The Charnel Crypt
Worcester Cathedral’s charnel crypt was built in 1224 to house the disarticulated remains of the collective dead.
Charnelling was a common practice until the Reformation. Bones were stacked as at Hythe, below.
Worcester’s crypt is unique as it has been used in modern times; by the Victorians, and today, for archaeological remains.
Standard archiving boxes have rotted, and a better system is needed. We are fundraising to install shelving to re-stack all archaeological skeletal remains; the past populations of Worcester, from Anglo Saxons to the 19th Century.
Our charnel chapel would have looked very much like this in medieval times; an ordered space to receive visitors and prayer. Large quantities of loose bones were added with the Victorian landscaping of the burial ground in College Yard. And, more recently, archaeologically excavated remains have been laid here in archival boxes. Unfortunately, the below-ground conditions do not suit this storage, and it has become necessary to provide shelving for the more respectful reburial of these individuals.
We are fundraising to provide shelving that will allow us to keep all archaeological remains separate and ordered, and to receive further remains in the future.
Hythe charnel crypt, which was re-stacked from loose piles in the 1840s. Credit Tom Farrow