Alfred the Great's Remains Possibly Under a Parking Lot in Winchester

Researcher Graham Phillips claims that the bones of Alfred the Great, the 9th-century King of Wessex, are buried under a parking lot in Winchester, England. This follows a long history of the king's remains being moved multiple times after his death in 899. Initially interred at Old Minster, then moved to New Minster by his son Edward the Elder, and later to Hyde Abbey around 1110, the bones were supposedly lost after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1788, a prison was built on the abbey site, and in the 1860s, antiquarian John Mellor claimed to have excavated and reburied the bones at Saint Bartholomew's Church. However, 2013 radiocarbon dating by the University of Winchester showed those bones were not Alfred's. Phillips found an 1800 journal article at Cambridge University with a map indicating where bones were reburied during prison construction, now a parking lot. He hopes for a non-invasive radar survey. Meanwhile, osteoarchaeologist Katie Tucker identified a pelvic bone from Hyde Abbey, radiocarbon-dated to 895-1017 CE, possibly belonging to Alfred or Edward the Elder. Phillips' theory is not independently verified.