Turn into Redcross Way in Southwark and on the right hand side is a cemetery called Cross Bones. This was where the medieval sex workers were buried along with the criminals and witches who were not granted a Christian burial. It closed in the mid 1850s after an Act of Parliament was passed forbidding further burials in central London. If it wasn't for London Underground building an electricity sub-station for the Jubilee extension it might never have been found. Builders began finding skeletons, 148 of them to be exact - the archaeologists who joined them from the Museum of London estimated that there were probably 15,000 people buried on that site. Friends of Cross Bones have now made it into a pleasant garden of remembrance.
sandyrhodes
Comments