Crossrail engineers working in the tunnels at Liverpool Street in London have made an exciting but dreadful discovery. The workers were preparing the site for building the entrance to a new station in the city when they stumbled upon an ancient Bedlam burial ground. Thirty skeletal remains, believed to be from the victims of the bubonic plague from the 1600s, were unearthed.
Osteologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) were called in to analyze the skeletons and carry out tests. They said that the bodies look like they were buried on the same day. A nearby gravestone dating to 1655 has boosted their theory that this was a mass burial site for the outbreak's victims, according to CNN.
Some 350 years ago, London was beleaguered by a major plague that killed 100,000 people or almost a fifth of its total population.
"This mass burial, so different to the other individual burials found in the Bedlam cemetery, is very likely a reaction to a catastrophic event," said Jay Carver, the lead archaeologist, according to CNN. "They were stacked up, some even on their side, some orientated north-south to try and squeeze as many as possible in."
"Only closer analysis will tell if this is a plague pit from The Great Plague in 1665, but we hope this gruesome but exciting find will tell us more about one of London's most notorious killers," Carver added.
"We hope detailed osteological analysis will help determine whether these people were exposed to The Great Plague and potentially learn more about the evolution of this deadly disease," said Mike Henderson, a senior osteologist at MOLA, according to the Independent.
Watch the video taken from the discovery site:
