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A medieval mass burial containing the remains of more than 100 men, women, and children has been revealed during excavations connected with a new heritage centre in the gardens of Leicester Cathedral.
The pit, which is believed to date to the early 12th century, takes the form of a narrow, vertical shaft measuring 3m square by 4m deep. It was found to contain the remains of 123 individuals, amounting to an estimated 5% of the town’s population at this time, and representing the largest burial pit in the region, possibly the whole country. Bodies had been placed in the shaft over a rapid succession of three deposits, which has led University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) to suggest that it reflects a previously unknown mass casualty event that took place at least 200 years before the Black Death.
The discovery of burials outside the cathedral is not in itself surprising: the gardens were once the site of a large cemetery, used between the early 11th and 19th centuries. (They are being surveyed by ULAS ahead of the construction of a new heritage centre, designed to meet the significant uptick in visitors interested in the city’s history following the discovery of Richard III’s remains in 2012; see CA 272, 277, and 294.) Some 1,237 of the 16,000 individuals originally buried in the cemetery have been uncovered so far – but the pit appears to have been kept separate from the other graves. ‘It was located on the eastern side of the burial ground, in an area which doesn’t appear to have been in use for burials at the time,’ Mathew Morris, Project Officer for ULAS, commented.
Such a separation would be in keeping with suggestions that the shaft burials represent the victims of some kind of epidemic disease – it is hoped that ongoing analysis of the remains, which is taking place at the Francis Crick Institute, will reveal the presence of any ancient pathogens, and will add to our understanding of medieval diseases beyond bubonic plague.
As might be expected for a hurried mass burial, no artefacts were found with the individuals from the pit, but the fact that their bodies were still largely articulated indicates that they had been wrapped in shrouds. This might suggest that their families had been able to prepare the bodies before they were collected and consigned to the pit, and that there had been a degree of civic organisation and control in the process.
This is not the only insight that the investigations have granted into the chronology of Leicester Cathedral. The wider excavations have also revealed a possible Roman shrine (see CA 398), and a structure identified as a potential Anglo-Saxon sunken-featured building. ‘We now know [the cathedral] was a late Saxon foundation (before the dig, the earliest reference we had to it was in the early 13th century), and the burial sequence of 1,237 skeletons gives us a snapshot of life in Leicester over 850 years, from the early 11th century through to the mid-19th century. It is not often that you get to study a single population from a single place with that time depth,’ Mathew said.
Finds from the excavations will go on display in the new Heritage Learning Centre, which is expected to open in 2025.
Text: Rebecca Preedy / Photo: ULAS
