Is Anne Boleyn’s heart buried in a Suffolk or Norfolk church?
Legend tells, that the heart of Englands Tudor Queen, Anne Boleyn, is buried in the crypt at Erwarton Church in Suffolk……
Behind Erwarton’s gothic gatehouse, lies a Tudor Hall forever linked to the most famous of King Henry VIII’s wives.
Anne was a regular visitor to Erwarton Hall, where her aunt Amy and uncle Philip lived.
Anne Boleyn loved the church so much, that she asked that her heart be buried there, upon her death.
It’s also believed that Henry visited Anne at Erwarton Hall when they were courting and deeply in love.
Just three years after the couple married, Queen Anne Boleyn was b~headed within the confines of the Tower of London, after being found guilty of high treason.
Her body was taken by her distressed ladies in waiting and carried to the nearby Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula.
Placed in an old elm chest which had once contained bow staves from the Tower, her head and body were reunited and she was buried in the chancel close to the remains of her brother, Lord Rochford.
And that was the end of Anne Boleyn.
Or was it?
During Victorian-era renovations in 1837, a heart-shaped tin casket was discovered in the chancel wall of St Mary’s Church at Erwarton, filled with dust.
It was reburied beneath the organ with a small plaque marking the spot which made the claim that the former queen’s heart had been brought to the church by her uncle, Sir Philip Parker following her death on 19th May 1536.
Whether the heart was indeed buried at the church or not, the Philip in question is incorrect.
Sir Philip Parker was a later owner of Erwarton Hall, Anne’s uncle was Sir Philip Calthorpe, who had married her aunt Amy.
In a twist, a church across the border in Norfolk, also lays claim to housing Anne Boleyn’s remains.
Author Agnes Strickland in her book ‘Lives of the Queens of England’, written in the 1840s, wrote of the lore that said Anne’s remains had been removed from the Tower, and interred at midnight with the full rites of Christian burial.
Marked with a plain black stone with no inscription, the queen is said to have asked to be returned to her ancestral home of Salle, near Reepham.
And no tale involving Anne Boleyn is complete without mentioning the fact that the doomed queen’s headless ghost is said to return to Norfolk’s Blickling Hall every year on the anniversary of her death, in a coach drawn by a headless horseman!
Legend tells, that the heart of Anne Boleyn, is buried in the crypt at Erwarton Church in Suffolk.
