CHAPTER 1: A BODY IN THE BOG

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On 1 August 1984, Andy Mould, a man working for a peat cutting company located
on the edge of Lindow Moss, near Wilmslow, Cheshire, pulled a long thin object off
of a conveyor-belt. Assuming it was a piece of wood he threw it towards a co-worker.
When the object hit the ground the peat fell away revealing the well-preserved
remains of a human foot and lower leg. The police were informed and the leg was
taken away for examination. Later that day Rick Turner, the county archaeologist for
Cheshire, received a telephone call from a reporter at the local paper, the Wilmslow
World, informing him of the unusual discovery. Keen to investigate, Turner visited
the peat-cutting company the next day and was shown the cutting where the leg was
uncovered. At the edge of the cutting he noticed a protruding flap of skin. Turner had
discovered the remains of what came to be known as Lindow Man, the best preserved
bog body to be found in Britain and an unprecedented scientific investigation was
initiated which ultimately led to the display of these remains at the British Museum.
This book tells the story of Lindow Man, the everyman of British prehistory.

A Murder Investigation
This was not the only time human remains have been discovered at Lindow Moss.
During the 1980’s a series of extraordinary discoveries were made. Workmen at the
peat-cutting company at Lindow Moss uncovered well-preserved ancient human
remains on five separate occasions and the remains of at least 3 bodies, possibly 4
have been uncovered. All date to the late Iron Age and Roman periods (see Table
1.1).

Number Date of Discovery Description Date

Lindow I 13th May 1983 Head of a woman AD 90 – 440
Lindow II 1st August 1984 Torso and Left Leg 2 BC – AD 129
of a man – known
as Lindow Man
Lindow III th
6 February 1987 Many pieces of an AD 30 – 225
adult male
Lindow IV 14th June & 12th Buttocks, left leg
September 1988 and right thigh of
 an adult man.
Possibly further
remains of Lindow
II (Lindow Man)
Table 1.1: The discoveries from Lindow Moss

The first discovery was made a year before Lindow Man was found. A skull was
removed from the elevator at the company depot on 13th May 1983. The skull was that
of a woman aged between 30 and 50. The left eyeball was still in place and some of
her hair. Identifying features such as the cheek bones and jaw bones were missing.
The peat, transported from excavations on the moss by narrow-gauge railway, was
processed through a shredding mill before leaving the site. Before shredding any
objects which could damage the mill, such as pieces of wood, were removed. On that
day Andy Mould and Stephen Dooley removed a round object, 20cm in diameter,
which intrigued them. They joked that it could be a dinosaur egg, but after they hosed
it down it was clear that it was a human skull. The site manager, Ken Harewood,
immediately took the skull to the police.

The Maccelsfield Police were extremely interested by the discovery because at that
time they were investigating an unsolved murder. During a police interview two
suspects of another crime had told of a cell-mate who boasted of murdering his wife.
Peter Reyn-Bardt claimed that he had disposed of his wife Malika, twenty years
previously in 1960 by dismembering and burning her remains in his garden. Reyn-
Bardt’s property at that time backed onto Lindow Moss. The skull was found only
300m away from the Reyn-Bardt house. When first interviewed in January 1983
Reyn-Bardt firmly denied murdering his wife. Investigation of the garden produced
no evidence of murder. However, when presented with the evidence of the skull
Reyn-Bardt made a full confession to the murder. Suspicious of the age of the skull,
the police consulted with archaeologists who radio-carbon dated a sample from it. The
date obtained showed that the skull was around 1800 years old, proving that the
woman was alive when the Romans occupied Britain, and therefore was not
connected with the police murder inquiry! Despite this, Reyn-Bardt was convicted of
the murder of his wife at Chester Crown Court in December 1983 on the strength of
his own confession.
Further Discoveries
Even though the site was periodically monitored by the Chestershire County
archaeologist Rick Turner, there were no further discoveries at Lindow Moss until
1987. On 6th February 1987 the first part of a further body was exposed, again by the
men working on the site elevator. Happy that the remains were most probably ancient
the police left the investigation of this body to the archaeologists. The next day all of
the recently excavated peat was sorted and over 70 different pieces of a body were
uncovered. Although survival of bone was poor, the condition of the tissue of this
body was better than that of Lindow Man. The total remains consisted of the back of
an adult male as well as the remains of a hand and a leg. An archaeological
investigation of the moss, funded by English Heritage, located the likely location
where this body originated. It was probably broken up when the peat was excavated
and processed. Additional discoveries were made at Lindow Moss on 14th June and
12th September 1988 when parts of the buttocks, left leg and right thigh of an adult
male were uncovered. As these discoveries were made only 15m away from were
Lindow Man was found it has been assumed that these are some of the missing pieces
from his body.

Human remains have been discovered in bogs throughout the British Isles and these
discoveries have been recorded since the seventeenth century. Recent research has
revealed at least 106 cases in England and Wales and approximately 35 in Scotland,
some at least as well preserved as Lindow Man. Peat covers 5.8% of the British
landscape, however rates of peat loss have been dramatic. Since 1850 Britain has lost
over 96% of its raised bogs. This may explain why the bulk of bog body discoveries
have been made since 1850. One particularly interesting discovery was that of a
human head in Worsley Moss, Lancashire in 1958. The head is that of a man aged 20-
30 when he died. The sites of Worsley and Lindow mosses are only 20 km apart and
Worsely Man, as he became known, looks to have been killed in a similar way to
Lindow Man sometime in the Romano-British period. In addition to decapitation, he
received injuries sufficient to fracture his skull and had a cord tied around his neck.
What is a Bog Body?
Technically the term ‘bog body’ describes any human remains recovered from a bog.
Bog bodies have been recovered from lowland northwest Europe, specifically Britain,
Ireland, Denmark, Netherlands and northwest Germany. They date from the Neolithic
to the early modern periods. It is impossible to determine exactly how many bog
bodies from these countries have been uncovered but it is possibly up to 2,000. Many
were discovered hundreds of years ago and we only have documentary evidence to
prove they existed. Bodies were placed in bogs for a variety of reasons and belong to
a number of different periods but the term ‘bog body’ is most usually used to describe
human remains recovered from bogs dating from approximately 500 BC – AD 100.
Many of these bog bodies suffered violent deaths. This is a period known as the Iron
Age as people used iron for the first time to make tools and weapons. The majority of
iron-age people lived on farms or in small settlements. They harvested crops such as
wheat, barley and rye and reared cattle, sheep and pigs. The Iron Age is perhaps best
known for its elaborate artefacts, such as torcs and display shields, made from bronze
and precious metals, which are popularly labelled as Celtic Art. In some regions
people also built large settlements with huge earthen ramparts, known as hillforts.
These enigmatic artefacts and sites provide tantalising clues to the nature of life in the
Iron Age but it remains a mysterious period from the European past. It is thought that
water was important to the beliefs of iron-age people. Metal objects, particularly
weaponry, have frequently been found deliberately deposited in rivers and lakes,
possibly placed in watery locations as offerings to the gods. Only 20 or so bog bodies
are as well preserved as Lindow Man and fewer still have been the subject of such a
thorough scientific investigation but because of their excellent preservation, bog
bodies offer us a unique insight into life in these past communities.