Conference: Royal Death and Burial - Reading Abbey in Context
Reading Town Hall | Saturday 6 April, 9am-5pm
Reading Abbey is famous as the burial place of King Henry I. Other members of the Anglo-Norman/Angevin family were buried at this favoured royal abbey.
This conference places Reading Abbey as one of the great royal mausoleums of medieval Europe. An internationally renowned set of speakers will explore royal death and burial at Reading itself; at Fontevraud and Westminster Abbeys, which came to rival and overtake Reading as burial houses of the English kings.
Speakers will provide a context for the burial practices and monuments of the English royal family, looking at those of the English kings’ cousins, the counts of Champagne, and their relatives by marriage, the kings of Sicily, Castile and Portugal, and at those of their cousins and enemies, the kings of France. Great figures from the past – Henry I; Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine; Richard the Lionheart and his sisters, queens of Castile and Sicily, his sister-in-law, countess of Champagne; Henry III and St Louis of France; John of Gaunt’s daughter, Queen Philippa of Portugal – all will come alive as we explore their deaths, burials, and the monument in which they lay.
Tickets £10, booking essential
Call 0118 937 3400 or Book Online
