Site record MDR22863 - Mausoleum

When opened in the 1970s and 1980s the burial mound in the Repton vicarage garden was found to have been erected over an earlier stone structure. This structure was found to have been dated from the late-C6th to early C7th and to have lain slightly below ground surface. It was entered from the west by a number of steps. It appears to have been oriented on a similar alignment to the current St Wystan's church and to have consist of two chambers one to the east of the other. The interior walls had been plastered and the windows appear to have been glazed. The Biddles believed the stone structure to have originally served as a mausoleum, associated with the Anglo-Saxon religious house. There was evidence that the building had gone out of use prior to the arrival of the Viking army in 873, leading the Biddle to suggest that whatever remains the Anglo-Saxons had previously lain in the mausoleom were removed to the cryspt than now lies at the east end of St Wystans.