In Search of Alfred the Great

Attempts to find Alfred the Great

Following the destruction of the site during the construction of the County Bridewell in the 1780s, there have been many (and as yet unsuccessful) attempts to find Alfred over the years.

In 1866, John Mellor, an antiquarian, claimed to have excavated the bones of the royal household from the site of Hyde Abbey. Mellor sold the bones for ten shillings and the Rector William Williams of Saint Bartholomew’s Church in Hyde, reinterred them in brick-lined vault, with two stone slabs covering it, under a ledger stone with a cross but no other markings or names. 

2010 marked the 900th anniversary of the establishment of Hyde Abbey and the translation to Hyde of the royal remains. To mark the occasion, a group of local residents set up Hyde900 to organise events to celebrate the history of the area, including a re-enactment of the procession which brought the royal bones to Hyde. 

With so much focus on the legacy on the Abbey, the question was raised whether advantage should be taken of the latest technology to test Mellor's claims and examine the bones in the unmarked grave.

With the encouragement of Revd. Canon Cliff Bannister and the support of the University of Winchester, a ‘faculty petition’ (a request for permission) to exhume the bones in the unmarked grave was submitted to the Diocese of Winchester.

In 2013, osteoarchaeologist Dr Katie Tucker led a team of archaeologists from the University of Winchester to exhume the bones in the unmarked grave. They found that the bones came from at least six individuals but radiocarbon dating revealed that the skeletons dated from about 1100 to 1500 AD, so could not include Alfred.