The Hawkstone Grail is a small stone cup located at Hawkstone Manor in Shropshire, England which is purported to be a Holy Grail by ownerGraham Phillips. According to Phillips, archaeologists and historians at the British Museum have identified it as a 1st-century Roman scent jar. However, Phillips cautions that this is not the Marian Chalice, the cup that Jesus' apostles reputedly drank from during the Last Supper. The Hawkstone Grail's small size makes it a poor choice for that use. Rather, Phillips believes that this cup could instead have been used to collect a small amount of Jesus' blood as he was dying on the cross or to hold ointments for his body during his internment in the tomb.
History
In the 18th century, the owner of Hawkstone Manor built a park in an adjacent garden. A neighbour named Thomas Wright began adding antiques. In 1920, workmen employed to move some statues located in a cave in the park accidentally broke a statue of St. John and the cup fell out of a hidden compartment. Believing it to be unremarkable, it was taken to the manor itself and placed among other objects. However, in 2004, Graham Phillips, who was working on a book about King Arthur, identified it as the Holy Grail based on clues which suggested Wright had hidden the cup in the park. Phillips deciphered the clues and concluded that the cup now known as the Hawkstone Grail was the cup Wright had written about. The Hawkstone Grail was featured prominently in The RealDa Vinci Code, a documentary presented by Channel 4 in Britain. The documentary was produced to examine claims made by American authorDan Brown in his worldwide best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code, which Brown contends is based on actual events and that organisations cited in the book are factual. He reiterates a theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married; the union produced a daughter. The real Holy Grail is not a cup, but the womb of Mary Magdalene, and that there are possible living descendants of their child. However, host Tony Robinson appeared unimpressed with the Hawkstone Grail and Phillips' story, stating that, "No, we can do better than this, can't we?"
