Old Minster

Not long after they laid him in the ground, the priests of Winchester's Cathedral started saying that the king's skeletal body moved of its own accord.

According to the story that survived, the clergy of the Old Minster claimed that Alfred's spirit had climbed back into its body and was wandering the church buildings after dark.

His son took the complaint seriously, and he had his father dug up and moved next door.

That was the first time anyone disturbed Alfred the Great, but it wouldn't be the last.

He explained that Alfred had an illness no doctor could name, one that reportedly first struck him at his own wedding feast.

Modern writers have guessed that Crohn's disease or something similar, though that speculation stacked on a 9th century description.

He was buried in the Old Minster, the cathedral church at the heart of Winchester, and that was meant to be temporary.

Alfred had been planning a new church of his own, the New Minster, right beside the Old One, and it wasn't finished when he died.