Westminster Abbey — Secrets Beneath the Stones

Westminster Abbey in London served as England's royal treasury in the Middle Ages and is the site of a famous 1303 heist where merchant Richard Pudlicote spent 98 days chiseling into the 11th-century Pyx Chamber. Beyond royal history, the Abbey holds over 3,000 graves, including playwright Ben Jonson, who was buried standing upright in 1637 in a two-foot-by-two-foot plot.

London · from the walk “Secrets of Westminster & MI6” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Westminster Abbey — Secrets Beneath the Stones

Westminster Abbey, London SW1P 3PA

Why was playwright Ben Jonson buried standing upright in Westminster Abbey?

You're standing before Westminster Abbey... a place most visitors think they know. Coronations, royal weddings, Poets' Corner. But beneath your feet and behind these ancient walls lies a far stranger story... one of heists, hidden vaults, wartime secrets, and a poet buried Standing UP.......... Did you know this Abbey once served as England's most secure bank vault? From the late twelve sixties, the basement of the Chapter House and the Pyx Chamber were used to store the Crown's most precious treasures... crowns, jewels, gold plate, and coinage. The Pyx Chamber, dating back to the eleventh century, was considered the most impregnable room in all of Britain.......... And then came the spring of thirteen oh three. King Edward the First was away fighting the Scots... and a rogue wool merchant named Richard Pudlicote hatched an Audacious plan. He planted hemp seeds along the Abbey wall months in advance, and when those seeds had grown into thick cover, he spent night after night chiseling through the stone. It took him ninety eight days... from Christmas to Easter. On April twenty fourth, he broke into the treasury and spent an Entire day inside, sorting through the king's jewels. The stolen treasure began turning up in the strangest places... pawnshops, brothels, even tangled in a fisherman's net on the Thames!......... Now, there's a grim legend that after Pudlicote was hanged, his skin was flayed and nailed to the treasury door as a warning. A two thousand and five study of that very door... England's Oldest surviving door... found only animal hide beneath its iron straps. The legend, it seems, is just that. A legend.......... But the secrets here go far deeper. During the Second World War, the Abbey's crypt sheltered staff during the Blitz, while a man named Sir Charles Peers spent two years quietly moving the Abbey's most precious treasures to safety... just in time. On the night of May tenth, nineteen forty one, bombs burned through the lead roof, sending molten metal crashing onto the paving below.......... And just steps from where you're standing, at Saint ER-min's Hotel, an entirely different kind of secret was unfolding. From nineteen thirty eight, entire floors of that hotel served as headquarters for MI six's Section D, and later the Special Operations Executive... Churchill's so-called Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Spies like Kim Philby and Guy Burgess walked these very streets between the hotel's Caxton Bar and MI six headquarters at fifty four Broadway, just around the corner... sometimes passing secret documents to their Soviet handlers in Plain Sight.......... One more thing before you go. Among the three thousand souls buried beneath this floor, there's one who rests like no other. The playwright Ben Jonson, who died penniless in sixteen thirty seven, reportedly told the Dean he was too poor for a proper grave. "Two feet by two feet will do for all I want," he said. And so he was buried... standing upright. When workers accidentally disturbed his grave in eighteen forty nine, they found his leg bones fixed vertically in the sand... and his skull, still bearing traces of red hair, came rolling free.

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