Excavations for the Crossrail Extension project discovered the second major Black Death cemetery in London in 2013. This week the first peer-reviewed publication of findings from the site appeared (in press). As a rescue excavation in the midst of a construction project, the site had to be quickly surveyed for the extent of the cemetery and this is what is contained in this publication.

This site is part of 13 acres leased by Sir Walter de Mauny from St Bartholomew’s Priory for an emergency cemetery for plague victims in 1349 AD. The site has been used for a variety of purposes over the centuries and currently is a four acre green space called Charterhouse square. The site is graphically displayed below with the locations of later structures.

The initial discovery came in a shaft just to the southwest of the Charterhouse Square. There they found three layers of graves with a total of 25 bodies lacking signs of trauma and with pottery shards from 1270-1350 AD. Subsequent radiocarbon dating and aDNA analysis confirmed that they were victims of the Black Death.

The surveys conducted over just two days were able to outline the broad contours of features at the site. These included a 15th century building, a priory kitchen, a probable World War II submerged emergency water tank, and a possible ditch and bank along the cemetery that is mentioned in descriptions. They believe that a disturbed area in the southwest corner represents about 200 individual graves, although only excavation can confirm these graves. They concluded that their ability to detect medieval objects in such an intensely used urban area suggests these methods are a good option for similar future situations.

The scans also revealed some surprises. There are not as many graves as descriptions suggest should have been there, though bodies may be more dense that suggested by the scans. They also did not find any large pits of stacked bodies. This indicates that even during the height of the Black Death, many people were still buried in individual graves. Graves were found in three phases with layers of clay-rich earth in between perhaps in an attempt to seal the graves. These scans should allow them to target future excavations to areas with a high probability of dense graves.

Reference:

Dick, H. C., Pringle, J. K., Sloane, B., Carver, J., Haffenden, A., Stephen Porter, H. A., et al. (2015). Detection and characterisation of Black Death burials by multi-proxy geophysical methods. Journal of Archaeological Science, 1–50. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2015.04.010 [In press, accepted manuscript]