ethnography and archaeology alongside his medical work.
All the casts were since believed to be lost, but Professor Jo Story recently discovered Thurnam’s cast in the collections of the Duckworth Laboratory in the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES) at the University of Cambridge.
The cast of the skull of Bede sits there alongside remains of the earliest hominids, which are the focus of the pioneering research at LCHES.
A copy of the Cambridge cast has been made for the museum of Early Medieval Northumbria at Bede’s World in Jarrow, and is the centrepiece of the new exhibition which opens on Tuesday 8 September at Bede’s World, Jarrow.
Matt Storey, of Bede’s World, said: “Not only is it exciting that we have been able to acquire a cast of the skull of Bede for permanent display at the museum, but the story behind the cast opens up a number of fascinating questions about what happened to Bede’s bones after his death along with the celebration of his cult in medieval Europe. The project has been a very successful collaboration between Bede’s World, the University of Leicester and the University of Cambridge and I hope that there will be further opportunities for us to work together in the future.”
The ‘Skull of Bede’ by Professor Jo Story and Richard Bailey is free to view online from 4 September until 31 December 2015: http://journals.cambridge.org/Skull_of_Bede
Information about Bede’s World is available here: http://www.bedesworld.co.uk/
Skull of Bede Exhibition – Photo by Bede’s World