In a city where medieval streets still funnel you towards the cathedral, the find shows that Canterbury’s past isn’t just preserved in museums, it’s layered beneath benches, memorials, and flowerbeds. And, as one archaeologist dryly noted, when there’s a hole in the ground, people can’t help but stop and look, reported BBC News.
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Butchery Lane, in the beautiful historic center of Canterbury, England. (Ray in Manila/ CC BY 2.0)
A Vault Under St Mary Bredman Square
The chamber was uncovered where crews were meant to be doing routine improvement works, after paving stones were lifted in St Mary Bredman Square, near the former Nason’s department store, as part of a refurbishment scheme. Canterbury Archaeological Trust has been brought in to examine and record the structure while the square’s wider works continue.
The square itself sits on the footprint of a former church site and is currently home to a war memorial, seating, and planting. The council’s plan includes relaying paving, adding benches and planting, repositioning gravestones so they’re easier to see, and moving a historic horse trough, alongside a new mural designed to echo the square’s church past.
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The vault has been discovered under St Mary Bredman Square in central Canterbury, England. (Local Democracy Reporting Service)
Could it be Reverend John Duncombe?
Archaeologists say the vault measures about 2.5m by just under 1m, and its position reported to be just in front of where the altar once stood suggests it was reserved for someone important. One tentative candidate is Reverend John Duncombe, an 18th-century vicar and poet associated with St Mary Bredman, though the link is not confirmed according to BBC News.
Jess Twyman of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust pointed to a late-18th-century description of monuments in the church that recorded a ledger stone dedicated to Duncombe (who died in 1786). “We cannot say for sure that it is his vault, but it’s possible,” she said, stressing the need for careful, evidence-led work.
Duncombe is an intriguing figure to have potentially waiting in the dark. Beyond his poetry, he was also an antiquarian writer who produced, among other works, a Historical Description of Canterbury Cathedral (1772) and other studies rooted in local history - exactly the sort of person you could imagine commemorated prominently inside a parish church.
Canterbury Cathedral crypt, a reminder of how much of the city’s history lies below floor level. (Saxon Moseley/CC BY 2.0)
Why the Canterbury vault discovery fits the city’s buried story
Canterbury’s historic streetscape can give the impression that the past is already fully on show, yet major sites have long histories beneath their visible surfaces. In Roman times, the settlement was known as Durovernum Cantiacorum, and archaeology has repeatedly shown how later medieval and modern Canterbury was built over earlier layers.
Even within the city walls, churches “tended to spring up” from the late Saxon period, leaving Canterbury with a dense network of parish sites - some lost, some rebuilt, and some now only hinted at by scattered stones and buried features. St Mary Bredman’s church, for example, was ultimately demolished in 1900 after being declared unsafe.
The renewed interest in hidden spaces also resonates with other Canterbury-linked stories on Ancient Origins, from the tombs of high-status churchmen to the city’s better-known cathedral narratives. For readers wanting broader context, see Ancient Origins’ coverage of the cathedral’s famous medieval occupant in The Strange Story of the Black Prince of Canterbury and the digital resurrection of a lost sacred focal point in Thomas Becket’s Sacred Healing Shrine Digitally Reconstructed.
What happens next in the square’s revival?
The vault investigation is unfolding alongside the council’s push to transform “unloved” city spaces through its wider Connected Canterbury programme. The ambition is not just cosmetic—planting, seating, and public art are meant to make the square feel calmer, while also making its earlier identity readable again to passers-by.
For now, the Canterbury vault discovery remains a carefully handled mystery: mapped, recorded, and interpreted, but not overstated. If the chamber can be securely tied to a named individual, or to a wider burial practice within the former church, it could add a distinctly human chapter to the square’s next life as a public space.
Top image: Stone carved with a skull above the vault found in Canterbury. Source: Canterbury Archaeological Trust
By Gary Manners
References
Duncombe, J. 2026. John Duncombe (writer). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Duncombe_(writer)
Gupta, T. 2026. Canterbury archaeology investigation after vault discovered. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2y8nv2nlwo
Gupta, T. 2026. Canterbury’s hidden vaults bringing the city’s past alive. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4gwdwp3pdo
