DURING September 1665, the plague in London reached its very worst peak, with the hot, late-summer weather combining with the disease to create deadly conditions. Parliament and Charles II had fled the capital. At one point during that month, more than 1,000 Londoners were dying, every day.
One was a girl called Mary Godfree, who died on Saturday, September 2. Despite all the images of mass plague pits, of carts loaded high with ‘bring out your dead’, Godfree was accorded a proper burial. We know this because her headstone was discovered five years ago during one of the biggest engineering projects of the 21st century: Crossrail.
‘We had always thought during this great pandemic that people were buried in mass ceremonies,’ explains Marit Leenstra, one of the archaeologists working on the project, and now a project manager at the MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology). ‘We thought they were simply thrown into holes. But this little girl, no more than nine years old, had a gravestone carved and inscribed for her. It wasn’t that harsh; people really cared for her. I thought that was very touching— especially from today’s perspective of being in a pandemic.’
Crossrail, the 73-mile railway that runs from Abbey Wood and Shenfield in Essex in the east to Heathrow and Reading, Berkshire, in the west, has been a hugely complex engineering project, which will finally become operational in the first half of 2022 (intensive trial runs begin next year). It has involved the digging of 26 miles of tunnels under some of London’s busiest streets and the construction of 10 new railway stations, in an attempt to slash journey times across the capital. It has gone over time and over budget. But one aspect of the project has not: the archaeological digs.
Denne historien er fra December 02, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra December 02, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
