Newcastle, Blackfriars, human remains

HER Number:
11970

District:
Newcastle

Site Name:
Newcastle, Blackfriars, human remains

Place:
Newcastle

Map Sheet:
NZ26SW

Class:
Religious Ritual and Funerary

Site Type: Broad:
Funerary Site

Site Type: Specific:
Human Remains

General Period:
Medieval

Specific Period:

Form of Evidence:
Find

Description:
Grainger's workmen had been digging up the foundations of some old buildings, and an ancient burial ground where the new markets and streets were intended to be laid out in the Nuns' Field. They found a stone coffin, lead coffins, and the decayed wood of others, 3-4' deep, most embedded in clay. They were clearing a lot of bones, thought to indicate the regular burial place of the nuns of St Bartholomew's Priory. Several entire skulls were supposedly found, together with the fragment of a tablet which has been transcribed. The report gives no precise location. [See the reference to stray finds from the 1834 campaign which gives more detail of the inscription in Richardson 1844, 200 (Event Rec. No.475)]. [Caution: the incident was reported second-hand in the newspaper, and may be classified as circumstantial evidence.]

Easting:
244

Northing:
642

Grid Reference:
NZ244642

Lats/Lons:

Sources:
NEWCASTLE COURANT, 21st March, 1835, p.4, col.4.