LONDON, ENGLAND—The remains of at least 50 people thought to have lived in the late eleventh or early twelfth century have been unearthed at the footings of Westminster Abbey’s south transept. The bodies were probably originally buried in a small cemetery outside the walls of a church that was demolished by Henry III before he began the construction of the abbey in the thirteenth century. The king’s workers stacked the bones in piles, which were found under a layer of stone chips left behind by the masons who built a platform for the massive new church. Some of the bones were damaged by pickaxes, including the skull of a small child. “What the child is doing there is one of the many unanswered questions, but it is a feature of many ecclesiastical sites that you find the remains of women and children in places where you might not quite expect them,” Warwick Rodwell, abbey archaeologist, told The Guardian. A few original graves remain, but they were damaged by water that had leaked from pipes installed during the Victorian era. The Victorians also moved a stone coffin and incorporated it into a new brick wall. To read about another medieval burial, go to "Vengeance on the Vikings."
