The bone chests of Winchester: an Anglo-Saxon detective story

So when, on that December morning, soldiers smash through the cathedral’s great west door, the clergy are appalled but not surprised. They watch in terror as the troops storm the nave with colours flying, drums beating and torches lit, some even riding on horseback.

Over the hours that follow, the building is desecrated. Eventually, the soldiers turn their attention to the tops of the finely carved stone screens that surround the central presbytery, the cathedral’s beating heart.

There on a ledge sit 10 neatly spaced wooden chests, placed up high by Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester, in the 1520s. The remains of King Cnut and his wife Emma lie within the chests, as do those of Ecgberht and numerous other West Saxon kings, along with William II and various venerated bishops.

The troops climb up to the chests and rifle through them callously, smashing some on the cold stone tiles. Observers watch in shock as the soldiers pick up the bones and hurl them at the beautifully crafted stained-glass windows that adorn the cathedral.

It is only hours later, recovering from their terror, that the clergy begin to pick through the detritus of the onslaught, attempting to return what remains to a safe place once again.

A tragic tale

Little could those 17th-century clerics have known that, some 370 years later, another group of people would be focussing their attentions on those very same bones. This time, the group would consist of archaeologists and anthropologists, not clergymen. And their mission? To work out exactly who the bones belong to.

If you visit Winchester Cathedral today, it is easy to miss the bone chests. But if you look up from the presbytery, you will see stone arches where six carved, painted and decorated wooden chests are placed.

Of the original 10 that were commissioned in the 1520s, six were smashed by the parliamentarians, and four remain. The other two are replacements made around 1661.

The chests’ history is an extraordinary and at times tragic one. And to tell the story of those interred in them is, to a large extent, to tell the story of early England.

Each chest sports a painted Latin inscription giving the names of the people whose bones allegedly rest within. Thanks to these chests, Winchester is the English location that boasts the most pre-Conquest royals gathered in one place. Yet when you dig into their history, it is clear that the listed names cannot tell the full story.

Written records cite names of others whose remains may have become jumbled up inside the chests – more kings and several other churchmen, including Stigend, archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century.

But why here? The answer is partly that the cathedral was then, and remains today, the jewel in Winchester’s crown – but also that the city was once the nucleus of the country. We know that what was probably Winchester’s first church was built in the seventh century, during the rule of Cenwealh of Wessex, son of King Cynegils – the oldest of the names listed on the chests.

These were the settlement’s fledgling years, as it sprouted among the ruins of a former Roman town. Soon, however, it became a major religious and political centre – capital of Wessex, one of the kingdoms that rapidly grew to prominence during the second half of the first millennium. Wessex was also the kingdom where, in the early 10th century, the country of England was formed.

Remarkably, those buried in the chests include Cnut the Great, the Scandinavian king who ruled England for 19 years as part of a wider North Sea empire. So what can those chests tell us about how the Vikings turned from raiders to rulers? To answer that question, we have to backtrack to the eighth century.

Although the 793 raid on Lindisfarne is often assumed to be the first Viking assault on England, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that, in the late 780s, three shiploads of pagans attacked Portland, on Wessex’s southern shores. The next part of the story is well known: the Vikings subjected the people of Britain to decades of assaults.

Yet the real impact of their raiding on south-west England doesn’t become completely apparent until the time of Alfred the Great, in the late ninth century. It is Alfred who is credited with defeating the Vikings – temporarily, at least – at the battle of Edington in 878.

Some time afterwards, Alfred signed a treaty with the Scandinavian leader Guthrum, dividing the land: some would be ruled by the English, some under Danish law. Alfred’s own descendants were to reign over Wessex and, subsequently, all of England, until 1013.

It was in AD 901, two years after Alfred’s death, that the initial minster church in Winchester was joined by a new monastic foundation, which was founded by Alfred’s eldest son, Edward. It seems that this minster (or the New Minster, as it was soon called) was built to provide a burial place for Edward’s family.

Edward may also have wanted the building to send out a message to the world: though the West Saxon kingdom of his grandfather, Æthelwulf, and great-grandfather, Ecgberht, was powerful and extensive, it was Alfred – and, by extension, Edward – whose rule was the launchpad for something much bigger: a fledgling united England.

Grave concern

All the while, the curation of bones remained a significant part of the story. Edward moved his father’s remains into the new church, using his possession of them to assert his political power. If we understand graves as memorial devices designed to be read by the living, Edward’s handling of his father’s bones helped him to keep Alfred’s legacy relevant and in people’s minds.

The bones of saints were treated in a similar way, too. Take Saint Swithun, who became one of the best-known Anglo-Saxon saints across England and parts of Europe. The remains of this ninth-century bishop of Winchester were moved twice – the first time on Saturday 15 July 971. That ‘translation’ (moving ceremony) was a spectacular event; nothing at the same scale had ever taken place in England before.

According to a later legend, those who sought to catch a glimpse of the ceremony as it unfolded in Winchester that day were soaked by a heavy rain shower. That downpour birthed the widely held superstition that if it rains on Saint Swithun’s Day (15 July) it will rain for the next 40 days.

Despite Alfred’s famous victory at Edington, Wessex hadn’t decisively rid itself of the Vikings. In the 980s, only a short time into the reign of Æthelred Unræd (‘ill-advised’), Scandinavian raids on England began again in earnest after a long period of relative peace.

Over the next two decades, the constant threat of Viking invaders must have weighed heavily not just on the king’s mind but also on those of his people. Remarkably, this seems to have coincided with something of a golden age for the English church. Estates that had been taken from churches were restored to them; new churches were built; others were furnished with books and treasures; and people were recruited into religious life.

All of this may have been a direct response to the Vikings’ incursions: there was a widespread belief that the invasions were God’s punishment for misdeeds and a lack of devotion to Christianity.

God on their side?

Between 995 and 1002, a large number of saintly relics were moved from one place to another, both to appease God and to ensure their safety in the event of a raid. In the end, however, Æthelred’s efforts were in vain.

In 1013, Danish leader Swein Forkbeard invaded England. Swein died just a few months later, but his success paved the way for his son, Cnut, to launch his own invasion in 1015, and defeat Æthelred’s son, Edmund Ironside, at the battle of Assandun the following year.

Cnut’s rule of England is remarkably poorly remembered and under-appreciated. Not only did he preside over an extensive North Sea empire from his base in Winchester, he also ushered in a period of relative peace and prosperity for England, not least because he was able to keep other Viking invaders at bay.

Far from being a brutal pagan warlord, Cnut was a devout Christian and a highly capable ruler who used saintly cults and relics to his own advantage. After his victory at Assandun, Cnut seized the relics of the local saint Wendreda (which had been carried into the battle by the monks of Ely) and had them moved to Canterbury: he could then claim that Wendreda’s failure to make a saintly intervention and stop her bones from being moved implied divine support for the Scandinavian invaders. Cnut even supported the cult of Saint Edmund, the East Anglian ruler killed by the Great Army in 869.

Power woman

Perhaps a key reason why Cnut’s remains were allowed to remain in Winchester after his death in 1035 relates to his wife, Emma. The daughter of a Norman, Richard I, and Danish-descended Gunnor, Emma had Scandinavian ancestry on both sides of the family.

In 1002, she was sent to England to become Æthelred’s second wife. After that king’s death, Cnut took Emma as his own bride, and together the two ruled England, Norway and Denmark. Two of Emma’s sons – Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor – later ruled England in their own right, too. Emma was also the great-aunt of William the Conqueror – a fact that he used some decades later to help justify his own right to the English throne.

When the current cathedral in Winchester, begun during the Conqueror’s reign, was dedicated in 1093, an important part of the process was the relocation of Saint Swithun’s relics to the new edifice. In the same year, Old Minster was demolished and the remains of Emma, Cnut and the other sacred kings were also moved to the new cathedral.

In 2012, more than 900 years after the bones of Emma and Cnut had made that short journey, the chests were reopened for the first time in decades. A team of researchers then got to work.

Using techniques such as ancient DNA (which can now be carried out on ever smaller fragmented remains), isotope analysis (which can give clues to geographical origins) and refined radiocarbon dating, they aimed to identify the remains contained within.

Preliminary results were released in 2019 – and one of them was particularly surprising. It’s traditionally been believed that the chests contain 12 individuals – yet the new research suggests that in fact they house the remains of no fewer than 23 people.

Among the remains are those of a woman. Could this be Emma? The physical characteristics match descriptions of her, and there are very few other women in the records who could fit the bill. Another surprise was the discovery of two adolescent boys – perhaps Norman æthelings, sons of noble or even royal blood.

A key to understanding why these bones were preserved for such a long time lies in the stories of those who worked to protect them over the years. In the 12th century, Winchester’s bishop Henry of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror, had burials gathered from different locations around the cathedral.

Yet as 15th-century historian Thomas Rudborne wrote: “It was not known who were kings, and who were bishops, since names were not written on the tombs.” For this reason, Rudborne noted, Henry placed the remains in lead sarcophagi: “Kings with bishops and bishops with kings, all completely mixed up.” So when, in the 16th century, Bishop Fox had new chests made, it seems the bones were already in disarray. The Civil War raid in 1642 only made the situation worse.

Will we now, with 21st-century methods, be able to identify those remains once and for all? Science is unlikely to be a silver bullet – but perhaps, by untangling their complex history, we will begin to understand how those bones helped to create England.

You can listen to Cat Jarman speak to Dr David Musgrove on the podcast here. This article was first published in the November 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine