Finding Flinders

Archaeologists solve a 200-year mystery in central London by uncovering the remains of revered explorer Matthew Flinders, who led the first known circumnavigation of Australia.

- Roff Smith

AUSTRALIA’S HISTORY IS littered with explorers who’ve gone missing – Ludwig Leichhardt, Jean-François de Galaup La Pérouse and George Bass, to name a few. But only one managed to achieve the feat posthumously in the heart of London. Matthew Flinders, the man who literally put Australia on the map, vanished in roughly four acres of parkland off Hampstead Road during the 19th century, near today’s busy Euston Station in London’s inner-north.

After he died in 1814, Flinders was laid to rest in what was then a burial ground of St James’s Church. One would think that would be the end of his story. But the 19th century was a dynamic one in London, with the industrial revolution hitting its stride, arrival of the railways and the city growing by leaps and bounds. Within a few decades, the old Georgian graveyard where he was interred had vanished as completely as if it had never been, covered over by the sooty sprawl of Euston Station and the grounds of a leafy public park – St James’s Gardens – where top-hatted Victorians could promenade and ‘take the air’.

With no headstones remaining, and no layouts, maps or church records saying who was buried where, Flinders’ grave, along with those of tens of thousands of other people, was lost, seemingly forever. This year, however, the area around Euston Station is undergoing a massive redevelopment as part of a £55 billion (A$102 billion) high-speed rail project called HS2. To make way for the new railway terminus, the old city park is being dug up, and the estimated 45,000 unmarked graves that lie beneath are being exhumed for respectful reburial elsewhere. One of those graves belongs to Matthew Flinders.