We need your help to raise funds to create and install a permeant memorial to Queen Anne Boleyn in St Peter’s Church, Hever.

Why Memorialise Anne at St Peter’s Church, Hever?

Queen Anne Boleyn was a central figure in one of the most transformative periods in English history and was mother to arguably one of the greatest Queens in English history, Elizabeth I.

When she was executed in 1536, Anne was buried hastily and without ceremony in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London. According to some sources, her body may even have been placed in an old arrow chest. Today, a simple flagstone marked “Queen Anne Boleyn 1536” offers a quiet remembrance, but historians remain unsure whether her remains lie beneath it. That stone wasn’t laid until the 19th century, when Queen Victoria ordered an excavation in the hope of finding Anne’s resting place. The attempt yielded only a tangle of bones from many prisoners, and some were labelled as Anne’s, likely more out of royal hope than reliable evidence.

We believe that Anne Boleyn deserves better.

Though we cannot know where she lies, we can give her a memorial worthy of her role in our national story. And there is no place more fitting than Hever.

Anne spent much of her formative life at Hever Castle, the home her great-grandfather Geoffrey Boleyn purchased in 1462. Just steps away stands the parish church of St Peter, where her family worshipped and where her own memorial will be placed in the Boleyn Chapel. It’s the same chapel that holds the modest brass memorial of her infant brother Henry and the richly decorated tomb of her father, Thomas Boleyn. Anne will become the third member of her family honoured there, in the church that knew her in life.

And recent research adds even greater weight to this setting. Architectural historian Dr Simon Thurley has shown that Anne lived at Hever as an adult, from around 1524 to 1529. These were crucial years. Anne often resided at Hever as she was awaiting the outcome of Henry VIII’s “Great Matter,” the long process of ending his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and breaking from the Church of Rome. Hever wasn’t just her home; it was a place of political intrigue and theological development. Bishops came to update her in person. The rector of Hever, John Barlow, acted as a courier between Anne and the King. She was not a bystander—she was a key figure in the events that gave rise to the English Reformation.

The Diocese of Rochester has already recognised Anne’s importance in its new Reformation triptych at Rochester Cathedral. Now, this memorial at Hever offers us a chance to honour her in the very church where her story began and where her family rests.

We invite you to be part of this long-overdue act of remembrance. Help us give Anne Boleyn the memorial she has always deserved.