Riddle of Cromwell's head

From the archive, first published Tuesday 3rd Mar 1998.

OXFORD seems to have finally lost out in the 300-year-old mystery of Oliver Cromwell's head.

Scientists are now almost certain that the real skull is at his old Cambridge college, Sidney Sussex.

Debate has raged for centuries over the whereabouts of the Roundhead leader's skull, with at least three competing for the honour.

Until now, one of the likeliest candidates was a skull inherited by Benjamin Jowett, the 19th century philosopher and former Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

But tests comparing it with a Cromwell death mask from the Ashmolean Museum, in Oxford, suggest it cannot be his.

The new findings mean Cromwell's head is almost certainly one buried in a biscuit tin in Cambridge in 1960.

The burial place of the head - given to the college by the Wilkinsons, a Suffolk family - is kept secret, in case it is dug up by latter-day supporters or enemies.

Dr Louise Scheuer, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Anatomy at London's Royal Free Hospital, carried out tests on the 'Oxford' head after it was taken from its storage place in Canterbury and reunited with a death mask kept at the Ashmolean Museum.

Dr Scheuer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that her suspicions were aroused when she found that the skull's dimensions did not remotely fit those of the death mask.

She also found that the skull was made up of the remains of two people - the lower jaw did not match the rest of the head.

Dr Scheuer said: "The first thing I noticed was that the skull and lower jaw did not belong together. "We then compared the skull with an authenticated death mask of Cromwell and when we took measurements across the top of the skull in the region of the eyes we found a large discrepancy between the size of the death mask where the eyes were and the width of the nose.

"There was a discrepancy of at least one-and-a-half centimetres and that's a lot on the width of the skull. So as the mask had been authenticated, the skull, even the top part could not have been that of Cromwell."

The saga of the three Cromwell heads is thought to be evidence of a small and gruesome 18th century cottage industry which fabricated heads, complete with murderous spike holes.

One skull displayed at the Ashmolean Museum for decades was thrown out 100 years ago after it was found not to match the death mask.

At the restoration of Charles II in 1660, the embalmed body of Oliver Cromwell, who died of a fever in 1658, was disinterred from his grave in Westminster Abbey on January 26, 1661, and hung from Tyburn gallows. His head was then chopped off and impaled on a pole in Westminster Hall and his body was said to have been buried under the gallows.

According to one story relating to the Cambridge skull, the head lasted 25 years before blowing down in a violent storm.

It was taken by a sentry who only admitted to the possession on his death bed.

The Wilkinson head comes up trumps because embedded in it is part of a spike. It is also said to look enough like Cromwell to give some plausibility to the tale and the flesh on it was embalmed in a way reserved in the 17th century for royalty or top people.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.

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