Skeleton in a Roman Stone Coffin May Be a Medieval Abbot, New Study Says

A skeleton buried inside a fourth-century Roman stone coffin at Westminster Abbey in London was probably a medieval abbot, a new study argues. The abbey announced the findings on Wednesday 21 October 2026, under the headline "Mystery of Abbey's Roman sarcophagus solved."

The coffin, called a sarcophagus, is made of limestone and carries a Latin inscription to a man named Valerius Amandinus. It was found in 1820 and excavated in 1869 from a grassy strip on the north side of the abbey's nave, the long central part of the church. That spot was once the yard of the Great Sacristy, a room where church items were kept, built under King Henry III.

The new study was written by Warwick Rodwell, the abbey's consultant archaeologist, and published in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association. Rodwell argues that the coffin first sat in a recess in a mausoleum wall, a tomb-like structure. He believes it was moved into the new sacristy courtyard around 1258, after Henry III rebuilt the abbey in the 1240s.

The skeleton is much younger than the stone. Radiocarbon dating, which measures the decay of carbon in old bone, was carried out by the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre. It placed the bone between 987 and 1052 CE, during the late Anglo-Saxon period, the years before the Norman Conquest of 1066.

The bones also reveal something about the man. Analysis showed he was about 5 feet 9 inches (175 centimetres) tall and died aged between 35 and 49. Rodwell concluded that he was of high status and almost certainly a church official. He points to a large cross carved across the lid of the coffin as a sign of that rank.

Rodwell names two candidates. The first is Abbot AElfwig, who died around 1020 after leading the abbey for 27 years. The second is his successor, Abbot Wulfnoth, who died around 1049. Westminster was a Benedictine monastery, a community of monks following the rules of St Benedict, at the time of both men.

Rodwell favours AElfwig. He writes that AElfwig had already been a monk at Westminster, which may make him the more likely occupant. The abbey's announcement points the same way, saying that the person was buried with honour in a "fine sarcophagus," a clue that the skeleton belonged to an abbot.

What makes the find stand out is the gap in time. A Roman coffin, carved more than 600 years before the bones were laid in it, was clearly reused for a later burial. For visitors who walk the grass beside the abbey, the discovery turns an overlooked patch of ground into a window on the building's long history.

The abbey's headline calls the matter solved. The study itself names two possible abbots and makes a case for one of them, so the identity remains a well-argued theory rather than a confirmed name.