. No one knew where Arthur's last resting place actually was. I think most contemporary scholars would doubt that in historical terms there ever was an Avalon. But in 1191, 600 years after Arthur's death, the monks of Glastonbury Abbey in the west of England made a stunning discovery. They found King Arthur's grave. This must have been one of the most celebrated discoveries, or was the most celebrated discovery of the Middle Ages. The grave contained a lead cross, identifying the bones as King Arthur's. When they came to look at the inscription on the lead cross, they read it as saying, here lies buried the famous King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon. The monks of Glastonbury believe their own abbey was Avalon itself. The mystery of King Arthur's death seemed to be solved. There really was a King Arthur. We've got his tomb exactly in the same way as we've got the tombs of other famous kings. But for modern historians, it was impossible to tell whether the monk's story was true. Because in 1539, Glastonbury Abbey was totally destroyed by Henry VIII in his power struggles with the Catholic Church. All traces of King Arthur, his bones and the cross that marked his grave were apparently lost. By the 20th century, scholars were left with no hard evidence that there ever was a real King Arthur. There's a lot of scepticism about whether King Arthur really existed or did any of the things ascribe to him. There is nothing that would confirm the existence of a historical figure called Arthur. But in 1908, there was one man who firmly believed that King Arthur was real. And not only that, he set out to prove it. The brilliant architect Frederick Bly Bond believed that only he could track down King Arthur's last resting place somewhere in the shattered ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. The only way we can actually prove whether King Arthur existed or disprove it is by tangible archaeological remains. If you could find a fragment of Arthur's tomb, then your reputation as an archaeologist would be made. Bly Bond convinced the Abbey's owners, the Church of England, to allow him access to Glastonbury. But he would still have to prove his credentials. I think this was too good an opportunity for him to miss. Here was this almost virgin site, remarkably little work has done on it. He's the man to step forward. In the early 1900s, the science of archaeology was in its infancy. Bly Bond would use his architectural skills to make the first systematic search of Glastonbury Abbey. But only a few ruined walls remained. So the first step in Bly Bond's quest was to fill in the gaps, to make a detailed plan of the Abbey as it once was. Bond is, in effect, making a map. He actually stayed on site each day. He took measured drawings of what was found. Now, this, of course, sounds very, very basic to our ears today, but this was something that most of his contemporaries simply didn't do. The magnificent Abbey had several major buildings. But if Bly Bond could map them out, then the historical records gave him a tantalising clue where Arthur's bones could be found. After finding the grave, the monks had been anxious to display Arthur's remains to important visitors. So they put them in pride of place at the centre of their largest and most important building, the Abbey Church. They were brought out in their 1278 to be presented to two very interested visitors, indeed, King Edward I and his wife, Queen Eleanor of Castile. So they paid for a tomb of black marble to be set out in the middle of the Abbey Church. The story should have led Bly Bond straight to King Arthur's tomb. But with the entire site in ruins, the location of the Abbey Church was far from clear. Bly Bond's problem was to somehow map out its missing walls, then find the tomb at the centre. And to find the solution, he would rely on his lifelong fascination with mathematics. His first love really is mathematics and especially mathematical puzzles, numbers, correspondences. Bly Bond believed the builders of Glastonbury Abbey had used a secret mathematical code. His measurements showed that the layout of the Abbey followed a deliberate number pattern. It had been handed down by architects since biblical times. According to his measurements, there seemed to be repeating numbers and patterns which were coming out. And these were more than coincidental, but seemed to be a foundation plan, a foundation geometry. Bly Bond knew that ancient builders often used number patterns called magic squares. Every square has six rows and six columns. But to crack the code, Bly Bond had to find a way to fill in the rows and columns so that they all added up to the same number. He made hundreds of attempts to find the right pattern. Until finally, he had the solution. The secret magic number was 111. History Hit is an award winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans. Enjoy our rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period. History Hits medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones, Eleanor Janega and Kat Jarman. Not only that, but we have a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of history through our network of podcasts. Sign up now for a free trial and chronicle fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code chronicle at checkout. Bly Bond was convinced that he knew what it meant. 111 multiplied by eight makes 888 inches or 74 feet. He believed he had discovered the secret. The ancient builders had laid out the Abbey on a grid of 74 foot squares. Bly comes to the conclusion that he's discovered the medieval laying out plan of Glastonbury Abbey. Bly Bond decided to prove his credentials by putting his map to the test. He would reveal the Abbey's lost buildings one by one. Acting on his instructions, his workers dug a trench exactly 74 feet long. They immediately hit the foundation stones of an entire chapel that no one else knew was there. It had been missing for nearly 400 years, but Bly Bond's map had predicted its location. The lost chapel exactly filled the last square of 74 feet. Bond called it the lost chapel because it was the only significant addition to the Abbey of which there was no surviving trace. Nothing remained above ground. It was something of a test for Bly, if you like. One of England's greatest archaeologists said the lost chapel had never even existed, but Bly Bond uncovered it within weeks. He had even predicted its eventual size. Bond hit foundations, followed them to the east and discovered a very large four bay building, thus proving one of the leading archaeologists of the day wrong. The church authorities were dazzled. This was a man who could predict exactly what he would find before he even started digging. The discovery of the lost chapel, if you like, very clearly marked Bond out as an archaeological force to be reckoned with. Large numbers of visitors came to the Abbey, including people like the Bishop of Bristol, who even commented, how are you doing it? You know, you don't seem to be wasting a spade full of earth. The lost chapel was the first square to be filled in on Bly Bond's 74 foot grid pattern. His excavations soon revealed that the much larger Abbey church, the last known location of King Arthur's tomb, was also a perfect fit to his master plan. The huge building was one square wide and five squares long. Bly Bond knew exactly where to dig for Arthur's bones, right in the centre of the church. When he's got all that information, then he measures out on the ground and puts his spade into the turf. If Bly Bond's calculations were correct, then the marbled tomb was about to be revealed. And he soon found what he was looking for. Telltale chippings of the distinctive black stone. These were the last remnants of the tomb which had been smashed by King Henry VIII in 1539. If Arthur's remains had also survived, they had to be somewhere nearby. But to Bly Bond's utter disbelief, his workers couldn't find a single fragment of bone. For all his ingenuity, Bly Bond's search for King Arthur had failed. And at this major setback, his church paymaster started to question his strange obsession with numbers. There was nothing fundamentally unorthodox about what Bond was doing with number at all. It was just highly unusual. To the church establishment, magic squares looked like numerology, a practice they connected with the paranormal, even Satanism. It all sounded extremely dubious. Eyebrows were raised. Questions were asked at committee meetings. The church's patience was running out and Bly Bond needed results fast. His new plan was to look for the actual grave where the 12th century monks had found King Arthur's remains. It would be one last chance to find any bones the monks had left behind. But Bly Bond's map was now useless. The grave could be anywhere in the abbey's grounds. A total area of 220,000 square feet. To track it down, Bly Bond was ready for desperate measures. Bly is so convinced by his work with symbolic number and he so desperately wants this to be true that he oversteps the mark. Bly Bond turned to the occult. With the help of a psychic named John Bartlett, Bond planned to communicate with the Their seances used the paranormal technique of automatic writing. They would take out a couple of sheets of clean white paper. They would sit down comfortably and they would either ask a question into the air or alternatively write a question at the top of a piece of paper. Bartlett would put a pencil in his hand and put his hand on the sheet of paper. Bly would then take his right hand and put it on Bartlett's left hand in which he was holding the pencil. And after a few hesitant movements, Bartlett's hand would start to write and scrawl would proceed across the page. The writing seemed to be guided by an unseen power. For Bly Bond, it was electrifying. The monks of the ancient abbey were telling him their secrets. He literally believes in the spirits of medieval monks. Much to Bly's surprise, a lot of the personalities do seem to be remarkably helpful. In fact, they egg him on, you know, you should dig further. You should look here. You should look there. A monk named Johannes was the most anxious to be heard. He encouraged Bly Bond's obsession with mapping out the abbey. They were interested in mathematics and geometry as well. Bly gets quite fond of Johannes and often asked for him if he was talking to a different personality. Totally gripped, Bly Bond begged for the location of King Arthur's grave. And Johannes had a shocking revelation. There was another, much older church, far beneath the abbey soil. In the search for Arthur's bones, Bly Bond would have to dig deeper into Glastonbury's dark age past. The very oldest part of Glastonbury Abbey was called the old church, the Ecclesia Vitusta. It was extremely ancient and nobody was quite too sure how old it was or who was the original builder. According to Johannes, the site of the old church was now occupied by the medieval Lady Chapel, which Bly Bond had already located on his map. King Arthur's grave was just outside in the ancient cemetery. Bly Bond realised he could use his mathematical knowledge to track it down. So he thinks to himself, if the same ground plan has been used through the centuries, we can project backwards in time, exploring the geometry and the buildings to find the form of the very first church. Bly Bond mapped out his search zone around the old church. Still obsessed by the number six, he formed a hexagon, the cemetery and King Arthur's grave had to be somewhere within the symbolic shape. When his excavations began, Bly Bond could hardly believe his eyes. There were bones everywhere. He had found the ancient cemetery filled with centuries of the Abbey's inhabitants. It was only a matter of time before he identified the grave of King Arthur. He was quite convinced that he had discovered the original grave site of Arthur and Guinevere, and that if he had had the season to dig, he would have been able to excavate the original grave cut. But now Bly Bond made his greatest mistake. In 1918, he published a book called The Gate of Remembrance. It detailed his paranormal investigations at Glastonbury Abbey and revealed his seances with dead monks. The news spread like wildfire through the Church of England. As you can imagine, this created something of a stir. The accusation was that Bly wasn't an objective architect, archaeologist. How could he be? And it wasn't Bly who was director of excavations. In fact, it was the personalities of medieval monks that were actually directing what was going on site. In the eyes of the church, Bly Bond was flirting with the devil, not Christian archaeology. The clincher for them was that six rows of 111 make 666, the number of the beast. This is the moment which the excavations are closed down and his services are no longer required. Bly Bond's quest for the bones of King Arthur was over. The horrified church shut down the excavations. In 1923, he was banished from the abbey for good. But a new Arthurian hero was already waiting to take up the quest. In 1908, the excavations at Glastonbury Abbey had been visited by a highly inquisitive eight year old boy. From the very start, he seemed destined to take up the quest for King Arthur. His name was Arthur Raleigh Radford. And in Bly Bond, he found a charismatic mentor. It seems highly likely that Bly made quite an impression on the young Radford. The boy was thrilled by Bond's fantastic stories of ancient monks and a legendary king. Bly always used to be the circus master when he took people around his excavations. Excavation work, that was his love, that was his passion. And that came across in everything he did. And that's the sort of thing that I would have thought that would appeal to a young mind. There and then, young Radford decided to find King Arthur's grave, a quest he would follow for his entire career as the leading archaeologist of Dark Age Britain. He'd been obsessed by the idea that the Arthurian past had had some archaeological reality. But Radford had little time for Bly Bond's paranormal methods. He was very much his own man, careful, logical and systematic. A sceptic who wanted solid evidence above all else. One of the things that Raleigh Radford has going for him is he isn't a dreamer. He's not guided by hidden forces or anything like that. Radford was an extremely serious, earnest scholar. Very critical and very methodical. He was a proper archaeologist. He wasn't chasing shadows. But even Radford couldn't get permission to dig at Glastonbury. The Church of England was still wary after its experience with Bly Bond. So Radford switched the focus of his search from the place of King Arthur's death to the place of his birth. A hundred miles from Glastonbury on the windswept Isle of Tintagel. The setting for the fantastic story that started King Arthur's legend. The story goes that King Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, had fallen in love with the Duke of Cornwall's wife. The Duke of Cornwall realised what was going on and so whisked his wife back to Cornwall and put her in the most secure location he could find, Tintagel. Believing his castle was safe, the Duke made the mistake of leaving his wife at home. But Uther found a miraculous way to gain access. The answer to an impossible task was to get Merlin the magician. Merlin worked his magic. He transformed Uther into the exact likeness of the Duke and he walked straight into the castle unopposed. Uther Pendragon took the opportunity to sleep with the Duchess of Cornwall, disguised as her husband, then leave in the morning and then catch up with the real Duke of Cornwall and kill him. According to the legend, King Arthur was the result. It was on that very night that King Arthur, the most famous of men, was conceived. Few archaeologists took this legend seriously, but Radford himself was intrigued by the specific mention of Tintagel. He believed there had to be some reason why the legend was set on the island. It seems reasonable to suppose there's no smoke without fire. He was pretty sure that following these legendary Arthurian associations could lead you to just about anything. Genuine 5th and 6th century sites. Radford thought the Tintagel must have been part of a real 6th century Arthurian kingdom. With hard archaeological evidence. But he risked making himself a laughing stock. No other archaeologist believed the island had even been inhabited in the 6th century. When Raleigh Radford started digging at Tintagel, scholarly views were that there was no Dark Age presence on Tintagel at all. Radford set out to prove them all wrong. By digging deeper into Tintagel's past than anyone had before. He revealed a hidden Dark Age world. Rectangular buildings. Laid out like a religious settlement. He thought he'd identified there a series of characteristics which showed that the site was in fact a 6th century monastery. Digging into the ruins, Radford found evidence that could precisely date the monastery to King Arthur's 6th century. It was a special type of pottery that had never before been found in Britain. Here's, I think, a really fascinating element in the discoveries that Radford made at Tintagel. That the pot shards, the pieces of pottery that he was turning up in vast quantities, were not locally made. The pottery came from the eastern Mediterranean. It proved that Dark Age's Tintagel was not just a monastery, but an international trading post. During the 5th and 6th centuries, Tintagel was plainly in contact with traders bringing eastern Mediterranean imported pottery. What he's discovered is a sophisticated 6th century world. Radford called his pottery Tintagelware. It showed what everyone else thought was an empty island had in fact been a thriving community. Radford's discovery of imported Mediterranean pottery at Tintagel in the 1930s was a turning point for the archaeology of 5th and 6th century Britain. There he was, uncovering with spadework absolute tangible evidence of this wealthy, sophisticated, international cosmopolitan world in Dark Age Britain. It was absolute groundbreaking, pioneering stuff from a man who absolutely knew what he was doing. By following up on the King Arthur legend, Radford had proved something that no one else had even suspected. Tintagel had been part of a thriving 6th century Britain, just like the legends of King Arthur had described. Radford believed he had uncovered King Arthur's kingdom. Now he wanted evidence of King Arthur himself. All it will now take is the opportunity to start digging at sites connected with the rest of the legends of King Arthur. Radford was ready for Glastonbury Abbey. And the mystery buried somewhere beneath its ancient ruins. In 1951, the church authorities finally gave him permission to excavate. Now all he had to do was find King Arthur's grave. Radford tackled his task like a master detective. He would make a detailed forensic analysis of the key eyewitness account from the 12th century. What really happened outside Glastonbury Abbey in 1191? The medieval monks had called in a historian named Gerald of Wales to verify their find of Arthur's grave. Radford planned to put Gerald's evidence under the microscope. Exhibit A was King Arthur himself. Gerald of Wales described his bones as those of an imposing warrior. He describes how large the shin bones were, how large the eye sockets of this great heroic leader. You can imagine him probably standing seven foot tall with his stocking feet. For Radford, the vital clue was a deep wound in the skull, exactly matching King Arthur's fatal battle wound as described by legend. The body had several wounds to its head, mostly healed, but the last one, the major wound, was unhealed and presumably had been what had killed him. Exhibit B was very different. The skeleton of a woman with long hair still clinging to the skull. It was Queen Guinevere. One of the monks was so overcome with romantic enthusiasm that he got hold of the handkerchief, which unfortunately then turned to dust. Finally, exhibit C, a lead cross, identifying the skeletons as King Arthur and his wife. Gerald had copied down its ancient inscription. When they came to look at the inscription on the lead cross, they read it as saying, here lies buried the famous King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon with his second wife, Guinevere. Gerald was sure the monks had found King Arthur's grave, but Raleigh Radford had reason to be sceptical. After the destruction of Glastonbury Abbey, all three key pieces of evidence were now missing. And Radford had to consider another very different interpretation of Gerald's story. The find of King Arthur's grave could have been an elaborate fraud. There have always been rumours of skullduggery, of deliberate forcification of the evidence. It is absolutely possible that monks could have hoaxed the whole discovery. It really is a kind of medieval scene-of-the-crime mystery. The monks' motivation for fraud would be financial gain. They were trying to prove they had the rights to their land. You have to remember that Glastonbury Abbey was one of the biggest landowners in the country back in the 12th century. It was now up to the monks to try and justify why they had all that land. With King Arthur's body in their possession, the monks could argue that he had granted them a royal charter. And it could be seen as a seal of approval, a confirmation of some of those charters, if they could find King Arthur's burial. So, at face value, the discovery of King Arthur's grave was suspiciously convenient. Gerald of Wales could have been the unwitting victim of the monks' deception. They could have found a convenient body and shown it to Gerald of Wales. He was very much the kind of person you'd want to have as a publicist, and he was specifically invited over to Glastonbury Abbey to talk to the monks and look at their discovery. The inscription on the lead cross, as recorded by Gerald, was the most damning evidence of all. Modern archaeologists had dated the style of the lettering to the 12th century, exactly as if the monks had faked it. They can create something which, in the context of the time, is a plausible forgery. Can monks really be trusted? Who knows? Radford was the only archaeologist who believed the monks were telling the truth. He thought the lettering could be much older than the 12th century and that the cross itself had been genuine. But to prove that Gerald's story was true, Radford had to find the only piece of evidence that was still in existence. The grave itself, still buried somewhere in the abbey's oldest cemetery. But thanks to Frederick Bly Bond, he knew exactly where to start his search. Raleigh Radford had the big advantage that he could follow up the work of Bly Bond. That gave Raleigh Radford a very good ground plan for the kind of places he was going to have to be digging if he wanted to find King Arthur's tomb. Radford focused his excavations around the abbey's old church, the Ecclesia Vitusta. The same place where Frederick Bly Bond had been digging 40 years before, guided by the spirit of the medieval monk Johannes. But Radford planned a much more scientific approach. Peter Points Wright, an archaeologist on the team, was fired by his enthusiasm. He was an inspirational character. They're with you all the time. Urged on by Radford, the team dug deeper into the abbey's ancient cemetery. But they faced the same challenge as Bly Bond, to somehow identify Arthur's grave amongst many. Radford's vast experience gave him an ingenious way to solve the problem. His depth of knowledge was oozed out everywhere. Radford's research had uncovered a key historical detail. The site of the old church was now occupied by the medieval Lady Chapel. King Arthur had been buried south of the third window. His grave was directly in between two gigantic pillars. One was 26 feet high and one was 19 feet high. The pillars were stolen after the abbey was destroyed. But Radford thought monuments this size must have left some trace behind. He planned to dig a 60-foot trench to find them. We worked out where we thought the site was. The trench took weeks of careful excavation. But then came the breakthrough. The pillars that once marked Arthur's grave had left gaping holes in the ground. That gave the exact location, almost X marks the spot, for where he would have to start digging. Directly between the holes, there were clear signs of disturbed earth. It was an empty grave, exactly where Radford said it would be. This sort of area you would respectfully put a body into the ground. Radford and Pointswright soon found more proof that they were digging in the right place. Tiny chippings of stone showed the 12th century monks had also been in the grave. And they'd been digging down in exactly the same spot. In 1191, when the monks dug up Arthur's grave, the abbey was under reconstruction. The local building material, dolting stone, was everywhere. Radford found that some of it had gone into the grave. It was a clear indication that at the time of the building works, the grave had been open. There was the building chippings from the ladies' chapel that was being put up at that time, got down the hole when they'd made the disturbance. The hole that they'd made had gradually filled up with these chippings as they had been backfilled. The stone chippings proved that the monks had definitely dug up the grave in 1191. But their story could still have been a hoax. Radford needed further evidence that the original grave was even older than the 12th century. And when he examined his trench more closely, he found it. There was a foundation wall designed to contain packed earth. And Radford soon discovered its purpose in the abbey's historical records. Long before 1191, the 10th century abbot of Glastonbury had raised the level of the entire cemetery to venerate its famous occupant. And he could see that St Dunstan, or Dunstan the abbot of Glastonbury in Anglo-Saxon times, had been reorganising the graveyard at a higher level. Arthur's grave had been dug up and re-buried long before the monks of 1191 rediscovered it. Radford was sure the lead cross came from this 10th century re-burial. It was put in the grave to make sure King Arthur was still properly marked. The 12th century monks hadn't faked it. His theory was this was something which had been made between the time of King Arthur and the discovery of Arthur's grave in 1191. With evidence to show that the 12th century monks had been telling the truth, Radford was ready to go public. He gave an interview to the BBC. The monks said that they found in the coffin a leaden cross with a Latin inscription which says Here lies Arthur, the famous king in the island of Avalon. That has been dismissed as a forgery. In my view, on the basis of the lettering and the form of the cross, it dates not from the late 12th century but from the 10th century. If Radford was right, then the monks really had found King Arthur, the king who had founded their church in the 6th century. It was traditional in the 12th century to put the founder of your church, your monastery, in a great tomb in the choir. And I have very little doubt that that's what they intended to do. Radford thought quite definitely that this was the grave from which the bodies of Arthur were removed. Radford was sure the account by Gerald of Wales was true. The monks had dug up a grave. Radford had found it. It really did happen in 1191. The stone chippings said so. The cross identified King Arthur and Radford could show it wasn't a fake. There was only one piece of evidence he couldn't find. Tintagelware, to prove that King Arthur's original burial was in the 6th century. Radford used imported Mediterranean pottery as the key indicator for sites of the 5th and 6th centuries. It was one of the few things he didn't find on that excavation. It could well have been that those Tintagelware fragments had once been there and gone, but the truth was he hadn't found his smoking gun. Radford knew his evidence was all circumstantial. There was nothing to link the grave directly to King Arthur. This is where I excavated in 1962 and 63 and found the great hole from which they dug out someone. Someone? Well, I think it was Arthur, but of course I can't prove it. Radford never did prove the existence of King Arthur. But even at the age of 90, he was still visiting sites like Tintagel, still hoping for that conclusive final piece of missing evidence. He died in 1998, still on his quest. Personally, I'm very much on the side of Raleigh Radford. He must have been persuaded there was something behind these Arthurian legends. But Radford's story has a final twist. A decade after his death, archaeologists reassessed his finds at Glastonbury Abbey. They discovered that Radford had in fact found Tintagelware in the abbey grounds. Radford never knew it, but he had proof all along that Glastonbury dated back to the 6th century. While most experts still don't believe in King Arthur, Radford was convinced this would have been the heart of his Dark Age kingdom. A fitting last resting place for Britain's greatest legend.