Then lord of the manor General Sir Frederick Carrington, who had commanded the Frontier Light Horse until April 1878, had unceremoniously dug a hole near a garden wall next to the shooting box and placed in it a lead-lined oak case containing a human skull. The skull, much to the distress of Lady Carrington, had stood on the mantelpiece of Sir Frederick's smoking room for years before she finally persuaded her husband to accord it a decent burial. T he headstone now lies flat, cemented into a pathway. A photograph taken in 1932, published in the local newspaper, shows its original position. The controversy also raged in South Africa as the local press debated the merits of it being Sandile's head.
Historians are equally divided.
Some historians claim he was killed and abandoned after a skirmish with Mfengu auxilliaries, while others say his body was found by a German settler named Schuch and buried in his garden. Somewhere under a cement pathway in the Gloucestershire countryside may lie the answer. Griqua leaders have demanded the return of the bones of 19th century a Griqua chief, dug up 30 years ago by Wits anthropologists. Professor Andrew Sillen describes the growing controversy over ancient bones between anthropologists and ethnic or religous groups.