King Stephen Dead!

King Stephen died on 25th October 1154 at Dover.

He was buried at Faversham Abbey, alongside Queen Matilda and their son, Eustace.

King Stephen and his queen Matilda founded Faversham Abbey in 1148 as a place for royal worship and burials. Though almost nothing survives of it, the abbey dominated the town until Henry VIII’s Reformation in the sixteenth century.

During a 1965 excavation, the tombs were located, but no coffins or bodies were found. Southouse, a local antiquarian writing in 1671 records “when for the gain of the lead wherein this King’s body was incoffined his sacred Remains were dislodged and thrown into the neighbouring river”. This story has continued to be told within the town; however the archaeological evidence cannot prove or disprove this myth. The Trinity Chapel in St Mary of Charity church has a tomb in which the bodies of King Stephen and his family were said to be interred. Were they recovered from the ‘nearby river’ or did the Abbot and monks arrange for the reinterment at the time of the dissolution?