passengers ‘pop’ as the tube tunnel drops to dip underneath a plague pit which sits beneath the Marylebone war memorial. The Piccadilly line between Knightsbridge and South Kensington stations has to bend around Brompton Oratory to avoid a plague pit. Bank station, in the heart of the City, is built on a plague pit or at least will stink ‘like an open grave’ from fumes wafting up from the pit Liverpool Street station is built into. The Victoria line cut through a plague pit under Green Park in the 1960s, and according to Mike Heffernan on the Unexplained Mysteries website: ‘A huge tunnel-boring machine ploughed straight into a long-forgotten plague pit at Green Park, traumatising several brawny construction workers on site.’
Stephen Smith reveals why Muswell Hill does not have a tube station: ‘They started to dig a tunnel there and hit a plague pit!’ One can also find on the internet the answer to the mystery of why there are far fewer tube stations in south London: because of endless pockets of dead plague victims. Tube drivers using the southbound escape tunnel for runaway trains on the Bakerloo line between Lambeth North and the Elephant and Castle must take care to not hit the end too hard, as a plague pit lies just beyond the walls at the end of the line.
Blackheath
Blackheath is an open windy space above Greenwich. Despite greater London enveloping all sides of the heath, it does still have a desolate beauty. Houses cluster all along the edge of the hill Blackheath sits on but they avoid the top of it because, according to lore, Blackheath gets its name from being a plague pit for Black Death victims, just as Mortlake is the lake of death. In his book And Did Those Feet: Walking Through 2000 Years of British and Irish History , Charlie Connolly, remembers: ‘I grew up in Blackheath in south London, to the casual observer just a great big expanse of grass sliced by a couple of roads. Yet it was a plague pit: during the Great Plague of 1665-6, hundreds of bodies were thrown into pits, scattered with lime and buried.’
Connolly demonstrates part of the attraction to plague pit urban legends here: that the storyteller has hidden knowledge they can share. He can lift the veil from an everyday piece of waste ground or greenery and describe the horror and history behind it. There is a dark glamour there.
On 7 April 2002, Blackheath Hill collapsed with a huge hole appearing across the A2 road so severe it took two years to repair. Remembering the event, a writer on the Tube Professionals Rumour Network website wrote that there was a ‘big fuss’ as Blackheath is ‘another plague pit’. The fuss about the big hole in the A2 was really about the big hole running across a major road. What had collapsed was not a burial pit but the cavern that runs underneath Blackheath and Blackheath Hill. Discovered in 1780, these connecting caverns are thought to be chalk pits or hiding places dug by locals during the Danish wars. They run along and under Blackheath Hill from Maidstone Hill. They are known as ‘Jack Cade’s Cavern’ in local lore, as it is thought the rebel leader Jack Cade hid in them to escape oppressive soldiers. Tours were given from 1850 and, after chandeliers were installed, balls were held in the caverns. They were abandoned in 1853 after a panic, when the lights went out. The caverns were next investigated in 1938 as a possible air-raid shelter. They were found unsuitable and were again sealed and forgotten about until the A2 caved in.
Blackheath is not a plague pit, its name being in use since at least the twelfth century, more than 500 years before the Black Death arrived in Britain. ‘Blackheath’ is thought to have come from the dark colour of its soil or have evolved from its description as a bleak heath. People are very fond of digging on the heath: as well as whoever dug the chalk pits, Blackheath, like much common land, was used by locals to dig gravel. After the Second World War
Stephen Smith reveals why Muswell Hill does not have a tube station: ‘They started to dig a tunnel there and hit a plague pit!’ One can also find on the internet the answer to the mystery of why there are far fewer tube stations in south London: because of endless pockets of dead plague victims. Tube drivers using the southbound escape tunnel for runaway trains on the Bakerloo line between Lambeth North and the Elephant and Castle must take care to not hit the end too hard, as a plague pit lies just beyond the walls at the end of the line.
Blackheath
Blackheath is an open windy space above Greenwich. Despite greater London enveloping all sides of the heath, it does still have a desolate beauty. Houses cluster all along the edge of the hill Blackheath sits on but they avoid the top of it because, according to lore, Blackheath gets its name from being a plague pit for Black Death victims, just as Mortlake is the lake of death. In his book And Did Those Feet: Walking Through 2000 Years of British and Irish History , Charlie Connolly, remembers: ‘I grew up in Blackheath in south London, to the casual observer just a great big expanse of grass sliced by a couple of roads. Yet it was a plague pit: during the Great Plague of 1665-6, hundreds of bodies were thrown into pits, scattered with lime and buried.’
Connolly demonstrates part of the attraction to plague pit urban legends here: that the storyteller has hidden knowledge they can share. He can lift the veil from an everyday piece of waste ground or greenery and describe the horror and history behind it. There is a dark glamour there.
On 7 April 2002, Blackheath Hill collapsed with a huge hole appearing across the A2 road so severe it took two years to repair. Remembering the event, a writer on the Tube Professionals Rumour Network website wrote that there was a ‘big fuss’ as Blackheath is ‘another plague pit’. The fuss about the big hole in the A2 was really about the big hole running across a major road. What had collapsed was not a burial pit but the cavern that runs underneath Blackheath and Blackheath Hill. Discovered in 1780, these connecting caverns are thought to be chalk pits or hiding places dug by locals during the Danish wars. They run along and under Blackheath Hill from Maidstone Hill. They are known as ‘Jack Cade’s Cavern’ in local lore, as it is thought the rebel leader Jack Cade hid in them to escape oppressive soldiers. Tours were given from 1850 and, after chandeliers were installed, balls were held in the caverns. They were abandoned in 1853 after a panic, when the lights went out. The caverns were next investigated in 1938 as a possible air-raid shelter. They were found unsuitable and were again sealed and forgotten about until the A2 caved in.
Blackheath is not a plague pit, its name being in use since at least the twelfth century, more than 500 years before the Black Death arrived in Britain. ‘Blackheath’ is thought to have come from the dark colour of its soil or have evolved from its description as a bleak heath. People are very fond of digging on the heath: as well as whoever dug the chalk pits, Blackheath, like much common land, was used by locals to dig gravel. After the Second World War
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