Actress uncovers 500-year-old church vault by accident

An amateur actress uncovered a 500-year-old long-lost vault at a historic church after accidentally putting her foot through the floor tiles during rehearsals.

Kathy Mills exposed the entrance to the secret chamber that had been hidden for centuries as she rehearsed a scene for an upcoming production of the musical Quasimodo at St Mary's Church, in Redgrave, Suffolk.

She dislodged a marble flagstone near the altar of the 14th century building and her foot vanished into a dark void below.

Mrs Mills, who is in her 60s, suffered a swollen ankle.

But she was amazed to be told she had uncovered a mystery tomb containing coffins thought to contain the remains of the village's aristocracy stretching back centuries.

Just weeks before a geophysicist had used state-of-the-art radar to map out where the long-forgotten vault was.

But if it was not for Mrs Mills' intervention experts would still be seeking the hidden entrance.

The church is now hosting an open weekend to give the public a chance to glimpse through the hole and see exactly what they have been walking above over the years.

Mrs Mills, of Redgrave, said: "I was just doing a rehearsal for the production and I walked onto the flagstone, whether it was already loose I'm not sure, but my foot went down.

"They lifted it up (the flagstone) and you could just see some mud and sand underneath. It's possible my foot went down eight inches. I wondered where I was going. It was quite a shock.

"I was thrilled when they told me I had discovered this vault they did not know was there. One or two people have now started calling me the Tomb Raider."

Rumours had been rife for decades that an intriguing labyrinth of passages and tombs lay under the ancient slabs of the church, now owned by The Churches Conservation Trust.

Bob Hayward, chairman of Redgrave Church Heritage Trust, said stories had passed through the generations of how people walked through the tunnels as recently as the 1920s, but records of their existence cannot be found.

In a bid to establish fact from fiction, the group employed Malcolm Weale, of Geofizz Ltd, from East Harling, near Thetford, Norfolk, two months ago to analyse what lay below.

Using ground-penetrating radar, Mr Weale identified a large space, about 6ft deep, extending under the altar and into the adjacent vestry.

Trust bosses were set to leave it at that until Mrs Mills dramatically put her foot in it last week.

The damaged flagstones were lifted up and a light lowered down.

A tunnel was discovered with a set of steps descending into the ground visible in one direction and a cluster of about six coffins tucked inside a dark chamber in the other.

It appears timbers holding up the floor tiles had rotted.

Mr Hayward said: "It's exciting. You think you know these places but you don~t until something like this happens."

The coffins are thought to belong to descendents of the local ruling Holt family.

Sir John Holt became lord of the manor in 1703 and an imposing memorial to his life sits above the newly uncovered vault.

But the chamber is believed to have been built deep in the 1500s by the Bacon family although their remains are located in another tomb beneath the church~s font.

Archaeologists plan to go down into the vault at the end of the year to assess if any of the other supporting timbers are rotten and to record what's inside but they will leave the coffins as they are.

St Mary's Church will be open to the public this Saturday and Sunday, between 10am and 4pm, where a video camera will beam images from inside the vault onto a projector screen.

The church boasts Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, King Henry VIII's famous and powerful chancellor, among its illustrious former rectors.

via Actress uncovers 500-year-old church vault by accident - Telegraph.