The discoveries, rooted in an intricate geometric shape, have links to buildings across the country, including Oxford.
Heritage consultants James Wenn and James Syrett have traced the use of the rhombic dodecahedron, a diamond-faceted, twelve-sided crystal form, to locations such as Oxford and Cambridge universities, Westminster Abbey, the Old Bailey, the Houses of Parliament, and numerous country houses.
The findings have sparked fresh interpretations of architectural designs and a deeper understanding of the “lost code” embedded in the built environment.
Mr Wenn said: “What they did in the coronation that was different to the previous one is that they made sure that the screen around the King was a perfect cube sitting inside of the square of the pavement.
“A rhombic dodecahedron is like a cube covered in pyramids.”
Their research suggests that the screen used at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 did not adhere to this principle, but the code influenced the setting for King Charles III’s coronation in 2023.
The project traces its origins to 2019 when Mr Syrett showed Mr Wenn a garnet crystal. This prompted a breakthrough in understanding why Anglo-Saxons favoured the stones in jewellery.
The garnet’s natural form is a rhombic dodecahedron – a shape that Mr Wenn realised appeared in Anglo-Saxon church towers and elsewhere as a symbol of harmony.
The pair believe that widespread knowledge of the shape’s significance faded during the First World War.
Mr Syrett said: “Aristocrats, who were the people who were the guardians of this knowledge, were sent to fight and die in the trenches in a way that hadn’t really happened before.
“It was an industrial war machine that chewed them up.”
He also noted that the rise of post-war modernism contributed to the loss of this architectural language.
Mr Syrett said: “The other thing… was the modernist movement and so the futurists and the Dadaists expressly said in their manifesto that they wanted to get rid of the old social order because they felt it had let them down and they wanted a clean slate and to start afresh on everything.
“We say it’s the combination of those two things that did for it (the knowledge).”
Their work has drawn support from figures such as Oxford mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy.
Prof du Sautoy described their findings as “an intellectual version of the metal detectorists uncovering a treasure trove of wonders.”