A forensic artist has revealed the face of Simon of Sudbury, a 14th century Archbishop of Canterbury.

Adrienne Barker used skeletal detail taken from the man’s part-mummified skull to recreate his muscle structure and facial features.

Ms Barker, of the University of Dundee, then created a series of 3D bronze resin casts of his head.

Simon of Sudbury became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1375 after serving as Chancellor of Salisbury and Bishop of London,

He crowned King Richard II, and became Lord Chancellor of England in 1380, but was unpopular with rebellious peasants due to his role in introducing the third Poll Tax.

A year later, insurgents stormed the Tower of London and seized the Archbishop, before dragging him to Tower Hill and beheading him.

It is believed his head was placed on a spike on Tower Bridge, where it was spotted by a man from Sudbury, Suffolk, who grabbed it in the middle of the night and took it back to his home town. It has since been kept in St Gregory’s Church in Sudbury.

Ian Copeman, a local schools worker, and Reverend Jenny Seggar, who at the time was curate of St Gregory’s Church, commissioned the University of Dundee’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification to carry out the reconstruction project.

Ms Barker, 24, from Bradford, enjoyed the project, which she carried out as part of her MSc Forensic Art studies.

She said: “I hope people in Sudbury like what we’ve done but he’s a strange-looking fellow so it’ll be interesting to see their reactions.

“The first thing we had to do was carry out an initial assessment of the skull to determine its age, sex and ancestry. We then sculpted each muscle of the face and built this up on the cast we made of the skull before adding a final layer which represents the skin.

“The only problem we really encountered was that there was still facial tissue attached to the skull, which we managed to remove using a computer modelling software before sending the CT data away for a rapid prototype model of the skull to be made.”