Crossbones Graveyard

This narrow Southwark side street sits on top of an estimated fifteen thousand bodies. The story of who's buried here tells you everything about medieval London's relationship with hypocrisy.

From the medieval period, the Bishop of Winchester controlled this part of Southwark. It was technically outside the City of London's jurisdiction — a lawless zone called the Liberty of the Clink. The Bishop licensed prostitutes to work here. They were called Winchester Geese, and the Church collected taxes from their earnings. But when these women died, the same Church that had profited from their labour refused them a Christian burial on consecrated ground. So they were dumped here, in an unconsecrated pit. The Church took the money, then denied them dignity in death.

Over the centuries, Crossbones became a pauper's burial ground for anyone society wanted to forget — sex workers, the destitute, plague victims, stillborn babies. When archaeologists excavated the site, they found bodies piled on top of each other, many showing signs of smallpox, tuberculosis, and severe vitamin D deficiency. These people rarely saw sunlight.

The graveyard was closed in eighteen fifty-three when it was declared completely full. For over a century it sat neglected, used variously as a building site and a car park. Then in the early two thousands, local activists began fighting to protect it. They tied ribbons and messages to the iron gates as memorials to the outcast dead. In twenty nineteen, after years of campaigning, the site became an official Garden of Remembrance with a thirty-year lease from Transport for London. The gates are still covered in ribbons.