Crossbones Graveyard, London

Crossbones Graveyard is a disused burial ground on Redcross Way in Southwark, with an entrance shrine where visitors leave messages, ribbons, flowers and other tokens. Its history is unusually stark: excavation evidence places its beginnings at least as early as the 17th century, when it served as a cemetery for women known locally as Winchester Geese. By 1769, it had become a paupers’ burial ground, and it closed in 1853 after becoming completely overcrowded.

As many as 15,000 people are believed to lie here. The ground was uncovered in detail during archaeological investigations from 1991 to 1998. Bodies had been placed in tightly packed layers, and the excavated remains showed illnesses including smallpox, tuberculosis, osteoarthritis and vitamin D deficiency.

A dig in 1992 found 148 graves dating from 1800 to 1853; more than a third belonged to babies before or shortly after birth. The permanent shrine and memorial garden now honour those remembered as the outcast dead. Friends of Cross Bones began campaigning for preservation in 1996, and a thirty-year lease for a garden of remembrance was granted in 2019. At the gates, a short memorial ceremony has taken place on the 23rd of each month since June 2004.