Louis de Rochefort's Skeleton
No inscription - an exhumed skeleton, displayed as an exhibit rather than a stone.Context & sources
DIFFERENT CATEGORY - not a stone at all, but an exhumed skeleton kept and displayed as a museum exhibit; found via a search of Historic England's own listings for the word 'murdered'. The building at 46 High Street, Brading, Isle of Wight (a C16 timber-framed house, later the Oglander family's town house, then an inn called The Crown in the C17, and by the 20th century Osborne Smith's Wax Museum) has a skeleton said to have been exhumed on the site and identified - on thin evidence, per every source checked here - as Louis de Rochefort, a French spy reportedly murdered there in 1640 when the building was The Crown Inn. The story and the skeleton became a fixture of the wax museum's 'chamber of horrors' displays, covered by the BBC when the museum's contents went back on public display in 2018. No further detail on who killed Rochefort, why, or how the identification was made has been found - this rests on local tradition and museum showmanship rather than documented investigation.
- Historic England, list entry 1034340, 'Part of Osbourne Smith's Wax Museum, Brading'
- BBC News, "'Nightmare' Brading wax works back on display" (10 Mar 2018)
Needs an in-person visit
- Rectory Mansion, Brading - reportedly hosts a mini exhibition on the old wax museum and its exhibits, including Rochefort's story; not visited or detailed further here.
- Town
- Brading
- County
- Isle of Wight
- Country
- England
- Coordinates
- 50.6839, -1.1489
- Year
- 1640
- Condition
- Unknown
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