The long–lost remains of King Alfred the Great have been found buried under a car park, an investigator claims.
Alfred is widely recognised as one of the country’s most important rulers.
He was best known for defending Wessex against the Viking invaders, but he also laid the foundations for a unified English nation.
Despite his importance, the whereabouts of his final resting place have long been shrouded in mystery.
Over the last century, there have been several attempts to find the ruler and identify his final resting place, but all have proved inconclusive.
Now, author and historical researcher Graham Phillips claims to have discovered Alfred’s grave after a 13–year hunt.
And he says the location of the remains is just 20 yards from a scenic garden where Alfred was once thought to have been buried.
‘Bizarrely, like Richard III, the bones are under a car park,’ Mr Phillips said.
The long–lost remains of King Alfred the Great have been found buried under a car park, an investigator claims
Author and historical researcher Graham Phillips claims to have discovered Alfred’s grave after a 13–year hunt
Alfred was born in 849 and ruled from 871–99, and is the best known of all the Anglo–Saxon kings.
He was a gifted leader, warrior, strategist, scholar and administrator.
Alfred died in 899 of unknown causes, and his bones were repeatedly moved.
He was buried in Winchester Cathedral until 1110, when his remains were moved to Winchester’s Hyde Abbey where they were interred before the high altar between the bodies of his wife and son.
The abbey was demolished after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, and the place left in ruins.
In 1866, during construction of a workhouse on the site, the English antiquarian John Mellor excavated the area and found what he thought were Alfred’s bones.
As a result, he had them reburied at nearby St. Bartholomew’s Church.
But in 2013, when archaeologists exhumed and carbon dated the bones from St. Bartholomew’s churchyard, they proved to date from over 200 years after Alfred’s death – sparking Mr Phillips’ interest and search.
Alfred was born in 849 and ruled from 871–99, and is the best known of all the Anglo–Saxon kings. Pictured: the King Alfred statue in Winchester
The location is set to be revealed for the first time in a new episode of the British television series Weird Britain, on Blaze TV this Wednesday, 8 July 2026, at 9pm. Pictured: presenter Andy McGrath
He said: ‘Whoever’s bones they were, they weren’t Alfred’s.
‘So, I decided to discover what happened to them.
‘The quest has taken me 13 years.’
With the presumption of Alfred’s bones having perished during the building of the workhouse in the 1860s, Winchester city council turned the Hyde Abbey site into a scenic garden with the locations of what had been Alfred’s grave, and that of his wife and son, marked with stone slabs.
Mr Phillips, however, believes he has found evidence that the bones of all three of them had already been moved a few decades before the 1860s.
He explained: ‘I discovered that in 1788 a prison was built next to the area, and the site where graves were was turned into a garden for the warden’s house.
‘I’m convinced the original bones were moved at that time.’
In the late 1700s, English historian Henry Howard visited Richard Page, the warden responsible for the work at the Hyde Abbey site, to obtain plans of the ruins that existed before the prison was built.
In the late 1700s, English historian Henry Howard visited Richard Page, the warden responsible for the work at the Hyde Abbey site, to obtain plans of the ruins that existed before the prison was built. Pictured: Westgate Museum in Winchester
And it was while Phillips was searching for a copy of that plan in the archives of Cambridge University that he made what he describes as an astonishing discovery.
He added: ‘Howard had written an article about Hyde Abbey published in Volume 13 of Archaeologia, the journal of the London Society of Antiquaries, in 1800.
‘In it, he refers to prisoners employed to landscape the warden’s new garden unearthing bones which were reburied nearby, even including a map.’
The location is set to be revealed for the first time in a new episode of the British television series Weird Britain, on Blaze TV this Wednesday, 8 July 2026, at 9pm.
