wfgodot
Former Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2009
- Messages
- 30,166
- Reaction score
- 731
Interesting little mystery, with the story - plus lots of pictures and a video and two sidebars- at the Daily Mail link:
Mystery of the missing coffins: Who stole the remains of FIFTEEN members of aristocratic family from cathedral tomb?
Mystery of the missing coffins: Who stole the remains of FIFTEEN members of aristocratic family from cathedral tomb?
A historical mystery has been uncovered at Sheffield Cathedral after 15 aristocratic bodies disappeared from the crypt.
In the Tudor era, the Earl of Shrewsbury built a special chapel to house the bodies of his descendants - but 500 years later, nearly all of them have gone missing.
The body-snatching whodunnit was only revealed last week, when archaeologists opened up the sealed crypt and found 15 fewer bodies than they had expected.
---
The most obvious solution to the puzzle might seem to be grave-snatching, but the fact that the heavy lead coffins are missing as well as the corpses themselves would seem to suggest that this was not the case.
Archaeologists are exploring the possibility that the crypt harbours a secret wall concealing the true location of the bodies.
---
Cathedral officials are now collaborating with historians from the University of Sheffield in an effort to crack the mystery and hunt down the bodies.
---