Talk - Malling Downs skeletons

In April 2005, on a section of Malling Down just off Mill Road, it was discovered that rabbits were unearthing bits of human bone. The ESCC archaeological group was called in to investigate, with help from other local societies, under the guidance of Greg Chuter. “We dug the area and found six headless skeletons, all of which had had their hands tied behind their backs. They had almost certainly been executed,” he tells me. But several unanswered questions remained unsolved. Who were they? Why and when had they been killed? And, of course, whodunnit? Chuter knew of an excavation in 1973, done by the late Richard Lewis on the same hillside, which had found 12 bodies, all with their hands similarly tied. Chuter and his team found nails on the site Lewis had left as markers, and realised they were dealing with the same mass grave.

“The skeletons found in the seventies all had their heads, so we surmised that our bodies’ heads had been carried off by rabbits,” he says. “They had probably not been beheaded, as many people presumed. Because skulls are round, rabbits find it easier to carry them off down their burrows than long bones.” “The bodies were washed and cleaned and sent off for a post excavation examination by a bone expert. We already knew that the bodies were all of young men, and that they were all well built.” This was also the case with the skeletons found previously by Lewis. “Many people assumed at the time that they had been killed during the Battle of Lewes, but the bones were dated to between 850AD to 950AD, so knew we were dealing with a completely different period.”