There are more than 4,000 skeletons in the cellar of a spooky church in England. According to the British newspaper Mirror, Hythe lies below the floors of St Leonard’s Church in Kent and is home to Britain’s largest collection of human remains.
There are approximately the remains of men, women and children among the bones in the catacombs. Their identities are unknown except for one: a priest who was killed eight centuries ago.
The bones have brought people and money to St Leonard’s Church since medieval times, when pilgrims began visiting his temple after Archbishop Becket’s murder around 1200.
The church began to ask for donations in return for the public to see the shrine, and it soon began to earn a lot of money and become a tourist attraction. This has continued over the years, and to this day visitors have paid to see the collection of relics.
No one is quite sure where the bones came from, but some say they were victims of the Black Death, while others believe they were soldiers’ bones. The Victorians spread the myth that they were Viking raiders killed in battle or drowned at sea.
However, the most likely explanation is that bones accumulated as a result of the church being expanded into a burial site, where bones were simply excavated and stored in the church. The church’s conclusion now is that they were residents of Hythe who died long ago and were buried in the cemetery, and the first remains were uncovered in the 13th century by the church’s enlargement.
No definitive evidence has been set for the date of people’s death, but estimates range from the 12th to the 15th centuries.
source: Noticias
