prof dame sue black Archives - Wardlaw Mausoleum

Followers of our story will recall that Sue Black sent the sternum (breast) bone from the remains of the young lady that we found in Simon the Fox’s coffin to Dr. Ceiridwen Edwards, Senior Research Fellow in Archaeogenetics at the University of Huddersfield, to see if she could recover DNA. Even though this was the bone in the best condition from the coffin, it was still in a very poor state of preservation, as were the other remaining bones. This was due to chemical reactions from microbes in the body, the lead, timber and fabric of the coffin, and also the air, given that the coffin had been forced open, possibly in the hunt for jewellery or physical souvenirs of Lord Lovat. Fear of such souvenir hunters may explain why there are reports of the skull being removed from the coffin and placed in a separate wooden box in the crypt. The box is reported as late as the 1960’s...

There was an interesting post from Sarah Fraser recently – did the coffin we examined belong to Simon the Fox? It is a double lead coffin, the type Prof Sue Black told us was used when bodies are to be transported a long distance, such as from London to Kirkhill. The other coffins appear to be single layer lead coffins as can be seen from the photos below. These were taken by our architect and Trustee Fred Geddes in the early 1990’s when the restoration project was being planned. At that time the outer lid of the coffin was bent back, showing how much the coffin had been interfered with and how easy it would have been to place other bones from a graveyard or crypt tidy-up in the coffin. Now that the lid has been pressed flat again we can see the shadow outline of a name plate with a screw hole in each corner. The size of the nameplate...

Tag: prof dame sue black

Results of Bone Analysis on the Headless Lady in the Coffin

Did we open the right coffin?