Bone stored in UK museum may belong to King Alfred the Great
Barely a year since the remains of Richard III were found beneath a Leicester car park, historians believe that a bone stored in a box in Winchester City Museum is that of Alfred the Great, or his son, Edward the Elder.
An article featured in the UK Mail Online describes how the pelvic bone, originally excavated from the grounds of Hyde Abbey in Winchester, has remained hidden in a musty box since 1999.
Human osteology researcher Dr Katie Tucker says although the bone offers the potential for DNA extraction, the problem would be finding another DNA source to check it against.
“We have had quite a number of individuals who have been contacting us, sending us their family trees, saying they are descendants of Alfred,” she said.
Although this is an option worth following, Tucker says, “… it’s always going to be more of a difficult task to find a descendant”.
Prior to the recent discovery of the bone, it was widely believed that King Alfred’s remains lay in an unmarked grave at St Bartholomew’s Church after his original burial place in New Minster was demolished in the 12th century.
Alfred’s body and those of his successors were reinterred in Hyde Abbey in 1110, but exhumed in 1788 when a prison was built on the abbey site. Convicts employed to build the prison looted the coffins and scattered the bones around the site.
Carbon dating puts the bone as dating back to 895 to 1017, which correlates with the king’s death in 899.
King Alfred the Great ruled Wessex from 871 to 899 and was famous for fending off Viking invasions, protecting the English language and defending Christianity.