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Eighteenth-Century Burial Discovered at Country Estate

Monday, February 11, 2013

CORNWALL, ENGLAND—Three hundred years ago, Sir James Tillie of Pentillie Castle requested that he be buried wearing his best clothes and sitting in a chair, accompanied by his books, wine, and pipe. Researchers have examined his favorite decorative building on the property, and found a burial vault beneath it. “I can confirm … there is a body actually still inside the vault,” said archaeologist Oliver Jessop. He found the vault beneath the floor of the folly, which had become known as the mausoleum, and a structure that may have been a chair or a coffin. It had been rumored that Sir James’s remains were moved to a local churchyard in the nineteenth century.