these gravel pits were used to bury rubble from the Blitz which were then grassed over, causing the heath to lose its rugged, gorse-covered appearance and become the grassy flat space we know today.
The part of Blackheath that survived being built on – much of it didn’t – was not because of the dead beneath it, but the living defending their piece of land from enclosure and development.
History being the weird, vast and diverse thing it is, of course, I will have to confess to you that there may still be a burial pit on Blackheath. Between 300-2,000 Cornishmen are in a mass grave somewhere on the heath. These men did not die as victims of the plague, but were killed by soldiers. They were camped up on Blackheath in 1497 on a march to London to protest against the taxes levied by King Henry VII to finance his war with Scotland. Henry sent in the troops and the Cornish rebels got no further than the heath. Local lore speculates that their bodies are buried beneath a mound called Whitfield’s Mount. This may or may not be true.
The vast majority of burials in London are not related to the Black Death. However, the idea of the mass, unmarked pits still has such a hold over some imaginations that when we are hurtling through underground London it is always plague victims that keep us company down there.
Green Park
I have found little written down about London’s plague pits outside of repeated pieces of urban legends and the odd ominous nod toward a plague pit in the countless ‘Haunted London’ and ‘Ghosts of London’ books. Ghost books will use anything, like any good story-spinner, to set the right atmosphere for their tale. So the stories of the London Underground tunnel meeting a plague pit is in little threads across books, the internet and folklore. One of the clearer stories has already been quoted: the tunnelling of the Victoria line that disturbed a plague pit, while others say that the Jubilee line had to be redirected around a pit under the park.
It is a sign of the poisoned ground of Green Park that flowers will not grow there and, like Blackheath, has a sense of bleakness about it made all the stranger and unsettling for its location in the centre of London. Peter Underwood described Green Park’s ‘stillness, an air of expectancy, and a sensation of sadness’ in his book Haunted London and James Clark mentions the park’s ‘subdued atmosphere’ in his London ghost book, also called Haunted London .
There may well be diseased bodies under the turf of the park, but they are not plague victims. Before the Reformation, the site of St James’s Palace was a leper hospital; and this part of its history may have informed the plague myths of the park. The Victoria line, being the first deep tunnel line on the London Underground, does not see daylight at any point. This may also have stoked fears regarding what was down in the earth with the commuters. This has always been a fear related to subterranean travel: when an underground train line was first proposed for London, Dr Cuming held an open-air meeting at Smithfield preaching the apocalypse: ‘The forth-coming end of the world would be hastened by the construction of underground railways burrowing into the infernal regions and thereby disturbing the devil.’
King Edward I granted the leper hospital the right to finance itself with an annual May Fair, so giving Mayfair, now one of London’s richest areas, its name from an annual charity festival for lepers. Green Park is the former grounds of this London leper colony. Henry VIII, during his marriage to Anne Boleyn, claimed the site for the Crown and St James’s Palace was built on the site of the hospital. The grounds were transformed into St James’s Park, with the neighbouring ground called Upper St James’s Park. However, this very ground (now known as Green Park) bears the mark of its history – flowers will not grow there. There are many theories as to why this is: flowers will not
The part of Blackheath that survived being built on – much of it didn’t – was not because of the dead beneath it, but the living defending their piece of land from enclosure and development.
History being the weird, vast and diverse thing it is, of course, I will have to confess to you that there may still be a burial pit on Blackheath. Between 300-2,000 Cornishmen are in a mass grave somewhere on the heath. These men did not die as victims of the plague, but were killed by soldiers. They were camped up on Blackheath in 1497 on a march to London to protest against the taxes levied by King Henry VII to finance his war with Scotland. Henry sent in the troops and the Cornish rebels got no further than the heath. Local lore speculates that their bodies are buried beneath a mound called Whitfield’s Mount. This may or may not be true.
The vast majority of burials in London are not related to the Black Death. However, the idea of the mass, unmarked pits still has such a hold over some imaginations that when we are hurtling through underground London it is always plague victims that keep us company down there.
Green Park
I have found little written down about London’s plague pits outside of repeated pieces of urban legends and the odd ominous nod toward a plague pit in the countless ‘Haunted London’ and ‘Ghosts of London’ books. Ghost books will use anything, like any good story-spinner, to set the right atmosphere for their tale. So the stories of the London Underground tunnel meeting a plague pit is in little threads across books, the internet and folklore. One of the clearer stories has already been quoted: the tunnelling of the Victoria line that disturbed a plague pit, while others say that the Jubilee line had to be redirected around a pit under the park.
It is a sign of the poisoned ground of Green Park that flowers will not grow there and, like Blackheath, has a sense of bleakness about it made all the stranger and unsettling for its location in the centre of London. Peter Underwood described Green Park’s ‘stillness, an air of expectancy, and a sensation of sadness’ in his book Haunted London and James Clark mentions the park’s ‘subdued atmosphere’ in his London ghost book, also called Haunted London .
There may well be diseased bodies under the turf of the park, but they are not plague victims. Before the Reformation, the site of St James’s Palace was a leper hospital; and this part of its history may have informed the plague myths of the park. The Victoria line, being the first deep tunnel line on the London Underground, does not see daylight at any point. This may also have stoked fears regarding what was down in the earth with the commuters. This has always been a fear related to subterranean travel: when an underground train line was first proposed for London, Dr Cuming held an open-air meeting at Smithfield preaching the apocalypse: ‘The forth-coming end of the world would be hastened by the construction of underground railways burrowing into the infernal regions and thereby disturbing the devil.’
King Edward I granted the leper hospital the right to finance itself with an annual May Fair, so giving Mayfair, now one of London’s richest areas, its name from an annual charity festival for lepers. Green Park is the former grounds of this London leper colony. Henry VIII, during his marriage to Anne Boleyn, claimed the site for the Crown and St James’s Palace was built on the site of the hospital. The grounds were transformed into St James’s Park, with the neighbouring ground called Upper St James’s Park. However, this very ground (now known as Green Park) bears the mark of its history – flowers will not grow there. There are many theories as to why this is: flowers will not
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