Charterhouse Square

You are standing on ground that served as an official emergency cemetery during the height of the Black Death. When the plague reached London in thirteen forty-eight, existing city burial sites were overwhelmed by the death toll. A knight named Sir Walter de Manny leased this land just outside the city walls to provide a coordinated space for the victims. Unlike haphazard mass pits, this was an organized burial ground with individual, ordered graves meant to contain the spread of disease. Archaeologists working on modern infrastructure projects have unearthed skeletal remains here that still carry the DNA of the bacterium responsible for the pandemic.