Eighteenth-Century Burial Discovered at Country Estate

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.