@Rebel Historian There were also licensed bars at both stations within the cemetery at Brookwood, leading to an amusing story involving a drunk loco driver
Great stuff, and bonus points for mentioning 'Quatermass And The Pit'. The station in the movie was called 'Hobbs' End'. That is/was the name given to a model station used in training (no pun intended) Tube train drivers. Where I live, in Suffolk, there are plague pits dotted everywhere. Unmarked, of course. In the 1980's my best mate's dad, who was a builder, was at a house in the middle of nowhere (there's a lot of that in Suffolk), marking out foundations for a summer house in the garden. Having measured the site, he was hammering pegs into the ground, when suddenly it gave way, and he fell about ten feet into a hole full of bones. It was a plague pit. The soil over it had weathered away until it was like a bubble, which gave way when he hammered a stake into it. He knew what the hole was, but didn't get out, but called the houseowner to phone for an ambulance, as he'd cut himself in the fall. In hospital, he said he was stuck with pretty much every needle in the place, and had to stay for a few days, just in case. Luckily, he was fine.
Hopefully the yersinia pestis dies completely within a few years unlike anthrax where the bacillus forms a protective crust and can live in soil for centuries
@@edepillim it's called a cyst or spore, and yeah, yersinia pestis doesn't form those. centuries afterward it would've been impossible to be infected with it. they likely held the guy in hospital bc of anything else he could've gotten infected with rather than the plague itself, unless they just didn't know that it was impossible for the plague to be a threat in that case
Pah!... That's nothing. Here in Hull they excavated a graveyard and found clear signs that the people had died from syphilis long before it was believed the disease came to Europe from the Americas. I think they later decided it wasn't that after all, but being able to claim my adopted home-town has led the world in spreading the clap for over five centuries is too good a yarn to be ruined by facts.
I had the opportunity to handle and examine some of the skeletal remains unearthed during the Charterhouse dig. It was a truly eerie experience seeing, literally, buckets of bones at the Museum of London Archaeological Archive. I feel a chill just now thinking of this experience, seven years later. Loved the video and looking forward to more on this subject. Cheers.
Unbelievably underrated channel. I've never even been within 1000 miles of London and I can't stop watching. I thought the subway here in Boston was old, Its crazy to think London's pre dates it by almost 50 years. Keep up the good work!
The plague pit I heard about was on the part of the Metropolitan line that heads north out of Baker Street. If coming from the north you pass a disused station (Lord's I believe), cross the Regent Canal, and then dive down into a tunnel on quite a gradient. The explanation I was given for this was that the line had to pass under a plague pit so went down steeply, passed under it and then rose back again to reach Baker street at just below street level. Coincidentally whilst looking for a new office for our company in the 1990s I looked at an office building below some flats on Park Road, right next to the canal (now being rebuilt as Atrium Tower or some such). The offices were great, but every time a Met line train passed behind them the building shook! Having had my first London office in Villiers House, above Ealing Broadway station, I knew that our Californian colleagues would not appreciate the shaking and probably dive under the table - which is what they did at Villiers House - "Earthquake!" they shouted as they dived under the table, "4:35 from Paddington" we replied...
I think the discovery of the 'Cross Bones' grave yard near Southwark Cathedral is interesting. Not a plague pit, but a pauper's graveyard and the last resting place of many female sex workers who were licenced by the Bishop of Winchester to work in brothels. They were good enough to pay a licence fee to the Bishop and sell their bodies, but were not allowed burial on church land.
Watching this again made me think of the Fawlty Towers episode 'Basil And The Rat'. Basil Fawlty has a conversation with Manuel about Manuel's new pet rat (or Spanish Hamster, as the pet shop owner told Manuel), which starts: "Have you ever heard of the black death, Manuel? It was very popular here in the middle ages..."
Friend of mine who worked for BR said that at the far end of one of the platforms there is a burial ground they found when Liverpool Street was being rebuilt in the late 80's early 90's.
The only plague pit I'd heard about wasn't from the Tube running through it, but the pit itself preventing the building of a Tube station, that being at Fenchurch St. It would explain why the nearest Tube station is Tower Hill, and also why Fenchurch St. is the only London terminus not directly served by the Tube...
I always wondered why there was a walk between those two stations when every other station seemed well connected without leaving the system. A relative lived in Basildon for a time, so I passed through that way occasionally.
I would think that only the cut & cover lines would have encountered pits. Certainly deeper tunnels would possibly go underneath any pits dug during the plague years. Also as a side note, the large building with the curved exterior in Charterhouse Square (at 7:53) is the one used as the exterior of Hercule Poirot's house in the David Suchet series.
My town was overtaken by plague in 1665. The town was quarantined from the rest of County and a third of the townspeople died. Nearly 1000 dead. The survivors were kept fed by food donated by the kind and the merciful and left in a field for collection. The Earl of Warwick and the Lord Maynard gave sheep and bullocks. According to my school history teacher, the dead were too many to bury with dignity. The town is a crossing of two Roman roads. A lane joined two of the Roman approaches, a short cut. My teacher explained that the dead were carted down the lane and tipped out. The best part of 1000 dumped along that sunken lane. When the plague passed, ever pragmatic, they covered over the bodies, abandoned the lane and set up another parallel to it. That road is still in use. The teacher (50 years ago) took the class to the spot where an entranceway cuts through the old lane. You can still see the U-shaped track of the old lane as it goes up the hill. I can’t find mention of the plague lane in local history online and therefore cannot verify the story. It doesn’t take too much imagination though in a situation where the clergy are dead, the gravediggers are dead and the population are too sick and frightened to leave their houses, needs must and there aren’t many alternatives.
My father went down with several BR assessment teams and surveyors to the old Snow Hill tunnel and he said they discovered by accident one charnal pit from the old Newgate prison down under there and where they were excavating for a building's foundation several more were found close by. Some thought there were originally wells that when dried up were turned into mass graves for dead prisoners just capped the well off when full and so on. My father having still been passed out for Loughborough Jnc and the old Holborn layout at Blackfriars was chosen for his views on where to site signals, crossings etc and often had to go to meetings sometimes held in bizarre locations like Manchester or Bristol well off the SR turf. It was a very tricky layout as not only did Victoria have to hand over units to the Midland at Farringdon, it also had to handshake with London Bridge for those Thameslinks running down by the old carriage sheds onto Borough Market Jnc which in rush hour is insanely busy with trains creeping block to block.
HiJago , I worked night shifts in RBS Derbyshire square , between Liverpool st and Aldgate Three floors down on my own at many times , You get to know the noises of the machinery and you can have an ear out when something is wrong .. More than one night I had some odd experiences , not as odd as old Bob at Stratford station before the Olympic park was built .
Did I not read somewhere that urine was exported, by rail, from Newcastle? I don't remember the details and I'm sure there's a joke or two in there but I'm sure it came from a reliable source.😁
@@MrTumbleweed22 Obviously, and taking the piss out of Geordies too.👍😁 It was something to do with textiles, I think, making cloth stronger, or dying it.
I used to work on the Bakerloo line and spent a fair bit of my time at London Road Depot. The depot is said to be haunted by the ghost of a Nun from the convent next door. Long before the railway arrived there she threw herself to her death from the top of the convent. Suicide in the catholic religion is a big no-no (especially within the confines of a religious order) so she was buried outside the the grounds of the order, technically where the depot is now. Several of my colleagues have reported "strange, odd, un-natural or weird" instances whilst working at night in the depot. The run-off line (to prevent any possibility of a train rolling out onto the main line) had an illuminated sign on the end wall saying something like "Absolutely positively no digging beyond this wall without written consent from everybody from the city planner to HM the Queen" This was always said to be because of the presence of a plague pit associated with the hospital in the building that now houses the Imperial War Museum. I've never met the ghost or tried to dig through the wall, but I would have thought that the location of plague pits would be recorded and if there was any ambiguity then Geophysics should be able to confirm what's down there. Geophysics was used at Stratford Market Depot when Thames water wanted to run a large pipe under the depot because of some sort of sporting event taking place in 2012. They discovered the remains of people that were buried outside the old Stratford Langthorne Abbey. As un-official burials they were never recorded by the Abbey so Thames water had to tread carefully with their excavations / tunneling.
I was told about the idea of there being odd bends in the underground lines where the builders were trying to avoid plague pits many years ago. At the same time I heard that the reason why Moorgate terminated was because the workmen encountered something that terrified them so much they refused to dig further, with the suggestion that whatever they saw might have been the cause of the Moorgate station disaster described in one of your other videos. I have found no other reference to this proposal.
Great videos and I really enjoy the short, informative format. Thanks for that. Glad to see your channel getting noticed and to see the subscriber numbers climbing.
this has just made me realise that the northern line between moorgate & old street would likely go directly under bunhill fields burial ground, a site which was prepared for use as a plague pit but not believed to have been used as such due to the death rate slowing down. which makes me wonder if any bones were encountered while building that section of the northern line... there was a hill worth of bones there after all...
There is a tunnel on the main railway network that was excavated through land belonging to a graveyard. The workers would often encounter skeletons of the people buried during the works and there were stories of steam engines suffering dangerous blowback from the furnace at one point in the tunnel.
I liked the story that the reason no trains go under hyde park is because too many corpses, but I know that's not real now, they just follow the roads because it's easier. When St Pancras was extended they did dig up a lot of graves there though! Apparently they ended up with a big conveyor belt of corpses rather than individually taking care of the graves.
Misconception about underground tunnels running through plague pits, it is the actual stations that were built on the old sites of old churches see the tv doc 'Ghosts on the underground' on youtube
@Jago Is there any chance of you doing a video on the Brookwood Necropolis Railway. It's a story that has fascinated me for many years as I lived in the area when I was a kid, but unfortunately I have not been able to find much in depth information about the company apart from the fact the rail line is still there on the viaduct for Waterloo Station approach. I am sure it is a story that would benefit from your particular style of historical videos.
Great video. Here's one I know of. When they were tunneling for the Jubilee extension under Jamaica road in Southwark, when one of the boaring machine went under the graveyard of St. James church. The crown area (ceiling) of the tunnel collapsed and a lot of skeletal remains fell onto the tunnel floor. All the bodies were relocated to other burial sites. The Bakerloo line may run into a small pox pit when they extend the line towards Old Kent road, there is a small pox pit located under Jeffery Chaucer's school playground, just off the New Kent road.
Not just walking there's tons places built on graveyards, Asylums, Hospitals, places where those died a hideous excruciatingly agonising painful languishing infectious diseases to eventually die from or places where people were executed or tortured to death or modern world murdered by some narcissistic sadistic psychotic nutters, jails, businesses including pubs and churches etc also farms, quarries, mines the thing is not everything was recorded I'm researching my family ancestors places they lived, worked, went to education, even where they are buried information didn't exist even photos don't exist like 1950s emergency housing my late mother lived in nothing i find it very frustrating yet go back centuries you got more chance of finding about things daft really is. Even to this day those professor who studied pass life are totally stumped I've heard of some are decades in to the work and due to retire to only discover new things which stops them from retiring as there fascinated by it so am I absolutely love history and old Victorian and Edwardian houses something of fantasy dream of living in one as I'm very extremely severely disabled i love all the original features minus obvious that has to be upgraded to fit in with building regulations and health and safety ie all electrics, boiler and heating etc yet it can be done ever so painfully respectfully done doing it sympatheticly people rip the heart and soul out place so very very sad even the original gorgeous beautiful fireplaces and the surrounds. My property I'm in the now was built on old primary school of 1960s up the road in the area that was huts for school there was suicide someone hung them self to this day I heard from neighbors she's still seen hanging from the beam or wandering aimlessly so it's no surprise what's been lurking under ground the more they disturb the ground the more restless lost souls are going to wander
@@lozzii1917 funny enough near where I live is an old mental asylum, but now it's been converted into a really fancy spa/hotel. Sits somewhat odd to me that a place where people would have suffered horrible me tal torment, is now used as somewhere to relax by those wealthy enough to stay there.
And places where people have been killed. I come from Derry, Northern Ireland. You could do a whole walking tour pointing out where so and so was killed, and then, for day 2 of the tour go visit their graves in the different graveyards. Two good days walking there. (And after lockdown ends, plenty of pubs en route.)
I stayed in Bucharest once and as we walked round Ceaucescu's palace the clearly visible bullet holes were there pointed out to us and there was the odd shrine to a young person who lost their life in the uprising. The young Romanian woman who was showing us round said they "forgave" him and his missus and buried them in the city's main graveyard.
Having worked on the planning side of the underground for a number of years, most new asset deviations were to go around "undisclosed obstacles" not plague pits. Never told what they were, just that we had to stay away from them
You will have to go into St Botolph's Aldgate . The internal murals have rather wacky cherubium on the walls, not surprised puritans painted most of them out to plain walls and listings of the commandments
Nice to hear some of our forgotten history. It is most important that all this information is either written down or made into informative videos. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
I lived in London between 1974 and 1977. During that time I listened to 'little' Nicky Horne on Capital Radio. He had regular feature about 'myths & legends' of 'old London town', one featured an apparent plague pit between Paddington & Edgeware Road underground stations. Allegedly due to the burials the ground had fallen away over time, thus there was an appreciable 'dip' as the train passed one part of the line over causing ones' ears to 'pop'. I accept however that there might other explanations, especially when one thinks of say the continuing problems with the high water table at Farringdon. Though the romantic in me like to think it is a plague pit! Please keep up the good work, fascinating videos thank you. M
Not the Underground, but a London railway. There was an Ox-bow lake left behind when the Thames shifted its route a tad. Perfect as a burial ground for plague victims! A lake of the dead…. Along came a railway. By then the lake was filled in and a station built on top. Named Mort-lake. Beside which, incidentally, to this day is a building built as the station waiting room for Queen Victoria.
I’d heard the tale about the alleged plague pit around South Ken on the Piccadilly Line where it bends tightly. However, I’ve often thought the line would have been too deep to hit the plague pit.
Not exactly an underground tunnel being dug through a plague pit but many remains were removed from the Crossbones Burial Ground when TFL built an electricity sub station for the Jubilee Line. Quite a horrible thing to do considering the history of the people buried in Crossbones. Okay, I'm biased and Crossbones is a bit of a special place in my heart.
It’s one I want to cover - unfortunately I happen to know a historian who’s studying it, and until she’s finished, I don’t want to make a video that might prove wrong.
@@JagoHazzard Really, my degree was in history... long story. May I email you with regard to Crossbones? As I mentioned, for my own reasons it's a place very close to my heart.
When they were building the Victoria Line, workers were troubled by an unusually cold, damp 'something' around them. I remember reports at the time, incl. in the Railway Magazine. Also my friend's father, working for Cementation on the line stopped his workmen playing football as the clay they were kicking contained a skull.
Good vid. Thanks. My old man was involved in the construction of the St Botolph building North West of the church and Aldgate Station. He said they had to reinter "a lot" of burials. I'll try to get some more info. Piccadilly line is 20metres+. below the surface and too deep for a burial pit. The line bends at Knightsbridge-S.Kensington for the line to follow the course of the road as is standard (wayleave). The Victorian viaducts built in Bankside disturbed a burial ground at Ewer Street. 'They do say' that the bodies weren't reburied but shifted aside and stacked vertically.
The story I heard, which seems to have evaded your notice, is that the Central Line loops around a pit somewhere around the Chancery Lane to Bank section. (Not that there's much evidence of such a loop on the physical map I just looked at).
I believe some of the more central adventure playgrounds in London were sited on top of old plague pits, as these spaces had been left and not built on. The one at St. Mary's in Paddington is adjacent to a now grassed over area, the old graveyard, which would have had a plague pit beside it. And I wonder just how safe it is to sink telegraph poles for structures into these sites, though I'm not aware that it was ever a problem.
Plague pits were surely not as deep as the Tube lines?..The 'Cut and cover' method of tunnelling may have discovered some, but was there any records of these? Isleworth Parish Church has one, from 1665.
Great video. I love the narration and the history of the underground. You should definitely do one another day about the single line branches that underground has. Keep up the good work 👍🏻
In the 60's, 70's and early 80's a man called Kieran Patrick Kelly from Ireland murdered a Considerable amount of people by pushing them in front of oncoming trains on the Northern line between Kennington and Morden stations. He was eventually caught and prosecuted for 31 deaths but in actual fact he murdered over 70 people.
Not the London Underground, but when in 1865 the GWR built The Bristol Harbour branch, from Temple Meads to the city docks at Bathurst Basin the route involved a 282 yard long tunnel that cut beneath the church yard of the famous St May Redcliffe, ("The fairest Parrish church in all England" - Queen Elizabeth 1). As the top of the tunnel roof would come with in 12ft or so of the surface there was real danger of graves being disturbed and remains falling into the working. To this end the GWR gave the Church £2500 to purchase land in the Arnos Vale cemetery in the south of the city (one of those great old gothic Victorian jobs, like Ealing or Highgate in London) and rebury all remains that might be disturbed by the construction there.
London churchyards were so overcrowded that recent burials were just a couple of feet deep and the smell was awful. Thus a private company opened the Brookwood cemetery in Surrey. Special trains from Waterloo took the coffins to Brookwood.
And what of Leyton to stratford on the Central Line ?, the train descends sharply upon entering the tunnel and the local legend is again that it does that to dodge a plague pit.
I know a person who did her Doctorate on the Cross Bones grave yard, obviously it is a very interesting subject and one that rightly deserves its own video.
It is going to be in an upcoming video - I find it, and the circumstances surrounding it, really interesting. It’s a less explored side of London’s history.
@@JagoHazzard it certainly is, it is a remnant of a time when things that can be defined as "other" happened on the other side of the river; from theatre to bear baiting type "entertainment" and activities that do not fall in the confines of "normal" daily living. Sorry, studied anthropology so am used to analysing history through the Levi Strauss theoretical framework. I specialised in looking at the interplay between daily and festive (carnival) behaviour, thus those that ended up in Cross Bones fall on the the Peripheries of behavioural normality, kind of like in Spain the sex workers operate outside of the town and do not work during the 40 days of Lent. Then after carnival leading up to Holy Sunday (Easter Sunday for protestants) the following Monday is often another festive day of celebrations as the sex workers can work once again. This last part I leant while studying cultural trends in Ciudad Rodrigo is a small cathedral city in the province of Salamanca, as it was the home town (although I was also told permanently it was a city as 30,000 people lised there) of my then girlfriend.
Apparently, soon after the Metropolitan Railway's construction in the 1860s, the retaining wall of the deep cutting at Farringdon Street collapsed due to extreme torrential rain. The retaining wall abutted on to one of the very many 'burial grounds' which pockmarked Victorian inner London, before the great outer cemeteries were established. Due to railway workings, many sets of remain were re interred in 'death houses' in the burial ground precincts. Huge flooding consequent to the retaining wall collapse apparently littered the railway with corpses.
On a completely unrelated but similar point, in Newcastle Upon Tyne now many years ago, a former smallpox or leper burial ground wax excavated for a new build scientific building. The irony is there. The burial ground eventually became a cattle market and years later a bus station. When knocked the latter down, they used full bio protection wear in case any spores were hanging around.
There is a St Botolphs at Barbican ? (the patron saint of entrances and leaving hence churches near the gates of london). North of Moorgate of course is Bonehill (Bunhill Fields), which is on the northern line , but the graves unless C14th would be too high about the tunnels.
having looked at London Road depot on Google Earth there isn't room enough to swing a cat in there, in fact your WW2 farm railway layout seems to be more spacious, All of the sidings appear to run right up to the boundary wall, so if any stop short of a plague pit, that pit must by under a house outside of the depot (or the siding has been extended over the pit). Fascinating subject Jago.
@CornishGardenTeam I'm literally researching this for a novel right now and from what I can ascertain, the runaway is at the other end - one tunnel goes towards Lambeth North, the other (the runaway) terminates roughly where St George's Cathedral is, and behind THAT wall is where they say the pit is. The cathedral was built in the 1850s but it's perfectly possible this was a burial ground before then, or the church site could be coincidence, or perhaps there is no pit there! The research continues, but this is really cool!
The building on the left at 7:34 to 7:36 (and again at 7:53 to 7:56) looks very much like the "home" of Hercule Poirot used in the TV series based on Agatha Christie's crime novels. Does anyone know if this is it?
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It's been a few years since I last watched Poirot, but after reading your comment, I also spotted the resemblance. And you're absolutely right! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin_Court#/media/File:Florin_Court_from_Charterhouse_Square_garden.jpg
Those puns at the end had me giggling in my hospital bed with a collapsed lung. The nurses think I'm mad! An interesting series so far, I'll be sure to check out your other video's. Greetings from Holland!
@@helmaschine1885 Don't worry, having a collapsed lung really sucks but I'm out of the hospital now. Thank you for your concern though, that's very sweet!
Fascinating tale! Currently making my happy way through your channel. Love the Tube series. My trip to London this year was postponed by another disease so I am enjoying a vicarious 'visit'.
Really good, well done and thanks for that. Some acid soils can completely munch up skeletal remains. It looks very much like that the underground diggers were lucky!
Any mention of the plague pit between St John's wood and Baker Street station, not to mention the extra time it takes to go from one station to the other as it bypasses it...?
Well researched. Very informative. I knew there had been something about mass graves as Tony Robinson popped up on tv about it but this fills in more detail.
Re the Knightsbridge pit... I heard it was located on the grass hummock at 51.5027N 0.1552W. Hence why that area of prime real estate has neve been built upon. But this is also the approx. location of the Knights Bridge over the river Westbourne - that same river that forms the fountains by Lancaster Gate, the Serpentine in Hyde Park, flows south under Sloane street, and flows OVER Sloane Square station’s platforms in a cast iron conduit.
Something you may turn over a bit is how people in the 1800s and into the early 1900s treated human remains. People have always been buried in a systematic fashion; however, over time those locations were forgotten. In the industrial age where you are moving vast quantities of earth, statically speaking, you would run into bones, some of which are human. Depending on the scruples of the people involved, they were handled with dignity and properly re-buried or just tossed away. Either way, the Victorian sensibilities would kick in and everything kept quiet. It was the common cultural practice at the time.
This is great! What a fascinating history (again) about places we thought we knew but you show we need to know more. Have you done (or thought of doing) a history of the area of Whitehall (was York Place, home of Scotland Yard etc)? Maybe a super-long special to celebrate 16k followers?
I know that some of the early railways line cut through existing cemeteries. This caused much upset locally as the bodies and bones were excavated with little or no regard to the deceased. Eventually the outcry from this led to railway line being redirected away from known cemeteries.
They reburied the Crossrail bones but kept it secret where, I found out it was just down the road to where i live. I contacted my MP by email, she did not know of this and went ballistic. But in the end they are still near my house.
Devonshire street cemetery in sydney, 30,000 in a cemetery moved for Central station which was trying to compete against Flinders Street station in Melbourne during the early 20th century
@@Lexify ...and ground level has risen in cities, sometimes considerably. Just look at how deep some Romanesque churches lie beneath the current street level.
Going off topic here, but still related; are there also legends about other European underground rail lines or sewers and other urban tunnels encountering plague pits, like in Marseilles, Rome, or Berlin? (Paris kinda made identification of plague victims impossible with the whole catacomb thing.) And speaking of underground lines, I don't know if you stick to London only, but have you ever heard the rumors that the Moscow Metro has a second system even deeper underground that was designed to evacuate politicians from the city in nuclear war?
Hello Jago. Sorry to dig this back up ( Pardon the pun) The only one I was told about was on the Victoria Line between Victoria & Green Park where it had to be diverted around it so it does that quick distort instead of being straight through . With the latter you could say the engineers building the line found the dead Centre of it ..
There are documented plague pits and mass burials for cholera in York. Some have been carefully avoided as it is not know for sure that some of the incidences of "plague" may have been in fact anthrax. A Yersinia Pestis plague pit poses little hazard, a pit full of anthrax victims would still be a plentiful source of anthrax spores.
Haha love the dark humour . Was so excited to do the breakfast dishes this morning as it's the only time I get to watch anything in peace haha. I think even with advances in technology as London expands no doubt more discoveries will be made . Fingers crossed you reach 20k subscribers x
I think these days that ground penetrating radar can be used for some of the tunnelling, however uncovering a body that was buried due to the plague has to be the most dangerous part of the construction. You don't want to unleash that again!
I heard that the London Necropolis Railway didn't have enough staff, which is why they ran a skeleton service.
>BaDum Tsss
A bare bones operation...?
@Rebel Historian There were also licensed bars at both stations within the cemetery at Brookwood, leading to an amusing story involving a drunk loco driver
Napoleon Boney-part was jealous.
necropolis
Great stuff, and bonus points for mentioning 'Quatermass And The Pit'. The station in the movie was called 'Hobbs' End'. That is/was the name given to a model station used in training (no pun intended) Tube train drivers.
Where I live, in Suffolk, there are plague pits dotted everywhere. Unmarked, of course. In the 1980's my best mate's dad, who was a builder, was at a house in the middle of nowhere (there's a lot of that in Suffolk), marking out foundations for a summer house in the garden. Having measured the site, he was hammering pegs into the ground, when suddenly it gave way, and he fell about ten feet into a hole full of bones. It was a plague pit. The soil over it had weathered away until it was like a bubble, which gave way when he hammered a stake into it. He knew what the hole was, but didn't get out, but called the houseowner to phone for an ambulance, as he'd cut himself in the fall. In hospital, he said he was stuck with pretty much every needle in the place, and had to stay for a few days, just in case. Luckily, he was fine.
that guys basement must look just like mine!
What year was that ¿?
@@suzyqualcast6269 - Probably about 1982-83.
Hopefully the yersinia pestis dies completely within a few years unlike anthrax where the bacillus forms a protective crust and can live in soil for centuries
@@edepillim it's called a cyst or spore, and yeah, yersinia pestis doesn't form those. centuries afterward it would've been impossible to be infected with it. they likely held the guy in hospital bc of anything else he could've gotten infected with rather than the plague itself, unless they just didn't know that it was impossible for the plague to be a threat in that case
In my city, when they widened a major road in the 70s, they uncovered a pit full of irish bones, killed from Cholera. Wouldnt expect that in Canada.
Pah!... That's nothing. Here in Hull they excavated a graveyard and found clear signs that the people had died from syphilis long before it was believed the disease came to Europe from the Americas.
I think they later decided it wasn't that after all, but being able to claim my adopted home-town has led the world in spreading the clap for over five centuries is too good a yarn to be ruined by facts.
@Stephen Anthony Fossilised cans of Guinness.
@@Maakali1333 This is the internet. It's all about competition :-D
Stephen Anthony because they came from ireland
Stephen Anthony they were posed to spell out “Irish”
I had the opportunity to handle and examine some of the skeletal remains unearthed during the Charterhouse dig. It was a truly eerie experience seeing, literally, buckets of bones at the Museum of London Archaeological Archive. I feel a chill just now thinking of this experience, seven years later. Loved the video and looking forward to more on this subject. Cheers.
Unbelievably underrated channel. I've never even been within 1000 miles of London and I can't stop watching. I thought the subway here in Boston was old, Its crazy to think London's pre dates it by almost 50 years. Keep up the good work!
The plague pit I heard about was on the part of the Metropolitan line that heads north out of Baker Street. If coming from the north you pass a disused station (Lord's I believe), cross the Regent Canal, and then dive down into a tunnel on quite a gradient. The explanation I was given for this was that the line had to pass under a plague pit so went down steeply, passed under it and then rose back again to reach Baker street at just below street level. Coincidentally whilst looking for a new office for our company in the 1990s I looked at an office building below some flats on Park Road, right next to the canal (now being rebuilt as Atrium Tower or some such). The offices were great, but every time a Met line train passed behind them the building shook! Having had my first London office in Villiers House, above Ealing Broadway station, I knew that our Californian colleagues would not appreciate the shaking and probably dive under the table - which is what they did at Villiers House - "Earthquake!" they shouted as they dived under the table, "4:35 from Paddington" we replied...
keep em coming Jago... Please cover that station too.. cheers from Brisbane Australia.
Ayy good to see I'm not the only Aussie here! Perhaps there's a similar series but in Sydney worth putting together...
And Cheers from Melbourne too!
And from Adelaide!
And one from Perth... seems all we're missing is Tassie and the Territory
Cheers from Ascot, Brisbane, too :-)
I think the discovery of the 'Cross Bones' grave yard near Southwark Cathedral is interesting. Not a plague pit, but a pauper's graveyard and the last resting place of many female sex workers who were licenced by the Bishop of Winchester to work in brothels. They were good enough to pay a licence fee to the Bishop and sell their bodies, but were not allowed burial on church land.
Watching this again made me think of the Fawlty Towers episode 'Basil And The Rat'.
Basil Fawlty has a conversation with Manuel about Manuel's new pet rat (or Spanish Hamster, as the pet shop owner told Manuel), which starts:
"Have you ever heard of the black death, Manuel? It was very popular here in the middle ages..."
Man in shop say "Filigree Siberian Hamster" 🐀
Friend of mine who worked for BR said that at the far end of one of the platforms there is a burial ground they found when Liverpool Street was being rebuilt in the late 80's early 90's.
The only plague pit I'd heard about wasn't from the Tube running through it, but the pit itself preventing the building of a Tube station, that being at Fenchurch St. It would explain why the nearest Tube station is Tower Hill, and also why Fenchurch St. is the only London terminus not directly served by the Tube...
I always wondered why there was a walk between those two stations when every other station seemed well connected without leaving the system. A relative lived in Basildon for a time, so I passed through that way occasionally.
I would think that only the cut & cover lines would have encountered pits. Certainly deeper tunnels would possibly go underneath any pits dug during the plague years.
Also as a side note, the large building with the curved exterior in Charterhouse Square (at 7:53) is the one used as the exterior of Hercule Poirot's house in the David Suchet series.
My town was overtaken by plague in 1665. The town was quarantined from the rest of County and a third of the townspeople died. Nearly 1000 dead. The survivors were kept fed by food donated by the kind and the merciful and left in a field for collection. The Earl of Warwick and the Lord Maynard gave sheep and bullocks.
According to my school history teacher, the dead were too many to bury with dignity.
The town is a crossing of two Roman roads. A lane joined two of the Roman approaches, a short cut. My teacher explained that the dead were carted down the lane and tipped out. The best part of 1000 dumped along that sunken lane. When the plague passed, ever pragmatic, they covered over the bodies, abandoned the lane and set up another parallel to it. That road is still in use. The teacher (50 years ago) took the class to the spot where an entranceway cuts through the old lane. You can still see the U-shaped track of the old lane as it goes up the hill.
I can’t find mention of the plague lane in local history online and therefore cannot verify the story.
It doesn’t take too much imagination though in a situation where the clergy are dead, the gravediggers are dead and the population are too sick and frightened to leave their houses, needs must and there aren’t many alternatives.
Hazzard, you're fast becoming a national treasure.
Oh Lord it’s a bad lookout for our country if so...
@@JagoHazzard pas du tout - the CBE beckons.
Well he’s in the media that’s how you get them these days.
My father went down with several BR assessment teams and surveyors to the old Snow Hill tunnel and he said they discovered by accident one charnal pit from the old Newgate prison down under there and where they were excavating for a building's foundation several more were found close by. Some thought there were originally wells that when dried up were turned into mass graves for dead prisoners just capped the well off when full and so on. My father having still been passed out for Loughborough Jnc and the old Holborn layout at Blackfriars was chosen for his views on where to site signals, crossings etc and often had to go to meetings sometimes held in bizarre locations like Manchester or Bristol well off the SR turf. It was a very tricky layout as not only did Victoria have to hand over units to the Midland at Farringdon, it also had to handshake with London Bridge for those Thameslinks running down by the old carriage sheds onto Borough Market Jnc which in rush hour is insanely busy with trains creeping block to block.
HiJago , I worked night shifts in RBS Derbyshire square , between Liverpool st and Aldgate
Three floors down on my own at many times , You get to know the noises of the machinery and you can have an ear out when something is wrong .. More than one night I had some odd experiences , not as odd as old Bob at Stratford station before the Olympic park was built .
'Wee dye.' And incidentally, they did use urine to dye cloth..
They probably produced plenty of it when they saw that skeleton.
@@JagoHazzard LMAO
Did I not read somewhere that urine was exported, by rail, from Newcastle? I don't remember the details and I'm sure there's a joke or two in there but I'm sure it came from a reliable source.😁
@@2H80vids they were taking the pee?
@@MrTumbleweed22 Obviously, and taking the piss out of Geordies too.👍😁 It was something to do with textiles, I think, making cloth stronger, or dying it.
3:10 a young single diet coke commuting to work.
Maybe it was going back to the syrup company with a complaint
I used to work on the Bakerloo line and spent a fair bit of my time at London Road Depot. The depot is said to be haunted by the ghost of a Nun from the convent next door. Long before the railway arrived there she threw herself to her death from the top of the convent. Suicide in the catholic religion is a big no-no (especially within the confines of a religious order) so she was buried outside the the grounds of the order, technically where the depot is now. Several of my colleagues have reported "strange, odd, un-natural or weird" instances whilst working at night in the depot.
The run-off line (to prevent any possibility of a train rolling out onto the main line) had an illuminated sign on the end wall saying something like "Absolutely positively no digging beyond this wall without written consent from everybody from the city planner to HM the Queen" This was always said to be because of the presence of a plague pit associated with the hospital in the building that now houses the Imperial War Museum.
I've never met the ghost or tried to dig through the wall, but I would have thought that the location of plague pits would be recorded and if there was any ambiguity then Geophysics should be able to confirm what's down there. Geophysics was used at Stratford Market Depot when Thames water wanted to run a large pipe under the depot because of some sort of sporting event taking place in 2012. They discovered the remains of people that were buried outside the old Stratford Langthorne Abbey. As un-official burials they were never recorded by the Abbey so Thames water had to tread carefully with their excavations / tunneling.
15.4K!!! You're moving right along, Young Man, and I'm enjoying following your track(s). LOL!
I was told about the idea of there being odd bends in the underground lines where the builders were trying to avoid plague pits many years ago. At the same time I heard that the reason why Moorgate terminated was because the workmen encountered something that terrified them so much they refused to dig further, with the suggestion that whatever they saw might have been the cause of the Moorgate station disaster described in one of your other videos. I have found no other reference to this proposal.
Interesting, any ideas on what it was they allegedly saw that scared them?
Great videos and I really enjoy the short, informative format. Thanks for that. Glad to see your channel getting noticed and to see the subscriber numbers climbing.
this has just made me realise that the northern line between moorgate & old street would likely go directly under bunhill fields burial ground, a site which was prepared for use as a plague pit but not believed to have been used as such due to the death rate slowing down. which makes me wonder if any bones were encountered while building that section of the northern line... there was a hill worth of bones there after all...
The line is far, far too deep there.
There is a tunnel on the main railway network that was excavated through land belonging to a graveyard.
The workers would often encounter skeletons of the people buried during the works and there were stories of steam engines suffering dangerous blowback from the furnace at one point in the tunnel.
I liked the story that the reason no trains go under hyde park is because too many corpses, but I know that's not real now, they just follow the roads because it's easier.
When St Pancras was extended they did dig up a lot of graves there though! Apparently they ended up with a big conveyor belt of corpses rather than individually taking care of the graves.
Misconception about underground tunnels running through plague pits, it is the actual stations that were built on the old sites of old churches see the tv doc 'Ghosts on the underground' on youtube
@Jago Is there any chance of you doing a video on the Brookwood Necropolis Railway. It's a story that has fascinated me for many years as I lived in the area when I was a kid, but unfortunately I have not been able to find much in depth information about the company apart from the fact the rail line is still there on the viaduct for Waterloo Station approach. I am sure it is a story that would benefit from your particular style of historical videos.
I’m told that one of the pedestrian tunnels from the Waterloo & city line hit a pit and that’s why there’s a dead end that looks out of place.
Great video. Here's one I know of. When they were tunneling for the Jubilee extension under Jamaica road in Southwark, when one of the boaring machine went under the graveyard of St. James church. The crown area (ceiling) of the tunnel collapsed and a lot of skeletal remains fell onto the tunnel floor. All the bodies were relocated to other burial sites.
The Bakerloo line may run into a small pox pit when they extend the line towards Old Kent road, there is a small pox pit located under Jeffery Chaucer's school playground, just off the New Kent road.
I bet we’re are walking over plenty of unknown graves every day
Not just walking there's tons places built on graveyards, Asylums, Hospitals, places where those died a hideous excruciatingly agonising painful languishing infectious diseases to eventually die from or places where people were executed or tortured to death or modern world murdered by some narcissistic sadistic psychotic nutters, jails, businesses including pubs and churches etc also farms, quarries, mines the thing is not everything was recorded I'm researching my family ancestors places they lived, worked, went to education, even where they are buried information didn't exist even photos don't exist like 1950s emergency housing my late mother lived in nothing i find it very frustrating yet go back centuries you got more chance of finding about things daft really is. Even to this day those professor who studied pass life are totally stumped I've heard of some are decades in to the work and due to retire to only discover new things which stops them from retiring as there fascinated by it so am I absolutely love history and old Victorian and Edwardian houses something of fantasy dream of living in one as I'm very extremely severely disabled i love all the original features minus obvious that has to be upgraded to fit in with building regulations and health and safety ie all electrics, boiler and heating etc yet it can be done ever so painfully respectfully done doing it sympatheticly people rip the heart and soul out place so very very sad even the original gorgeous beautiful fireplaces and the surrounds.
My property I'm in the now was built on old primary school of 1960s up the road in the area that was huts for school there was suicide someone hung them self to this day I heard from neighbors she's still seen hanging from the beam or wandering aimlessly so it's no surprise what's been lurking under ground the more they disturb the ground the more restless lost souls are going to wander
@@lozzii1917 funny enough near where I live is an old mental asylum, but now it's been converted into a really fancy spa/hotel. Sits somewhat odd to me that a place where people would have suffered horrible me tal torment, is now used as somewhere to relax by those wealthy enough to stay there.
And places where people have been killed. I come from Derry, Northern Ireland. You could do a whole walking tour pointing out where so and so was killed, and then, for day 2 of the tour go visit their graves in the different graveyards. Two good days walking there. (And after lockdown ends, plenty of pubs en route.)
I stayed in Bucharest once and as we walked round Ceaucescu's palace the clearly visible bullet holes were there pointed out to us and there was the odd shrine to a young person who lost their life in the uprising. The young Romanian woman who was showing us round said they "forgave" him and his missus and buried them in the city's main graveyard.
Having worked on the planning side of the underground for a number of years, most new asset deviations were to go around "undisclosed obstacles" not plague pits.
Never told what they were, just that we had to stay away from them
You will have to go into St Botolph's Aldgate . The internal murals have rather wacky cherubium on the walls, not surprised puritans painted most of them out to plain walls and listings of the commandments
Nice to hear some of our forgotten history. It is most important that all this information is either written down or made into informative videos. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
I lived in London between 1974 and 1977. During that time I listened to 'little' Nicky Horne on Capital Radio. He had regular feature about 'myths & legends' of 'old London town', one featured an apparent plague pit between Paddington & Edgeware Road underground stations. Allegedly due to the burials the ground had fallen away over time, thus there was an appreciable 'dip' as the train passed one part of the line over causing ones' ears to 'pop'. I accept however that there might other explanations, especially when one thinks of say the continuing problems with the high water table at Farringdon. Though the romantic in me like to think it is a plague pit! Please keep up the good work, fascinating videos thank you. M
Not the Underground, but a London railway. There was an Ox-bow lake left behind when the Thames shifted its route a tad. Perfect as a burial ground for plague victims! A lake of the dead…. Along came a railway. By then the lake was filled in and a station built on top. Named Mort-lake. Beside which, incidentally, to this day is a building built as the station waiting room for Queen Victoria.
I’d heard the tale about the alleged plague pit around South Ken on the Piccadilly Line where it bends tightly. However, I’ve often thought the line would have been too deep to hit the plague pit.
If any line cuts through a plague pit it'd be the Northern Line.
Not exactly an underground tunnel being dug through a plague pit but many remains were removed from the Crossbones Burial Ground when TFL built an electricity sub station for the Jubilee Line. Quite a horrible thing to do considering the history of the people buried in Crossbones. Okay, I'm biased and Crossbones is a bit of a special place in my heart.
It’s one I want to cover - unfortunately I happen to know a historian who’s studying it, and until she’s finished, I don’t want to make a video that might prove wrong.
@@JagoHazzard Really, my degree was in history... long story. May I email you with regard to Crossbones? As I mentioned, for my own reasons it's a place very close to my heart.
@@PurityVendetta You can, I’d be interested to hear.
Access to two historians with a focus on an already enigmatic location. That promises to be fascinating.
When they were building the Victoria Line, workers were troubled by an unusually cold, damp 'something' around them. I remember reports at the time, incl. in the Railway Magazine. Also my friend's father, working for Cementation on the line stopped his workmen playing football as the clay they were kicking contained a skull.
Good vid. Thanks. My old man was involved in the construction of the St Botolph building North West of the church and Aldgate Station. He said they had to reinter "a lot" of burials. I'll try to get some more info. Piccadilly line is 20metres+. below the surface and too deep for a burial pit. The line bends at Knightsbridge-S.Kensington for the line to follow the course of the road as is standard (wayleave). The Victorian viaducts built in Bankside disturbed a burial ground at Ewer Street. 'They do say' that the bodies weren't reburied but shifted aside and stacked vertically.
Looking forward to the cross bones cemetery one. This vid was great, really interesting.
Thanks!
There are rumours of Mummy's from the British Museum haunting the Central Line. They bring desert temperatures with them to the tunnels.
The story I heard, which seems to have evaded your notice, is that the Central Line loops around a pit somewhere around the Chancery Lane to Bank section. (Not that there's much evidence of such a loop on the physical map I just looked at).
I haven’t come across that one. I shall have to investigate.
Doesn't it just follow the road
According to my Dad, the sharp diversions on the central line near bank are due to avoiding the vaults at banks
I have a bone to pick with London Underground.
Also HS2 is unearthing plague pits, or at least mass graves.
I believe some of the more central adventure playgrounds in London were sited on top of old plague pits, as these spaces had been left and not built on. The one at St. Mary's in Paddington is adjacent to a now grassed over area, the old graveyard, which would have had a plague pit beside it. And I wonder just how safe it is to sink telegraph poles for structures into these sites, though I'm not aware that it was ever a problem.
Plague pits were surely not as deep as the Tube lines?..The 'Cut and cover' method of tunnelling may have discovered some, but was there any records of these? Isleworth Parish Church has one, from 1665.
Great video. I love the narration and the history of the underground. You should definitely do one another day about the single line branches that underground has. Keep up the good work 👍🏻
Quartermaster and the Pit was a great movie!
QUARTERMASS.
It was, but the TV serial was better I think.
[Edited to add] Oh, and actually it was _Quatermass._
@@ds1868
Quatermass.
Spellcheck killed me. Ouch.
@@PtolemyJones
Unlucky. Cheers ;)
When you showed a picture of the death karts. All I was thinking " I'm not dead yet.. " from Monty Python.
I was totally expecting something about Farringdon, with the stories about it being haunted
"More skeletons than you usually want to run into" - how much more? Is there some kind of upper limit of how many you want to run into? :)
Seven is generally considered the maximum. This is known as the Harryhausen Limit.
I'd say the top limit of skeletons you want to encounter is none :D
@@JagoHazzard I love your geekiness... never ever change.
@@JagoHazzard That may have been the first movie I saw at the cinema. Certainly the first I actually remember seeing, went with my grandfather.
I hope someone from National Geographic discovers you and give you loads of money to make tales of tube for a full feature length series
That would be great !
I’m A fascinated Toronto resident with a serious subway system envy
Our TTC is embarrassing, isn't it?
In the 60's, 70's and early 80's a man called Kieran Patrick Kelly from Ireland murdered a Considerable amount of people by pushing them in front of oncoming trains on the Northern line between Kennington and Morden stations. He was eventually caught and prosecuted for 31 deaths but in actual fact he murdered over 70 people.
Not the London Underground, but when in 1865 the GWR built The Bristol Harbour branch, from Temple Meads to the city docks at Bathurst Basin the route involved a 282 yard long tunnel that cut beneath the church yard of the famous St May Redcliffe, ("The fairest Parrish church in all England" - Queen Elizabeth 1). As the top of the tunnel roof would come with in 12ft or so of the surface there was real danger of graves being disturbed and remains falling into the working.
To this end the GWR gave the Church £2500 to purchase land in the Arnos Vale cemetery in the south of the city (one of those great old gothic Victorian jobs, like Ealing or Highgate in London) and rebury all remains that might be disturbed by the construction there.
London churchyards were so overcrowded that recent burials were just a couple of feet deep and the smell was awful. Thus a private company opened the Brookwood cemetery in Surrey. Special trains from Waterloo took the coffins to Brookwood.
And what of Leyton to stratford on the Central Line ?, the train descends sharply upon entering the tunnel and the local legend is again that it does that to dodge a plague pit.
I know a person who did her Doctorate on the Cross Bones grave yard, obviously it is a very interesting subject and one that rightly deserves its own video.
It is going to be in an upcoming video - I find it, and the circumstances surrounding it, really interesting. It’s a less explored side of London’s history.
@@JagoHazzard it certainly is, it is a remnant of a time when things that can be defined as "other" happened on the other side of the river; from theatre to bear baiting type "entertainment" and activities that do not fall in the confines of "normal" daily living. Sorry, studied anthropology so am used to analysing history through the Levi Strauss theoretical framework. I specialised in looking at the interplay between daily and festive (carnival) behaviour, thus those that ended up in Cross Bones fall on the the Peripheries of behavioural normality, kind of like in Spain the sex workers operate outside of the town and do not work during the 40 days of Lent. Then after carnival leading up to Holy Sunday (Easter Sunday for protestants) the following Monday is often another festive day of celebrations as the sex workers can work once again. This last part I leant while studying cultural trends in Ciudad Rodrigo is a small cathedral city in the province of Salamanca, as it was the home town (although I was also told permanently it was a city as 30,000 people lised there) of my then girlfriend.
Apparently, soon after the Metropolitan Railway's construction in the 1860s, the retaining wall of the deep cutting at Farringdon Street collapsed due to extreme torrential rain.
The retaining wall abutted on to one of the very many 'burial grounds' which pockmarked Victorian inner London, before the great outer cemeteries were established. Due to railway workings, many sets of remain were re interred in 'death houses' in the burial ground precincts. Huge flooding consequent to the retaining wall collapse apparently littered the railway with corpses.
That is fascinating. Do you have a source for this? It’s not that I don’t believe you but I want to conduct research into this.
On a completely unrelated but similar point, in Newcastle Upon Tyne now many years ago, a former smallpox or leper burial ground wax excavated for a new build scientific building. The irony is there. The burial ground eventually became a cattle market and years later a bus station. When knocked the latter down, they used full bio protection wear in case any spores were hanging around.
There is a St Botolphs at Barbican ? (the patron saint of entrances and leaving hence churches near the gates of london). North of Moorgate of course is Bonehill (Bunhill Fields), which is on the northern line , but the graves unless C14th would be too high about the tunnels.
Yes - St Botolphs without Aldersgate. Right next to the London Museum and the excellently titled street 'Little Britain'. I walk past it frequently.
having looked at London Road depot on Google Earth there isn't room enough to swing a cat in there, in fact your WW2 farm railway layout seems to be more spacious, All of the sidings appear to run right up to the boundary wall, so if any stop short of a plague pit, that pit must by under a house outside of the depot (or the siding has been extended over the pit). Fascinating subject Jago.
@CornishGardenTeam I'm literally researching this for a novel right now and from what I can ascertain, the runaway is at the other end - one tunnel goes towards Lambeth North, the other (the runaway) terminates roughly where St George's Cathedral is, and behind THAT wall is where they say the pit is. The cathedral was built in the 1850s but it's perfectly possible this was a burial ground before then, or the church site could be coincidence, or perhaps there is no pit there! The research continues, but this is really cool!
@@josephdowling811 cool will check google earth
The building on the left at 7:34 to 7:36 (and again at 7:53 to 7:56) looks very much like the "home" of Hercule Poirot used in the TV series based on Agatha Christie's crime novels. Does anyone know if this is it?
It's been a few years since I last watched Poirot, but after reading your comment, I also spotted the resemblance. And you're absolutely right! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin_Court#/media/File:Florin_Court_from_Charterhouse_Square_garden.jpg
Those puns at the end had me giggling in my hospital bed with a collapsed lung. The nurses think I'm mad!
An interesting series so far, I'll be sure to check out your other video's. Greetings from Holland!
Holy shit man are you going to be ok??
My husband had that some years ago. Get well soon!
@@helmaschine1885 Don't worry, having a collapsed lung really sucks but I'm out of the hospital now. Thank you for your concern though, that's very sweet!
@@fizzao1342 Thank you!
After watching a lot of your modelling and informational videos throughout yesterday I have subscribed. It will be good to see you get up to 20k.
Thank you!
To verify the path of a line, just search London Underground Track Maps, and it will show you the path of the tube to scale
Jago and his puns 😂 Great video
Fascinating tale!
Currently making my happy way through your channel. Love the Tube series. My trip to London this year was postponed by another disease so I am enjoying a vicarious 'visit'.
Struck gold with this channel! Such interesting topics discussed.
Thanks!
Really good, well done and thanks for that. Some acid soils can completely munch up skeletal remains. It looks very much like that the underground diggers were lucky!
These videos are really making me want to put London on my need to visit bucket list.
Any mention of the plague pit between St John's wood and Baker Street station, not to mention the extra time it takes to go from one station to the other as it bypasses it...?
If it’s there, no historical survey mentions it.
The opening still of this video, reminded me of a Tory party conference in full flow.
Apparently I read elsewhere on a vid that part of the District around Sloane Squarish was diverted in construction to avoid a plague pit.
Is cross rail liz line purple line not an underground or tube line ? What is the difference between an underground line and a tube line anyway?
Well researched. Very informative. I knew there had been something about mass graves as Tony Robinson popped up on tv about it but this fills in more detail.
Found a plague pit whilst digging for a new ring road in our North East city a few years ago
Re the Knightsbridge pit... I heard it was located on the grass hummock at 51.5027N 0.1552W. Hence why that area of prime real estate has neve been built upon. But this is also the approx. location of the Knights Bridge over the river Westbourne - that same river that forms the fountains by Lancaster Gate, the Serpentine in Hyde Park, flows south under Sloane street, and flows OVER Sloane Square station’s platforms in a cast iron conduit.
Is the timing of naming the Aldgate station in tact with the traffic light turning green on purpose?
A happy accident.
Perfect timing anyways :)
Tothill Street is supposed to be built on a plague pit, which is coincidentally midway between St James's Park and Westminster stations.
Something you may turn over a bit is how people in the 1800s and into the early 1900s treated human remains. People have always been buried in a systematic fashion; however, over time those locations were forgotten. In the industrial age where you are moving vast quantities of earth, statically speaking, you would run into bones, some of which are human. Depending on the scruples of the people involved, they were handled with dignity and properly re-buried or just tossed away. Either way, the Victorian sensibilities would kick in and everything kept quiet. It was the common cultural practice at the time.
This is great! What a fascinating history (again) about places we thought we knew but you show we need to know more. Have you done (or thought of doing) a history of the area of Whitehall (was York Place, home of Scotland Yard etc)? Maybe a super-long special to celebrate 16k followers?
It seems there is no end to Plagues coming from Asia!
I know that some of the early railways line cut through existing cemeteries. This caused much upset locally as the bodies and bones were excavated with little or no regard to the deceased. Eventually the outcry from this led to railway line being redirected away from known cemeteries.
Excellent stuff, and I am pleased you were guided by evidence and not wishful speculation.
Great humour also, as usual.
Huzzah, a new one, I think I've seen them all already.
Would love a video on ghosts on the underground
They reburied the Crossrail bones but kept it secret where, I found out it was just down the road to where i live. I contacted my MP by email, she did not know of this and went ballistic. But in the end they are still near my house.
Devonshire street cemetery in sydney, 30,000 in a cemetery moved for Central station which was trying to compete against Flinders Street station in Melbourne during the early 20th century
I would have thought the tube lines are much deeper than any plague pit
Cut and cover lines are very shallow
@@Lexify ...and ground level has risen in cities, sometimes considerably. Just look at how deep some Romanesque churches lie beneath the current street level.
yeah but in the current climate I'm pretty sure every station is a plague pit at this point sooooo
That Black Sabbath album cover gets everywhere,the 18th green at St Andrews is on top of one, I’d say it’s a racing certainty
Going off topic here, but still related; are there also legends about other European underground rail lines or sewers and other urban tunnels encountering plague pits, like in Marseilles, Rome, or Berlin? (Paris kinda made identification of plague victims impossible with the whole catacomb thing.)
And speaking of underground lines, I don't know if you stick to London only, but have you ever heard the rumors that the Moscow Metro has a second system even deeper underground that was designed to evacuate politicians from the city in nuclear war?
Here's a Russian video on the rumored "Metro-2". th-cam.com/video/fp01qzAdvjM/w-d-xo.html
Hello Jago.
Sorry to dig this back up ( Pardon the pun)
The only one I was told about was on the Victoria Line between Victoria & Green Park where it had to be diverted around it so it does that quick distort instead of being straight through .
With the latter you could say the engineers building the line found the dead Centre of it ..
There are documented plague pits and mass burials for cholera in York. Some have been carefully avoided as it is not know for sure that some of the incidences of "plague" may have been in fact anthrax. A Yersinia Pestis plague pit poses little hazard, a pit full of anthrax victims would still be a plentiful source of anthrax spores.
Haha love the dark humour . Was so excited to do the breakfast dishes this morning as it's the only time I get to watch anything in peace haha. I think even with advances in technology as London expands no doubt more discoveries will be made . Fingers crossed you reach 20k subscribers x
Thank you!
Bank Station maybe worth checking out
I think these days that ground penetrating radar can be used for some of the tunnelling, however uncovering a body that was buried due to the plague has to be the most dangerous part of the construction. You don't want to unleash that again!
As horrible as it was, the bubonic plague is less of a danger to us modern folk.
@@scythal not sure about that we still have the occasional outbreak. However better sanitation helps.