Residents of an historic Wiltshire town were left in awe when a National Lottery-funded archaeological dig turned up countless treasures in their gardens - some dating back centuries.
The picturesque market town of Malmesbury is believed to be the resting place of King Athelstan - grandson of Alfred the Great - who had a special relationship with the town. Deeply pious, he collected saints’ relics from across Europe and gifted part of the so-called true cross that Jesus was crucified on to Malmesbury Abbey, which was founded in 675.
During his reign from 924 to 939, Athelstan united the Anglo-Saxons, defeated the Vikings and became the first king of England after seizing control of Northumbria. He was the first monarch to be coronated using a crown, and also the first to be shown on a coin wearing the crown to denote his authority.
To celebrate the 1,100th anniversary of Athelstan becoming king, the town came together to dig deep into its own foundations. Built along the River Avon, Malmesbury was popular during the Middle Ages as a heavily populated commercial hub, where farmers could bring livestock to market and artisans produced fabric and clothing using wool from sheep grazing nearby.
Long before that it was a Roman settlement - a hoard of coins has been found outside the town, while the remains of an Iron Age settlement were discovered when the new was being built.
It meant that when the opportunity came to have parts of the town dug up in the hunt for buried treasure, several homeowners offered up their gardens. Thirteen sites were selected and the exact locations carefully selected and marked out with rope before volunteers got digging over the Athelstan Big Dig weekend in June.
Alison Lewis, 80, and husband Michael, 81, were thrilled when historians from Cotswold Archeology picked their garden - a stone’s throw from the historic Malmesbury Abbey - as one of the plots. “They wanted to dig under my beans,” grumbles Michael, good-naturedly. “It was the only thing I was allowed to plant this year!”
It was just as well he relented, as under his beans were a stash of one-time use clay pipes - the Victorian forerunner to vapes. Rare mediaeval floor tiles were also discovered, some still with the glaze used to protect them from floor traffic, and are thought to have come from the abbey itself.
The diggers, including school children and local people, were amazed to uncover stone walls about a metre below the Lewis’ garden, thought to be part of outbuildings belonging to the abbey. Buried close to one wall was the skeleton of a dog. “We think it was a beloved pet, perhaps a terrier, that was buried wearing a collar and tag,” says archaeologist Liam Wilson.
On the other side of the vast abbey’s footprint is Jackie Peel’s garden, where her new rose bed was chosen as a digging plot. Volunteers uncovered pieces of broken pottery from the past Victorian owners, as well as clay pipes and buttons. “I couldn’t believe this was all here under my garden,” she laughs. “They put the soil back afterwards but I’ve been digging it up myself since then to see what else I can find!”
Having their own town’s history brought to the surface was inspirational - and some of the older teens involved have now gone to university to study history themselves. “Athelstan’s got a really special relationship with Malmesbury, it was where he chose to be buried even though he died in Gloucester,” says Campbell Ritchie, leader of the Athelstan 1100 project, which coordinated the dig.
“One of his heroes was a chap called St Aldhelm, who set up the first abbey here in 675 and Athelstan followed his teachings. He saw Malmesbury as a place that represented the borders of Wessex and Mercia. It’s one of the very few places in England where you can tell a story from each period of history. Essentially it’s still an Anglo-Saxon town in layout, so we’re walking along the same roads that an Anglo-Saxon would have done. We thought, we must have things underneath our feet.”
Some townsfolk can even touch history. One home still houses the remains of a single-celled Anglo-Saxon chapel, dedicated to St Helen - mother of the Roman emperor Constantine and the woman said to have found Jesus’ true cross - while another on the adjacent plot has a large cornerstone on the outer wall bearing a ‘scratch dial’ - the precursor to modern-day clocks which used the sun’s rays to show what time the next Mass was.
Athelstan never married or had children, yet King Charles III is related to him all these centuries later through Athelstan’s half-brother and successor, Edmund. While his bloodline stopped with him, many of Athelstan’s laws remained in place as his legacy - including his care for the poor and raising the age at which thieves could be executed from ten to 15.
He also pursued relations with Europe, welcoming princes from the continent to join his court as part of their education, and marrying his female relatives strategically to form careful alliances. In the nearby village of Long Newnton, villagers celebrated Athelstan’s gift of the village common - where they could forage and graze their livestock - up until the 17th century.
Disappointingly for some, the body of King Athelstan himself still hasn’t been found. With the discovery of Richard III under a car park in Leicester in 2012, and the potential grave of 12th century ruler Henry I under Reading Prison’s car park, some had been hoping their own monarch might turn up during the dig.
“We know he was buried in the predecessor abbey to the building we’ve got now,” says Campbell. “There was a big Anglo-Saxon church there called St Mary’s where he was brought to be buried. That was knocked down 200 years after his death to make way for the new abbey. When they were demolishing it they did open up Athelstan’s coffin to have a look.”
According to the 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury, Athelstan’s remains showed him to be of medium size and height, and still with his fair hair intact and golden threads from his clothes. “You’ve got to assume he was put in the new abbey, but probably in a bit that no longer exists,” says Campbell. “So quite what happened over all those hundreds of years and during the time of the Reformation is open to guesswork.”
King Athelstan’s tomb remains inside the abbey, although it, too, has been through the wars. Rebuilt towards the end of the 14th century with a new stone sarcophagus to attract pilgrims - and their money - to the town, it was then torn down during the Dissolution in Henry VIII’s reign. The tomb was re-erected in a different part of the abbey, but Athelstan’s likeness was later destroyed by Parliamentary soldiers during the Civil War in the 1640s. After the war, locals paid for a new stone head to be placed on the tomb, and it was finally moved again in the 1920s when the building was being renovated.
No matter where his physical remains might be now, Athelstan’s legacy lives on in the town - and farther away.
“He’s been largely forgotten. People now think our history starts in 1066,” says Campbell. “But before Athelstan, there was no England. After him, there was always going to be an England. And despite threats from the Vikings and raiders, after Athelstan England was always going to be a Christian country. He had a huge impact on our society and he deserves to be remembered.”
And, hopefully, one day, his remains will be found.
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