Archeologists believe they have discovered the coffin and skeleton of Queen Eadgyth, the sister of King Athelstan and granddaughter of Alfred the Great, who died in 946.

It was thought that her actual remains were lost when they were last moved in 1510 and that a monument built in Magdeburg Cathedral in southern Germany, was a cenotaph in her honour.

But when the tomb was investigated as part of a wider research project, a lead coffin was found inside bearing her name and inside that the nearly complete skeleton of a woman aged between 30 and 40.