Charterhouse Square – Plague Pit, Tudor Mansion, Black Death

Charterhouse Square in London sits atop a 1348 Black Death mass grave where up to 50,000 plague victims were buried in orderly trenches. In 1371, a Carthusian monastery was built over the site before transforming into a Tudor mansion where Queen Elizabeth I stayed in 1558. Crossrail excavations in March 2013 uncovered 25 skeletons confirming plague deaths from the Yersinia pestis bacterium across three historical waves.

London · from the walk “Clerkenwell Uncovered: From the World's First Tube to London's Radical Heart” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Charterhouse Square, London EC1M 6AH

How many plague victims were buried in the medieval mass grave at Charterhouse Square in London?

Look around you. This peaceful little square, with its iron railings and shady trees... you are standing on top of one of London's largest mass graves.......... In thirteen forty eight, the Black Death arrived in London. The city's churchyards filled so quickly that the Bishop of London purchased a patch of wasteland here, known simply as "No Man's Land." A knight named Sir Walter Manny rented thirteen acres from Saint Bartholomew's Hospital to create an emergency burial ground. Up to fifty thousand people may have been buried in fewer than three years.......... And here's what's remarkable. When archaeologists finally dug into these graves, they found narrow trenches with bodies laid carefully in rows. This was not the chaotic dumping ground you might imagine... it was an organized official response, with individual, ordered graves authorized by religious and monastic authorities. Even in the depths of catastrophe, someone cared about dignity.......... The dead lay undisturbed for nearly seven hundred years... until March twenty thirteen, when Crossrail workers sank a shaft right here. Twenty five skeletons were uncovered, providing the first physical evidence of London's first Black Death emergency burial ground. From the skeletons' teeth, scientists extracted Dna of the Yersinia Pestis bacterium, confirming these people died of the plague. They even discovered three separate waves of burial, from thirteen forty eight, thirteen sixty one, and the early fifteenth century, as outbreaks kept returning.......... But what grew on top of all that death? Life... in extraordinary forms. In thirteen seventy one, the burial ground gave rise to a Carthusian monastery, officially called "The House of the Salutation of the Mother of God." The monks lived in silence and solitude, speaking only on Sundays, and even then, only about prayers.......... Then came Henry the Eighth. The monks refused to sign his Oath of Supremacy. The price was horrifying. Prior John Houghton was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, and his severed hand was nailed to the Charterhouse door as a warning. Incredibly, the majority of monks Still refused, and the last group were sent to Newgate Prison and starved to death.......... After dissolution, the monastery became a grand Tudor mansion. Some of its first occupants were the Bassano family, Henry the Eighth's Venetian instrument makers, and a recorder they crafted Here was found centuries later in the wreck of the Mary Rose! Even Katherine Parr, Henry's sixth wife, lived on this very square with her second husband, Baron Latimer, roughly where Number Ten stands today. Queen Elizabeth the First herself stayed at the Charterhouse before her coronation in fifteen fifty eight.......... So take a moment. Beneath your feet... tens of thousands of medieval Londoners. Above them... monks, martyrs, queens, and musicians. All layered into one quiet square.

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