A huge burial ground on the site of London's notorious Bethlem mental hospital - which was nicknamed "Bedlam", from which we get the English word "bedlam" to describe a state of wild confusion and uproar - has been found in the City of London (one of London's financial districts, located right in the centre of the metropolis) by workmen building a new railway line.
Not only that but Roman coins, including those from the reign of the 2nd century Emperor Hadrian, and an entire stretch of Roman road, have also been found...
'Bedlam' graveyard unearthed beneath the City of London as Crossrail dig reveals bones of 20,000 skeletons... including patients from notorious asylum
- 500-year-old graveyard near Liverpool Street found during Crossrail works
- Cemetery contains 20,000 skeletons including patients of Bedlam asylum
- Other finds include rare Roman coins and an entire stretch of Roman road
- A 13-mile high speed tunnel is currently being built under Central London
By Hugo Gye
8 August 2013
Daily Mail
Daily Mail
A 500-year-old graveyard containing the bones of mental patients from the original 'Bedlam' asylum has been discovered under the City of London during excavations for the new Crossrail train line.
Thousands of Londoners were laid to rest at the burial ground but modern-day residents passing in and out of Liverpool Street train station have had no idea of the history lying beneath their feet - until now.
The 16th-century Bedlam burial ground was the first graveyard in London not attached to a parish church and was intended to relieve the pressure on the original cemeteries.
Graveyard: An archaeologist digs up skeletons from a burial ground near Liverpool Street station
Discovery: The cemetery is named after the Bethlem Royal Hospital and holds many of its patients
Works: The graveyard has come to light during the excavation of a tunnel under London for Crossrail trains
The burial ground was built on the original site of the Bethlem Hospital, the notorious mental asylum which had recently moved a short distance to Moorfields and which later gave its name to the colloquial term for chaos.
The 20,000 corpses buried there included a wide range of Londoners, many of whom would have been Bedlam patients never claimed by their families after their deaths.
When completed, Crossrail will form 13 miles of tunnels carrying commuters from Paddington in the west centre of the capital to Canary Wharf (London's other financial district) in the east. The £15billion project is expected to be completed in 2018.
During four years of excavations, engineers have been accompanied by a team of more than 100 archaeologists working to preserve the large portion of London's history buried deep underground.
Other major discoveries to arise from the Crossrail tunnels include jewellery, Roman coins and 2,000-year-old horseshoes.
Major operation: More than 100 archaeologists have worked on the Crossrail excavations over four years
Anonymous: The identity of most of the bodies will never be discovered because of a lack of burial records
Overflow: The graveyard was established in the 16th century as the cemeteries of parish churches were filling up
Investigation: 4,000 skeletons will be disinterred and studied before being reburied elsewhere
'Everyone's been running around in Liverpool Street for years and not thinking that they've been walking around on bodies from one of the densest burial grounds in London,' said Nick Elsden, a Museum of London archaeologist.
The Bedlam graveyard was particularly associated with religious non-conformists, as it was not attached to a church.
One of these was Robert Lockyer, a member of the radical Leveller movement, who was executed by firing squad at St Paul's Cathedral after leading an army mutiny in 1649.
Lead archaeologist Jay Carver pointed out that the execution must have 'left some kind of damage', meaning that it may be possible to identify Lockyer's body.
Roman: This brass sestertius coin from the site dates back to 130 AD and bears the image of Emperor Hadrian, who ruled the Roman Province of Britannia and the rest of the Roman Empire between 117AD and 138AD
Valuable: A 16th-century Venetian gold coin with a hole enabling it to be worn around the neck
However, on the whole it will be extremely hard to identify any of the skeletons, as since they came from all across London researchers are unable to cross-check them against parish burial records.
By the time the graveyard was shut down in 1714, the bodies were buried in a solid layer two metres deep.
The soil has also yielded pieces of bone, antler, tortoiseshell and ivory - leftovers from local craft workshops dumped over the cemetery wall.
The remains of around 4,000 people will have to be disinterred, and will be studied for clues about their lifestyle before being reburied elsewhere.
'This site is a rare, perhaps unprecedented opportunity,' Mr Elsden said. 'This is a major roadway outside one of London's busiest railway stations. You don't get to dig that up normally.'
Learning: An archaeologist from the Museum of London next to a map of the site being excavated
Location: The cemetery is located next to Liverpool Street, near the original site of the hospital
How the new City of London skyline will look from 2014 following the construction of some new skyscrapers
Archaeologists have found everything from reindeer, bison and mammoth bones dating back 68,000 years to the remains of a moated Tudor manor house, medieval ice skates, an 800-year old piece of a ship and the foundations of an 18th-century shipyard.
At Liverpool Street, recent finds include a 17th-century Venetian gold coin with a loop that suggests it was an early sequin, worn as decoration on the clothes of a wealthy person who probably lost it.
Mr Elsden and his team are especially excited to have uncovered the remains of a Roman road, studded with 2,000-year-old horseshoes, made of metal and fastened to horses' hooves with leather straps.
So many have been found that researchers suspect this must always have been a busy transit area, with horses bringing food from the countryside to residents of the Roman city.
'Roman horseshoes, stuck in a rut of the Roman road - you've got this unique little snapshot,' Mr Elsden said. 'You can see a Roman pulling his cart across the bridge. That's a rare little glimpse into ordinary Roman life.'
THE PIONEERING MENTAL HOSPITAL WHICH BECAME A BYWORD FOR CHAOS
Bedlam: The scene inside the hospital as depicted by William Hogarth in The Rake's Progress (1732-33). Today Bedlam is run by the NHS
The Bethlem Royal Hospital was the first dedicated psychiatric institution in Europe, having been founded as a priory in 1247 and converted into a hospital in the early 14th century.
It was founded by Goffredo de Prefetti, who had been elected Bishop of Bethlehem, and was originally located just outside the London city wall, on the site of what is now Liverpool Street station.
Due to the hospital's reputation as the principle treatment centre for the insane, a bastardised version of its name - 'Bedlam' - came to signify madness and chaos more generally.
Although it is sometimes thought to have treated its patients cruelly, most were free to walk around the grounds, and conditions were not much worse than the average home of the period.
In 1674, the hospital's governors decided that the institution should move a few hundred metres to the west to Moorfields, with the area's open space thought to be healthier than its original premises.
Bethlem moved against in 1815, to St George's Fields in Southwark, which is now the site of the Imperial War Museum.
A final move came in 1930 when the hospital relocated to the London suburb of Bromley - it is now run by the NHS and is considered to be a leading psychiatric hospital.
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