This is Still the Crossbones Graveyard

The Goose at Liberty

Last Sunday I paid an unexpected visit to my beloved Crossbones Graveyard after far too long away. I found that much was as it has always been, but that much had changed.

In Southwark, close to London Bridge station in one of the oldest, dirtiest, and poorest, parts of London, stands the Crossbones Graveyard, once known as the Single Women's churchyard. Here, in this most sacred earth, lie the bodies of sex workers and paupers, who were either refused, or too poor to be granted, burial in consecrated ground. From at least the 14th Century until 1853, when the graveyard was closed having become 'overcharged with dead', an estimated 15,000 people, many of whom were babies & children, were buried there in unmarked graves.

It is an irony that the medieval sex workers buried there were licenced by the Bishop of Winchester, under an ordinance signed by Thomas Becket in 1161, to work in the stews, or brothels, of Bankside's Liberty of the Clink. The Liberties were areas outside the control, & the laws, of the monarch & some activities that were forbidden elsewhere, such as bull & bear baiting, brothels & theatres, were allowed there. The sex workers of the Liberty became known as the 'Winchester Geese' & enjoyed a measure of protection from the bishop whilst alive but were denied Christian burial at the end. The most brutal of judgements on women from whom the church had benefitted financially.

Having been closed, the graveyard was forgotten until the ground was disturbed by the building of an electricity substation for the Jubilee Line extension in the 1990s. This was when the bones of the outcast dead began to return to the surface of both land & memory. It was at this time that the lost history of the graveyard also returned in the visionary work of John Constable, revealed by the Goose to John's alter-ego, urban shaman John Crow, on the night of 23rd November, 1996.

“I was born a Goose of Southwark by the Grace of Mary Overie, whose Bishop gives me licence to sin within The Liberty. In Bankside stews and taverns you can hear me honk right daintily, as I unlock the hidden door, unveil the Secret History.”

Found On the Crossbones gates, words by John Constable

You may wonder who 'The Goose' might be but the answer will perhaps be different for each person who stands at the gates; a muse, the spirit of a medieval sex worker, a land spirit, the Goddess incarnate. She is all these things & so much more.

"Oh, you don't know me yet, dear.

You will dear I promise you.

I am a tricksy tart.

My aim is to astonish you!"

(from 'The Southwark Mysteries' by John Constable)

A ritual drama, The Halloween of Crossbones, based on John's book, 'The Southwark Mysteries', and ending with a candlelit procession to the gates of the Crossbones people's shrine, was performed every year from 1998 to 2010. Since 23rd June 2004, a vigil to renew the shrine & to honour the outcast, dead & living, has been held at the gates every 23rd of the month at 7pm. Since lockdown began we have also held a vigil online, which is attended by people from all over the world.

And, what of Crossbones & her dead? The people's shrine, hung with ribbons and other offerings, has been in existence for many years, and we have stood beside them imagining a garden as a permanent memorial to the Outcast Dead, sung to the greenman & to the spirits of the future children who might play there, perhaps never quite daring to believe that it would happen. The site belongs to Transport for London and is worth millions to developers. How could a tiny group of strange, raggle taggle, edge people, singing by some rusty iron gates to the spirits of medieval sex workers and the poorest of the poor, ever hope to stand up to that?

And yet, slowly, over many years, Crossbones began to appear on official maps, Southwark Council placed planters trailing ivy on the gates, a plaque was attached informing passers by that;

'This is the Crossbones Graveyard. In medieval times this was an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes or 'Winchester Geese'. By the 18th Century it had become a paupers' burial ground, which closed in 1853. Here, local people have created a memorial shrine. The Outcast Dead R.I.P'.

Even that is extraordinary but, behind the gates, something truly astonishing was happening. A security guard (the 'invisible gardener'), living on site in a caravan had begun to create a guerilla garden from building rubble & findings. This was decorated with oyster shells, once the food of the poor, discovered there. And it was beautiful.

Our Redcross Mary shrine

Then slowly, slowly Transport for London offered to lease the land for three years so that a 'meanwhile garden' could be created on the site. It has been there for eight. Now there is a lease for thirty. Hawthorn, crab apples, borage, pink yarrow, mugwort, foxgloves, mistletoe, hollyhocks, toadflax, and thyme, grow there. Dragonflies, honeybees, bright-eyed mice, and tiny, fierce wrens, make it their home. A meadow of flowers has bloomed on the bones of the Outcast Dead. In the summer, children play there, just as we imagined it. And each year, on Mary Magdalene's Feast Day, the clergy of Southwark Cathedral come to the garden to perform a service of ‘Regret, Remembrance, & Restoration’ in sorrow for the way in which the Church treated the Winchester Geese.

“We cannot undo the sins of yesterday but we can do right today and we can do better today, that is why we are here today as we have been here before, with regret, in remembrance, and to pray for restoration, of this land, of these memories and of the eternal souls of our sisters and their children…

Lord Jesus, you received all who came to you

Forgive us when we exclude others.

Lord, in your mercy,

hear our prayer.”

(From ‘An Act of Regret, Remembrance, & Restoration, Southwark Cathedral/Crossbones Graveyard)

I often ponder on what the Winchester Geese would think if they came by. I wonder if any of them ever saw anything so beautiful. They certainly couldn't ever have imagined that it would all be there for them. And, if you don't believe that extraordinary things can happen think of Crossbones where a garden has bloomed from the bones of the Outcast Dead, and believe in miracles. We need them so desperately now.

History says, Don't hope

On this side of the grave...

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

So, hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.

(Seamus Heaney)

But, just as the thirty year lease was agreed for the Crossbones Garden of Remembrance, permission was also granted for a major development on the land adjacent to it. When I visited on Sunday I found that piece of land surrounded by expensive looking hoardings which celebrate the ‘history’ of the area without any mention of Crossbones, nor of the Winchester Geese, except in the most sanitised of ways. Indeed, whilst calling in the ‘rebels and reformers’, the ‘creators and contravenors', the ‘skylarkers and the square pegs', the hoardings recount the history from the ‘wealthy Romans’ of 50 to 400 CE to the Victorian era, during which they admit that this was a place of the poor, but write that, “they were entrepreneurial men and women striving to make a living. They worked hard and played harder, enjoying the small pleasures of life.” The medieval history, which would have included the Geese, the true contravenors, is entirely ignored. Some might suggest that these hoardings have a lot to say about our society; calling in the rebel whilst entirely upholding the status quo. Reading all of this I remembered the Goose's words from ‘The Southwark Mysteries';

“And did they think my ghosts

would not start kicking

against the proxy pricks

what had done all the pricking?

How could they ever think

they could sanitise me,

dress up my Clink

to decriminalise me?

Turn me into their Heritage Theme Park?”

Ironically, the new development is called ‘The Liberty of Southwark', which they describe as ‘The Garden of Earthy Delights.’

The more cynical part of me is appalled that the ‘secret history' of one of the poorest parts of London is being appropriated for marketing purposes, to allow those who can afford to buy homes just over the bridge from the City of London to somehow feel that they are on the ‘dangerous rebellious edge' of society, rather than comfortably in the centre. But the part of me that listens to the bones is fascinated that what lies beneath the surface continues to bubble up like an underground spring. I have no concerns for the Winchester Geese or for the graveyard. The Goose has always looked after her own.

This is still the Crossbones Graveyard.

“Relax, dear, you're over ‘ere,

don't go bustin' an artery

or poisoning me rivers with yer

self-loathing fartery.

The Body we all know, dear,

is privy to mortality.

The flesh shall rot and wither,

as you're so fond of reminding me.

And when your kind's done,

when you're done despising me,

when you've had yer fun, son, you've

no further use for me.

So pipe down, shut yer mouth,

show some respect, humility,

and harken to the silence, what is

brimming with immensity

Unspeakable

shall speak and in One Word

unfold Her Mystery

Pronounce the End of Time

and beginning of Eternity

and all Her Children gathered there

in all their multiplicity

with One Voice

shall speak Her Name

And Her Name is Liberty!”

(from 'The Southwark Mysteries' by John Constable)

References:

http://crossbones.org.uk/

http://crossbones.org.uk/history/

Act of Regret, Restoration, & Remembrance:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_of_the_Clink

‘The Southwark Mysteries’ can be purchased at: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/southwark-mysteries-9781849438537/