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Display using:
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 Admin
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| Joined: 24 Jul 2003 |
| Total Posts: 592 |
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Re: Cross Bones.
Posted: 08 Aug 2005 03:35 PM |
Thanks for your message. That is a fascinating area with many layers of history to be discovered.
You can vote for the Cross Bones Graveyard in the Blue Plaques awards at http://www.southwark.gov.uk/DiscoverSouthwark/BluePlaquesSection/Voteforyouriconin2005/CrossBonesGraveyard.html
or by clicking on the 'Discover Southwark' section on the website, then clicking on 'Blue Plaques'
I hope that helps. |
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Re: Cross Bones.
Posted: 06 Aug 2005 01:20 AM |
Hi, I just want to thank you for sharing your knowledge of Cross Bones and the unfortunet's that were the history that really must not be forgotten. Although I have lived and worked in SE London for over twenty years, it's only in the past couple of years since I had a heart attack, and go for walks, that I have discovered some of the history of around the Borough, and of Southwark. I worked as a Minicab driver for ten years driving down Red Cross way, around SE1 and all around Southwark during the late 80's and early 90's, yet it was only on Friday the 5th of August 2005 whilst cutting through from the Borough to the Tate that I walked past Cross Bones and saw the messages and donations of cards and ribbons left by others in a shrin of respect. I was touched reading about this history to the point that I wanted to know more and needed to thank those that share and keep this history alive.
It would be sinful if this area is used for anything except as a memorial to those that are the history thats buried there. I can't see how to cast a vote for Cross Bones but needless to say it has mine. Please keep up the good work.
Sincerely John Shaw |
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Re: Cross Bones Graveyard
Posted: 19 Apr 2005 09:05 PM |
When it comes to Blue Plaques, Cross Bones Graveyard has to be the People's Choice!
Next time you’re in The Borough, take a stroll down Redcross Way, the tranquil back-street running parallel to Borough High Street. Close to the junction with Union Street, you’ll see a vacant plot of land, enclosed by London Underground boards, on which someone has chalked a skull and crossbones. There’s also a gate of rusty iron bars adorned with glittering ribbons, flowers, feathers and other curious totems.
This is Cross Bones, an unconsecrated graveyard going back to medieval times. The Tudor historian John Stow refers to it as a burial ground for ‘single women’ – a euphemism for the prostitutes who worked in Bankside’s legalised brothels or ‘stews’. In his 1603 Survey of London, Stow writes:
‘I have heard of ancient men, of good credit, report that these single women were forbidden the rites of the church, so long as they continued that sinful life, and were excluded from Christian burial, if they were not reconciled before their death. And therefore there was a plot of ground called the Single Woman’s churchyard, appointed for them far from the parish church.’
The burial registers of St Saviour’s parish don’t distinguish between burials in Cross Bones and those in the churchyard adjoining what is now Southwark Cathedral. However, the long-established local tradition – that Cross Bones was a prostitutes’ graveyard – is restated in the Annals of St Mary Overy (1833):
‘There is an unconsecrated burial ground known as the Cross Bones at the corner of Redcross Street, formerly called the Single Woman’s burial ground, which is said to have been used for this purpose…’
Such women were condemned to be buried in unhallowed ground. Yet many were actually licensed by the church. For some 500 years, the Bishop of Winchester exercised sole authority within Bankside’s ‘Liberty of The Clink’, including the right to licence prostitutes under a Royal Ordinance dating back to 1161. These women became known as ‘Winchester Geese’.
Cromwell and the Puritans shut down the Bankside pleasure quarter, with its bear-pits, theatres, taverns and stews. By Victorian times, the area around Cross Bones was known as The Mint - an overcrowded, cholera-infested slum, and a notorious thieves quarter. When William Booth was conducting his survey of poverty, his researcher George Duckworth described it as:
‘… a set of courts and small streets which for number, viciousness, poverty and crowding, is unrivalled in anything I have hitherto seen in London.’
Duckworth walked around The Mint with a policeman who told him: ‘Police don’t go down here unless they have to, and never singly.’ Around this time, Cross Bones witnessed many a pauper’s burial. It was also the haunt of body-snatchers, seeking specimens for the anatomy classes at nearby Guy’s Hospital.
The graveyard was finally closed in 1853, on the grounds that it was ‘completely overcharged with dead’ and that ‘further burials’ would be ‘inconsistent with a due regard for the public health and public decency’. In 1883, it was sold as a building site, prompting Lord Brabazon to write to The Times:
‘… with a view to save this ground from such desecration, and to retain it as an open space for the use and enjoyment of the people.’ (10th November 1883)
The following year the sale was declared null and void, under the Disused Burial Grounds Act (1884). Subsequent attempts to develop the site were fiercely resisted by local people. The land was briefly used as a fair-ground:
‘… until an action was taken against the showmen for abatement of the nuisance caused by steam organs and noisy music.’
Apart from these minor intrusions, the graveyard slept peacefully and unmolested for the best part of a century. Then, in the 1990s, London Underground built an electricity sub-station to supply power for the Jubilee Line Extension. Prior to the work, Museum of London archaeologists conducted a partial excavation of the site, removing some 148 skeletons. By their own estimate, these represented: ‘…less than 1% of the total number of burials that were made at this site.’ Some were exhibited at the Museum’s 1998 London Bodies exhibition, including:
‘… a young woman’s syphilitic skull with multiple erosive lesions, from Red Cross Way, Southwark, 18th century’.’
By then, the secret history of the graveyard had erupted into my own life and work. On 23rd November 1996, I wrote the first of many poems and plays inspired by the spirit of a Winchester Goose. In the middle of that night, I walked up Redcross Way, unaware of its true significance, with an unquiet spirit whispering in my ear:
‘And well we know how the carrion crow
Doth feast in our Cross Bones Graveyard.’
Only after writing these words did I discover that Cross Bones was a real historical place. When I found out that London Underground had just dug it up, it gave me ‘Goose bumps’! It was as if I’d tapped into what was happening in my own back-yard: had somehow channelled the spirit of The Goose.
I felt I had to try to heal this wounded spirit, by giving her a voice. In the course of the work, our relationship seemed to transform. It was she who had returned to heal me – and all the other people touched by the spirit of her sacred place.
You could say that this ‘Goose’ was the true author of The Southwark Mysteries, my epic cycle of poems and Mystery Plays, which was later published, and performed in Shakespeare’s Globe and Southwark Cathedral. Far from making me ‘lose the plot’, she’d connected me with my neighbourhood in a truly creative and life-affirming way.
I’ve since conducted many ritual dramas and community events at the graveyard. These rituals are simple, inclusive and non-dogmatic, emphasising respect for ‘the Ancestors’, and honouring the spirit of this particular place. The Halloween of Cross Bones has been observed every Halloween night since 1998, with hundreds of people making the candlelit procession to the site, to honour ‘the outcast dead’ with candles, incense, songs and offerings. By another curious stroke of synchronicity, the first Halloween of Cross Bones coincided with the London Bodies exhibition at the Museum of London.
Some of us meet regularly, at 7pm on the 23rd of each month, at the gate to Cross Bones in Redcross Way. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to clear rubbish from the vicinity of the gate, and to replenish our spontaneous shrine with fresh flowers and other tokens. We are also campaigning for at least a part of this historic burial ground to be rededicated as a memorial garden.
In 2002, Southwark Council refused planning permission for three office-blocks to be erected on the graveyard. However the decision was overturned on appeal, which means that transport for london now have permission to develop the site. Obviously, the commercial value of the site means that some development is inevitable. However, unless such developments are sensitive to the original nature of the site, they risk desecrating the past, arousing the opposition of present-day residents, and being condemned by future generations.
Friends of Cross Bones are proposing that any plans for future developments should reserve an area (between the Redcross Way gate and the junction with Union Square) as a Cross Bones memorial park. This might be only a small plot of land, with a tree and a tombstone – perhaps bearing the inscription: ‘The Outcast Dead’ - with a brief account of the history of this paupers’ graveyard.
At a time when green spaces are rapidly being swallowed up by new developments and when tourism is a vital part of the local economy, what could be better than to re-establish a public park and an important visitor attraction in the very heart of The Borough?
'Here hang your hopes, your dreams,
Your might-have-beens,
Your locks, your keys,
Your Mysteries...'
Please cast your vote for Cross Bones.
John Crow aka John Constable
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Poppy
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| Joined: 14 Apr 2005 |
| Total Posts: 2 |
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Cross Bones Graveyard
Posted: 14 Apr 2005 11:33 AM |
I would like to put in a vote, or several, for Cross Bones Graveyard in Redcross Way, close to Borough tube station. This is an unconsecrated graveyard where the prostitutes and paupers of the borough were buried from medieval times until the 1850s. It's believed that 15,000 people are buried there.
In medieval times the prostitutes of the area (known as The Winchester Geese) were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester but were denied burial in consecrated ground. The graveyard was later used as a paupers' burial ground. The graveyard was rediscovered when bodies were found during the building of the Jubilee line and since that time local people have been campaigning for a small memorial garden to the forgotten dead to be allowed on the site, which is currently concreted over. Some green open space is badly needed in the area and it would serve as a reminder of the people who lived and died in the streets of Southwark throughout its history.
If you wish to visit the site then you will find it in Redcross Way...you will know that you are in the right place when you see the gates decorated with ribbons, flowers and other objects in honour of the dead. They may have been forgotten by those who wish to build on the land but they are remembered in the hearts of many local people and a blue plaque would be a wonderful way to honour both the dead and the work of the people who continue to care and to campaign for their recognition.
By honouring the dead we honour the living and I would encourage everyone to vote for this important site.
Jacqui |
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