A ‘Scallywag’ Schoolboy Swiped an Abbot’s Kneecap 70 Years Ago. His Widow Just Returned It to Glastonbury Abbey

George Box kept the knee bone, along with a piece of tile from the same site, throughout his entire life. He confessed the origins of their acquisition to his wife in his later years

Ryley Graham | Correspondent

August 10, 2026 4:59 p.m.

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In 1956, an 11-year-old George Box was on a school trip to Somerset, England’s Glastonbury Abbey. It was in the midst of a large archaeological dig, exhuming the remains of several abbots buried during the 13th century. Bored, curious or perhaps just feeling mischievous, the young Box snuck from sight long enough to nab a kneecap from the dig, along with a shard of medieval tile.

“Both things are very easy to pick up and put in a pair of schoolboy shorts,” Lucy Newman, collections manager for Glastonbury Abbey, tells BBC News’ Sarah Jones.

He nearly got away with it too. Abbey staff didn’t know the kneecap had been taken until last year when, upon his death, Box’s widow reached out to confess her late husband’s transgression. In the years before his death, Box and his wife had agreed that the kneecap should one day be restored to the Abbey. This summer, on a trip to scatter Box’s ashes in his nearby hometown of Brent Knoll, Box’s widow returned the runaway kneecap to its original resting place.

“He didn’t want it to happen until he’d passed away—I think maybe [it was] embarrassment,” Newman tells BBC News.

Box, whose widow described him as a “bit of a scallywag” according to BBC News, may have filched the bone and tile in a moment of boyish daring, but his interest in the artifacts long outlasted the whims of childhood. He kept them through young adulthood and brought them when he moved to Australia in 1970. He displayed them proudly in a glass cabinet in his home, alongside fossils and other curiosities he had collected during a lifetime fascinated by archaeology.

If Box’s acquisition of these artifacts was impulsive, their return 70 years later was anything but.

“In preparation for the artifacts’ return, he made a box for their long journey—reminiscent of the medieval reliquaries that saints’ bones and other items were kept in,” writes Glastonbury Abbey in a statement.

Upon receiving the surprising news from Box’s widow last year, Glastonbury Abbey staff went to work trying to identify the kneecap’s owner. Based on which graves were excavated at the time of Box’s trip to the abbey, they say the bone could belong to one of three abbots who died between 1250 and 1290: Abbot Amesbury, Abbot Petherton or Abbot John of Taunton.

All three candidates have since been reburied, and it is hard to determine whether the photos of their remains taken during excavation were captured before or after 11-year-old Box took his souvenir. Abbey staff decided that the benefit of returning the kneecap was not worth the risk of damage that re-excavation could cause the archaeological remains, and decided to let the bone’s exact owner remain a mystery.

Instead, the provenance of the kneecap has become its own interesting piece of the Abbey’s lore.

Glastonbury Abbey was first built in the seventh century C.E. and expanded in the tenth, becoming England’s wealthiest monastery by the turn of the millennium. The abbey is perhaps most famous for the purported discovery of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere’s remains in 1191. Edward I was in attendance at Glastonbury Abbey for the monarchs’ grand reburial in 1278. But historians have since suggested that the discovery of Arthur and Guinevere’s remains was fabricated by the abbots in an attempt to draw pilgrims.

“Skeptics have long decried these stories as inventions by medieval monks to fill the abbey’s coffers, especially after a massive fire destroyed the monastery in 1184,” wrote Jason Urbanus in a 2016 article for Archaeology Magazine.

Forged or not, news of the finding led to a period of wealth for those at the abbey.

“How surprised would they be to know that one of their kneecaps had traveled to Australia and back—a land completely unknown to medieval monks,” reads Glastonbury Abbey’s statement.

The kneecap and tile piece are now on display in the Glastonbury Abbey museum, on public view for visitors alongside other artifacts excavated on the site.

Ryley Graham is a freelance journalist based in New York City. Her work has appeared in outlets such as National Geographic, Earth Island Journal and USA Today.