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Camden New Journal
Published: 5 July 2007

Tunnel corpse was French priest

A 200-year-old corpse dug up during building work for the Channel Tunnel rail link has been reinterred in a French cathedral.
Historians discovered it was the body of the Archbishop of Narbonne, Arthur Richard Dillon.
The priest’s remains were found in 2004 during excavations of the St Pancras churchyard for the rail link and found that the body included a set of wrought gold and porcelain dentures – a trend among the wealthy in France in the late 1700s.
Dillon, the son of an Irish Jacobite officer, was born in France in 1721 and became primate of France in 1763. He fled during the revolution and died in London in 1806.
The monthly newsletter of Camden History Society said: “The enlightened prelate presided over all manner of public works, such as the construction of canals, dykes, roads, bridges and harbours.
Fittingly, his coffin was placed on a barge that sailed in state along the Canal de la Robine to Narbonne, where it was then conveyed in colourful procession along medieval streets, to the cathedral.”
The remains have been reinterred at Narbonne.

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