Finding one dead king under a car park may be considered a fluke. Finding two could be seen as a very peculiar habit.
Yet this may prove to be the case for historian Philippa Langley.
Through a combination of meticulous research and what she calls a ‘strange sensation’, in 2012 Philippa famously identified the very spot in a Leicester car park beneath which lay the skeleton of the 15th-century king, Richard III.
Now Philippa believes King Henry I, who was Richard’s predecessor by nearly four centuries, may have met a similarly undignified fate.
Using the same critical combination of research and analysis that drew her to the final resting place of the last Plantagenet king, she is convinced that Henry’s earthly remains lie underneath the grey tarmac of — wait for it — a Ministry of Justice-owned car park at Reading Prison.
Finding one dead king under a car park may be considered a fluke. Finding two could be seen as a very peculiar habit. Yet this may prove to be the case for historian Philippa Langley (pictured)
Through a combination of meticulous research and what she calls a ‘strange sensation’, in 2012 Philippa famously identified the very spot in a Leicester car park beneath which lay the skeleton of the 15th century king, Richard III (pictured)
Somewhat fittingly, she believes he is buried under a parking area marked on a survey with the letter ‘K’.
It is one reason the 60-year-old — whose dedication to finding Richard III’s grave earned her an MBE and led to her efforts being portrayed in the 2022 film, The Lost King — has formed the ‘Hidden Abbey’ project to help raise funds for the estimated £55,000 cost of a local dig at the site of the prison, which was closed in 2013 and is now awaiting redevelopment.
‘There are powerful arguments for the location of the king’s grave here,’ she told the Mail yesterday. ‘It is therefore my contention that not only do we have another king in a car park in Reading, but that K is for king.’
It is a bold claim, but as we have seen, Philippa has impressive form. After becoming fascinated with Richard III in the late 1990s, she spent years trying to identify his exact burial spot, and became convinced that the site lay within a council-owned car park in Leicester.
Initially unlikely as that seemed, the car park stood on the spot once occupied by the church of the Greyfriars, a 13th century monastic friary, where Richard was buried following his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.
Philippa’s conviction was reinforced when she visited the site in 2004, and when, standing over an area labelled R — for Reserved Parking — she found herself shaking and came out in goosebumps.
‘It had never happened before that,’ she says. ‘Whenever I was standing in that area, I would get the feeling.’
Convinced she had identified where Richard’s remains lay, in 2009 Philippa formed the Looking For Richard Project, lobbying Leicester Council to support an excavation and launching a crowdfunding mission to reach the £33,000 she needed for a dig.
Finally, on August 25, 2012, the 527th anniversary of Richard’s death, a trench was dug under the spot where she had been seized by her conviction eight years earlier.
Hours later the remains of a skeleton were uncovered, which, following extensive genetic and anthropological testing, were finally confirmed as belonging to Richard III.
It was an extraordinary feat of detective work — not to mention a defining moment in the city of Leicester’s history.
And now Philippa believes her research may have identified the final resting spot of the only English monarch since William the Conqueror to have no definitively identifiable grave.
Henry was William the Conqueror’s fourth son, and despite believing he would never inherit the throne, proved a decisive and ruthless ruler once he was crowned king in 1100 — two hunting accidents and a battle having seen off his older brothers.
A political opportunist and hard-hearted, Henry I is famed for holding the record for the largest number of acknowledged illegitimate children born to any English king, with around 20 to 25 offspring born outside wedlock.
His strategy was to marry off his illegitimate daughters to various lords and princes, creating an extended family circle to promote his interests.
This, however, did not mean he was averse to some medieval barbarism: in 1119, he allowed his granddaughters via one illegitimate daughter, Juliana, to be mutilated — they were blinded and had the tips of their noses cut off — in order to settle a political squabble.
His reign was also marked by heartbreak. In 1120, 17-year-old William Adelin, Henry’s only legitimate son and heir by his wife, Matilda, drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Normandy.
And now Philippa believes her research may have identified the final resting spot of the only English monarch since William the Conqueror to have no definitively identifiable grave – Henry I (pictured)
Fifteen years later, Henry fell ill while hunting in Normandy after eating ‘a surfeit of’ lampreys (an ancient form of jawless fish) and died on December 1, 1135.
His body was taken to Rouen, where his entrails were buried, and his embalmed corpse was returned to England. Historical records show it was interred at Reading Abbey, founded by the King 14 years earlier ‘for the salvation of my soul’.
On this, historians are largely agreed — yet the exact location of Henry’s burial has continued to be a source of robust discussion, not least because the Abbey has gone through numerous changes since the day it was built.
Largely destroyed in 1538 under Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, the Abbey was then used as both a town hall and a school until, in 1844, Reading Gaol was built on the eastern side of the site.
Inmates included the playwright Oscar Wilde, who in 1895 was famously imprisoned for ‘gross indecency with other male persons’, and the American actor Stacy Keach, who in 1985 was sentenced to six months for cocaine smuggling.
The jail was closed in 1920, but continued to be used as a borstal for young offenders before becoming a local prison in 1972, and was finally closed in 2013.
Meanwhile a question mark hangs over the exact resting spot of its potentially most famous resident. In 1921, a plaque was erected over the area where the Abbey’s high altar — the area historical records indicate Henry I was buried — once stood.
Yet today, Philippa believes her calculations show the altar may have been moved at some point — so historians may have been looking in the wrong place.
‘We know from historic records that Henry I was buried in front of the (original) high altar at Reading Abbey, with Constance of York buried near him. Both would have been stone sarcophagus burials,’ she told the Mail.
‘From various reading of materials and recent experiences, it seems that the high altar may have been moved farther west within the abbey church at a later date.’
Philippa’s conviction led her to found the Hidden Abbey project to campaign for further investigation and, in 2016, a search by ground-penetrating radar revealed what looked to be two sarcophagus burials in the area where Philippa believes the original high altar stood in the spot she identified in the former prison car park.
‘Whether these are the burials of Henry I and Constance of York naturally forms one of the many research questions for the Hidden Abbey Project,’ she says.
It is why — following the recent 900th anniversary of the founding of the Abbey — she is renewing her campaign for a localised dig to establish once and for all whether another powerful king lies interred under a parking space.
Historian Nigel Jones is among those who supports the idea.
‘Evidence does point to the site of the old Abbey being Henry’s final resting place,’ he says.
‘Henry was a very important king who stabilised the kingdom after the Norman conquest, and I believe that finding his tomb would be almost as important as finding that of Richard III.
‘If bureaucracy and red tape can be overcome, then it might help to put Reading on the map, too.’
It’s a sentiment echoed by Philippa. ‘If the location of the burial place of Henry I is found, the aim is to place a memorial above ground,’ she says. ‘It will mean that Henry is no longer England’s forgotten king.’
Indeed not. Instead, he will go down in history as the second king to be uncovered in a car park.
