London rail work unearths 3,000 plague-era skeletons from Bedlam

A team of 60 researchers will work in shifts six days a week over the next month to remove 3,000 skeletons from a burial ground that will become a new train station. The Bedlam burial ground, on the site of a new east-west London train line, was used between 1569 and 1738 – a period that spanned Shakespeare’s plays, the Great Fire of London and numerous plague outbreaks.

There are up to six metres of archaeology on site in what is one of the oldest areas of the city, so we stand to learn a great deal.

Nick Elsden, a project manager from Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA)

The area was London’s first municipal burial ground and was named after the nearby Bethlem Royal Hospital or “Bedlam” the world’s oldest psychiatric institution. It was used by Londoners who could not afford a church burial or who chose to be buried there for religious or political reasons.

Odd News