Image credit: Richard Nevell / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 2014-10-31 ↗
Spitalfields Charnel House
Spitalfields / Shoreditch · Spitalfields / Shoreditch · Expansion route discovery
Story
Bishop’s Square appears as a contemporary public space, but beneath it survives a medieval fragment of the original Spitalfields. This is the Charnel House, an ossuary: a building designed to store skeletal remains removed from burials when cemetery space needed to be reused. This function, tied to burial practices and intensive land use, is difficult to imagine amid the offices, shops, and market activity surrounding the site today. Crucially, this archaeological remnant was not moved to a museum. It remains in its original location, carefully incorporated into the modern development and visible by looking down from the square. The discovery of this ossuary in situ shifts the neighbourhood’s chronology: after nineteenth-century buildings and Jewish institutions, Spitalfields suddenly jumps back to the Middle Ages. It also recalls that the name 'Spitalfields' itself comes from a religious and hospital landscape much older than the vibrant streets of today. The secret of its past is, quite literally, beneath your feet.
What to look for
Look for the walls and remains of a medieval structure, displayed at a lower level beneath a section of the twenty-first-century square. The contrast between eras is unmistakable.
Secret detail
This discovery is not a reconstructed or relocated ruin; the ossuary has remained in its original place, preserved *in situ* beneath Bishop’s Square for centuries.
Where exactly
Bishop’s Square, next to Old Spitalfields Market.
Orientation
Do not look for a façade. Walk through Bishop’s Square until you locate an area where the ossuary remains are visible at a lower level.
Why it matters
The presence of this medieval ossuary beneath Bishop's Square reveals Spitalfields' deep funerary and hospital history, anchoring the present to its most remote past.
Access & opening
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Accessibility
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