CROSSBONES: The Hidden Sex-Worker’s Graveyard

Crossbones Graveyard has got to be the most intriguing graveyard in London.

I happened to stumble upon it on a lunchtime walk with the intended destination of Southwark Cathedral. Wandering down a peaceful backstreet near Borough Market I saw open gates and on the brick wall next to it was a bright blue poster of a skull with a face mask on and the quote: ‘THIS IS STILL THE CROSSBONES GRAVEYARD’. My interest piqued, I poked my head in to have a look around.

You enter along a walkway with a slanted wooden cover held up by thin wooden trunks. You are then presented with a partially landscaped and paved garden space. Amongst the various pockets of foliage are scattered shrines, sculptures and poetry is scrawled on the walls. Also on the far side there is a large red metal gate adorned with hundreds of different coloured ribbons.

To find out what is going on here we have to go back to medieval London…

Crossbones: The History

Medieval/Tudor

During the medieval period the area was known as the ‘Liberty of the Mint’. Along with the ‘Liberty of the Clink’, also on the south bank, it was outside the boundaries of the city’s authority. Otherwise prohibited activities could therefore take place here are theatres, bear-baiting pits and brothels thrived. If you fancied a bit of fun in medieval/early modern London, heading south of the river would be your best bet.

The sex-workers that worked at the brothels in Southwark, known at the time as ‘stews’, were called the ‘Winchester Geese’. This was due to them being licensed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, who held the power in the Liberty of the Clink. The ‘geese’ bit no-one is quite so sure about but possibly refers to the noises they would have made to attract customers.

Their life expectancy would have been pretty dreadful, with disease and violence being very common. This is where Crossbones comes in. Due to their ‘sinful’ profession they were ‘excluded from Christian burial’ and so were interred in the un-consecrated burial ground at Crossbones, known then as St Saviour’s burial ground. St Saviour’s being what we now know as Southwark Cathedral.

It became a graveyard for all those who were deemed unworthy of a decent burial or simply could not afford it: the forgotten and the outcast.

Victorian

In the Victorian era, the area was one of the poorest districts in the city. Crime levels soared and diseases, such as cholera, were rife. The graveyard therefore started to fill up rapidly.

If the indignity of being buried in essentially a mass pit was not bad enough, it also became a hotspot for body-snatchers. They stole bodies to be sold for anatomy classes at the nearby Guy’s Hospital. Check out my self-guided bodysnatching walking tour here.

Crossbones became extremely overloaded and unsanitary and was closed in 1853. The site is thought to have held the remains of around 15,000 people. It proceeded to be forgotten and lost from the collective memory for nearly 150 years.

Crossbones: Rediscovery

It was rediscovered in the 1990s when TfL dug up part of the plot to extend the Jubilee Line. A number of bodies were exhumed and examined by the Museum of London for research purposes and some were displayed. Over half were from children, displaying the tragic scale of child mortality in the area.

The history of the site then takes an unexpected turn.

In 1996 local writer John Constable had a vision whilst writing late at night in which ‘The Goose’, the spirit of a medieval sex-worker, showed him to the site of Crossbones (which he says he had never heard of before) and dictated a poem to him.

For tonight in Hell
They are tolling the bell
For the Whore that lay at the Tabard,
And well we know
How the carrion crow
Doth feast in our Cross Bones Graveyard.

This poem became the first of a series called The Southwark Mysteries that were then performed at the Globe and Southwark Cathedral.  

Crossbones: Restoration and Remembrance

John along with others turned the space into a garden of remembrance to the ‘outcast dead’, with shrines to loved ones amongst the greenery. It is a place to consider the plight of poverty and dignity for human beings in both life and death.

There is a yearly Halloween candle lit procession to the site and monthly vigils in which rituals are observed, extracts from the Southwark Mysteries are read, and ribbons, beads and feathers are hung from the red gates.

This is exactly the kind of place I was excited to write about when starting Living London History. Despite being a burial ground this is a historical site that is very much alive. It has taken on an important new life as a site of remembrance and a way people can connect with the past in a cathartic and thoughtful way.

Located on Union Street, it is only open Thursdays and Fridays 12-2pm so you need to get the timing right!

Learn more about visiting here: http://crossbones.org.uk.

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