Adm Lord Horatio Nelson and William Pitt the Younger have travelled together by taxi across the Thames, from their home in Westminster Abbey to St Thomas’ hospital, to have their heads run through some of the most sophisticated scanning equipment in the world in a pioneering partnership of art, conservation and science.

Scanning of the wax portrait heads, made at the time of their deaths in 1805 and 1806, was performed using state-of-the-art equipment owned by Guy’s and St Thomas’, with all the scientists, curators, conservators and abbey staff involved in the project working unpaid overtime.

Ronak Rajani, consultant cardiologist in cardiac imaging at Guy’s and Thomas’, said: “It was an extraordinary experience for all of us. When we first put the 3D images up on the screen, and the people from the abbey realised the extraordinary detail the scans could capture, we saw their eyes widen in wonder.” Senior radiographer Dan Hodson said Pitt and Nelson were his best patients.

Senior radiographer Dan Hodson prepares to examine the waxwork head of Nelson. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty

Months of work will follow on thousands of images captured by the scans by scientists at King’s College London. One immediate revelation was that Nelson’s eyes were not made of solid glass, as the abbey curators had thought, but delicately blown like Christmas tree baubles.

The wax heads are part of a unique collection of funeral effigies in the abbey, dating to the death of Edward III in 1377. The oldest, in ceremonial robes, originally lay on top of their coffins during elaborate funeral processions; the more recent, such as Pitt, modelled from life and dressed in the subject’s real clothing, stood in the abbey for years as eerie grave markers.

Nelson’s is unique. The other figures represent people buried in the abbey, but the naval hero was buried in St Paul’s. The abbey bought the figure as a tourist attraction, though it prefers the term “memorial”.

The heads are being analysed using the cutting-edge Siemens Somatom Force Dual Source CT scanner, which is usually used to assess heart and cancer patients. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty

The figure – dressed in one of the admiral’s uniforms and a hat with a flap that folds down to protect his blind eye – is startlingly lifelike, a fact vouched for by his mistress, Emma Hamilton, who was barred from his state funeral but brought discreetly into the abbey to see the effigy.

Susan Jenkins, curator at the abbey, said Nelson and Pitt had been chosen because they were interesting heads whose makers were known. Pitt, who died in 1806 during his second term as prime minister aged just 46, was modelled, probably after life sittings, by Catherine Andras.

Nelson sat for his portrait, made by wax artist Patience Wright, whose double life might have surprised the admiral – she was also an American spy, who enclosed secret messages in the wax busts she sent to the US.

The waxwork heads form part of the abbey’s collection of funeral effigies currently undergoing conservation. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty

Although the abbey has been in touch with Madame Tussauds for information on how their oldest figures were made, records are sketchy.

“The scanning gave us a unique opportunity to study how these images were made – the interior composition and their condition,” Jenkins said. “It revealed Nelson’s head was hollow and that Pitt’s is particularly delicate, built up from very thin layers of wax.”

The hands of the abbey’s oldest wax figure, of Charles II who died in 1685, were also scanned.

Nelson and Pitt’s heads will be back on display in a new museum and gallery at Westminster Abbey due to open next year. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty

Ranjani said the images would produce a unique and permanent archive of the heads, which could be used for condition checks and to produce 3D-printed models or holograms.

Nelson and Pitt were among the figures moved many times in the abbey, some losing hands and heads in the process – a wooden and straw bust wearing a Tudor corset is all that survives of the body of Elizabeth I – until by the late 19th century they were all so shabby they were known as the ragged regiment.



The scanning forms part of extensive conservation work on the abbey’s collection, before a new museum opens in 2018 in the triforium, the attic of the church never before open to the public.