Liverpool Street: Ghosts, Dead Bodies & the Plague

Did you know that modern day Liverpool Street Station is built over the site of a former burial ground?

The ‘Bedlam’ or ‘Bethlem’ burial ground saw over 25,000 interments between the years of its opening in 1569 until its closing in 1739. Also know as ‘New Churchyard’, its colloquial name originated from the nearby Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem.

In 2015, Crossrail re-development in the station unearthed a huge new cache of almost 3,500 graves which were duly excavated by a team of archaeologists. This included a large plague pit which contained the remains of over 300 of London’s poorest victims of the Great Plague of 1665, laid to rest in tightly packed unmarked graves. The findings prompted the beginning of one the most extensive pieces of research conducted on the lives of ordinary Londoners between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Liverpool Street railway station is also said to be one of London’s most haunted stations. Staff at the station regularly report seeing ghostly figures appear and suddenly disappearing on CCTV in the dead of night. There has also been various sightings of a man wearing white overalls who paces up and down platforms. In 2000, the man was spotted on CCTV by two station staff closing the station. One went down to tell the man he had to leave, but once he got to the platform there was no one to be seen. However, on camera, his colleague saw the mysterious figure standing right behind him on the platform!