The Search for the Grail - Tapa dura

The discovery of a hitherto overlooked Authurian story, buried in a longer poem, gives the author a precise geographical location for the Grail's original hiding place in Britain - the White Abbey, an Augustan priory in Shropshire. Futher research reveals that the Grail was one of several treasures, also including the Golden Bull of Knossos and the sacred candelabra removed from the temple of Jerusalem, which were taken in 1410 AD from Rome to the safety of Viroconium - modern day Shrewsbury - virtually the last vestige of Roman civilization anywhere in the former Western empire. What happened to the Grail afterwards? Did it remain in the White Abbey until it was secretly discovered there in the late 16th century? In 1994, Graham Phillips closely examined the poem "Sir Gawain and the Red Knight", based on the medieval Arthurian romance "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". Written in 1610 by Lord Vernon, who had been responsible for renovating the Abbey ruins, this is the story of how the Red Knight stole the Grail from the monks of the White Abbey. Sir Gawain then retrieves the Grail, hiding it in some unspecified location. But the author discovers a secret code in the poem, envisaging the local landscape as a giant chessboard, which does specify the location.