Bayeux Tapestry mystery solved: Mealtime reading for monks, historian says

A long-simmering question about the Bayeux Tapestry’s origins has been given new life by a University of Bristol historian who argues the 70-meter embroidery was designed to entertain monks during meals at Canterbury’s St Augustine’s Abbey.

Professor Benjamin Pohl and his team contend the tapestry was initially hung on the walls of the abbey’s refectory, a large communal space where meals were served, rather than in a Bayeux cathedral setting as has been widely assumed. The study, based on analysis of the textile and existing theories, places the tapestry in the English monastery in the late 1080s, with the refectory itself built in the following decades and only completed around the 1120s.

The Bayeux Tapestry—roughly 230 feet (70 meters) long and consisting of about fifty embroidered scenes with captions—tells the events surrounding the Norman conquest of England in 1066. While scholars have long debated its origin, many have pointed to a commission by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William the Conqueror’s half-brother, to embellish a French cathedral in Bayeux in 1077. Pohl disputes that traditional origin story, arguing instead that the work was conceived in England and crafted at St Augustine’s Abbey during the 1080s, in alignment with the abbey’s plan to expand its refectory.

Historical Research published notes from Pohl and his students describing how the tapestry would have been viewed by diners seated below the artwork. The researchers suggest it was “hung roughly at head height or slightly higher,” allowing monks and guests to study the vivid scenes during meals. The interpretation offers a fresh context for why such a massive textile would have been created at St Augustine’s and how its display could have functioned in communal meals and the shaping of monastic identity.

The sanctuary of St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury has a long, storied history. Founded in 598, the monastery endured dissolution in 1538 during the English Reformation and later fell into ruin. The abbey’s refectory, the room Pohl identifies as the tapestry’s original display site, was constructed in the 1080s–1120 period, though no architectural remains survive today. The absence of surviving records about the tapestry’s location before the 15th century has long fueled uncertainty about its purpose and movement across regions.

In arguing for an English origin and a 1080s display, Pohl notes that the refectory’s completion after decades could explain why the tapestry did not immediately accompany its design. He told the Daily Mail that, if correct, the refectory would have housed the tapestry during a period when it might easily have been kept in storage for years before it could be mounted in the intended space. “We know that the refectory was finally built, according to Scolland’s plans, by his successor, Abbot Hugh, probably around 1120 or shortly thereafter,” Pohl said. “My theory is that without a place in which to hang it, the Bayeux Tapestry might simply have been kept in a box and was perhaps forgotten about.”

The new interpretation also reframes the tapestry’s journey. While the widely cited chain of custody traces the work from France to Bayeux and beyond, scholars acknowledge the first written record appears in 1476 in Bayeux Cathedral inventories. The evidence cited by Pohl does not set a precise cross-Channel timeline, but it does emphasize a possible English origin and early, intended use in Canterbury rather than as a display in Bayeux Cathedral.

Beyond the Canterbury theory, the tapestry’s path across the Channel remains murky. The artifact’s earliest provenance in England is not fully documented, and its movement west across the Channel could have occurred at any point before its first post-1476 literary mention. The tapestry’s long life has included a series of dramatic episodes: it was displayed in Paris under Napoleon in 1804, evacuated to the Louvre during World War II, and eventually returned to Bayeux after 1945.

Next year, the Bayeux Tapestry will go on display at the British Museum, marking its first return to the United Kingdom in nearly a millennium. The timing of the display amplifies the interest in rethinking where and how the textile was originally created and how it functioned in medieval life. If Pohl’s assessment is supported by further research, it could shift scholarly emphasis from a Bayeux-centric origin to a broader English context in the tapestry’s early years, including the role of monastic communities in commissioning and displaying monumental embroidery.

Scholars emphasize that the Bayeux Tapestry remains a rare, celebrated artifact whose exact origins continue to invite debate. The new hypothesis does not negate the tapestry’s significance as a landmark work of medieval art, but it does invite a reconsideration of its earliest purposes and the spaces where medieval viewers would have encountered it. Pohl notes that the tapestry’s scale and narrative complexity would have made it an ideal centerpiece for collective meals, hospitality, and shared cultural identity within a monastic setting—and that such a use would have been consistent with the social functions of mealtime rituals in the Middle Ages.

As researchers continue to scrutinize the evidence, the British Museum display next year will offer audiences a chance to engage with the tapestry in a new light. The ongoing scholarly dialogue underscores how a single, storied artifact can illuminate the everyday life of medieval communities while challenging long-standing assumptions about its origin and early display.