Coffin in a Coffin

A mysterious lead coffin found close to King Richard III’s grave beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England, contained the skeleton of an elderly woman, archaeologists at Leicester University announced.

Featuring an inlaid crucifix, carefully soldered on all sides but with feet sticking out of the bottom, the lead coffin was discovered inside a larger limestone sarcophagus in August 2013. The discovery came one year after the battle-scarred remains of the last Plantagenet king of England, the family ruled vast areas of Europe were unearthed.

Radiocarbon dating suggests the lady in the lead casket might have died as late as 1400, although it's much more likely she was buried in the last half of the 13th century, long before Richard III’s death at the Battle of Bosworth.

Although her sarcophagus was the first intact medieval stone coffin unearthed in the area, it wasn’t the only grave found at the site. Nine other burials were identified beneath the car park, which was basically the site of Grey Friars Church, the medieval friary of the Franciscans known to have been Richard III’s final resting place.

Established in around 1250, the friary was demolished in 1538, as part of King Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries.

“There is the potential for hundreds more burials elsewhere inside the church, the other friary buildings and outside in the cemetery,” said Grey Friars site director Mathew Morris, who led the dig.

The mysterious coffin-within-a-coffin prompted various speculations about the individual it contained. All suggested it was a male.

The guessing game included two leaders of the English Grey Friars order, Peter Swynsfeld, who died in 1272, and William of Nottingham, who died in 1330.

“We speculated that this grave might be for one of them. To find that it contained a woman was intriguing and to some extent frustrating for we know much less about the women associated with the friary than the men,” Morris told media reports.