Another English king may lurk beneath the country’s placid sea of asphalt and cement.
The remains of Richard III were found three years ago beneath a parking lot (confirmed as the reviled monarch by comparison with the DNA of his descendants), and Henry I may be the next car park king unearthed.
Henry ruled in the early 12th century and was the first Norman king to learn English. Searchers hope to find his bones in the ruins of Reading Abbey, which he founded in 1121, and whose true extent, obscured by centuries of development, is its own archeological mystery.
“The thinking in Reading, using current estimates of the size of the abbey, is that this burial spot is located beneath a school,” Langley told BBC History Magazine.
“If the abbey is larger, it could be situated underneath either what is today a playground or a car park.”
The discovery of the body of Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty and the last English king to die in battle in 1485, under a council car park in Leicester, central England, is considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of recent British history.
His body was re-buried in Leicester Cathedral in March at a somber ceremony which attracted global interest.
Reading Abbey now looks like the photo below, but was once a sprawling complex covering several blocks of modern Reading.
Reading Abbey. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Pastscape hosts resources detailing its extent.
Using a historical map of the abbey, I’ve made a rough GIF that illustrates the scale of the hunt:
