Cross Bones Garden
A moving Southwark memorial garden on a medieval paupers' burial ground, where the city's outcast dead are remembered with ribbons and shrines.
FREE
The lowdown
Behind a gate festooned with ribbons, feathers and trinkets lies one of London's most touching hidden corners, the Cross Bones Garden. For centuries this unconsecrated ground was a burial place for the poor and for the Winchester Geese, the medieval sex workers licensed by the Bishop of Winchester yet denied a Christian grave.
An estimated fifteen thousand people, many of them children, were laid here in unmarked graves. Local volunteers transformed the neglected plot into a garden of remembrance, and the gates have become a spontaneous shrine. It is free to visit, quietly powerful, and a rare memorial to London's forgotten and outcast.
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