Crossrail involves one of the largest archaeology programmes undertaken certainly across London.
To date we've investigated some 40 different sites representing the different periods of
history of the entire sequence of London from the early pre-history and Ice Age right through
the Roman city and Medieval finds up to the more recent industrial history of London.
We're here at the Crossrail Liverpool street construction site and we're excavating part
of the Bedlam burial ground. During the early part of next year we're going to be spending
5 months here with the archaeology team excavating the Bedlam burial ground and then the levels
of the Roman city which lie several metres below us here. The Bedlam burial ground that
we're excavating here in Liverpool street provides an indication of the scale, we've
got something like 3,000 skeletons to remove when we get to the main works here next year.
The burial ground is particularly important because it's a period of London's history
from around the mid 1500s to around the early 1700s. We know from historic records that
probably up to 10,000 individuals were buried here, but because this burial ground was outside
the confines of a local church we don't have a single Parish register. A volunteer project
we're currently undertaking is to really try and find out exactly who is buried here at Liverpool
street and the Bedlam burial ground project is working with volunteers from right across
London to list everyone we can from the historic records who has been buried here. Liverpool
street has one of the most remarkable archeological sequences because it dates all the way back
to the early Roman period and some of the earliest finds we've had are Roman skulls
that we discovered in the River Walbrook. We've now got such a good collection of Roman
skulls to be honest we must have remains of at least 20 at the moment so we are hoping
to do some research on those just to find out more about those individuals, so that's
a really good collection for that kind of analysis. Excavating one of the Crossrail
construction shafts right on the edge of Charterhouse Square itself we came across an amazingly
well preserved archaeological site. 25 burials buried about 3 metres below the ground level
and this location historically is within the area that we think was associated with one
of the emergency burial grounds of the Black Death set out in 1348. I mean this site is
one of the most important archaeological sites we've got because the period of the Black
Death and mid 14th century is not well understood through archaeological excavation it's quite
a rare opportunity to find an archaeological site that is so well preserved. At Westbourne
park we had evidence for one of the earliest sites a filled in river channel dating to
around 70,000 years ago and within those river channel fills we found a huge collection of
animal bones indicating the pristine wilderness really that London was during that last part
of the Ice Age with great herds of Bison and Reindeer roaming the landscape. Southeast
section of Crossrail which crosses either side of the River Thames gives us the chance
to look at some pre-historic landscapes that are now buried metres below the current floodplain.
One of the most important finds there has been a group of flint artefacts that date
to around 10,000 years ago, the mesolithic period and we have evidence there for a small
temporary hunting camp that was set up there by a group of early hunter gatherers. Of course
the history of London isn't just the pre-historic origins and the Roman and Medieval period
but London played a very important role of course in the industrial revolution and the
site at Limmo where we've excavated parts of the Thames Iron Works & Ship Building company
site played a hugely important part in London's economic development in the 19th century.
There we found evidence for one of the great slipways where ships that were constructed
for the world's Navy's were built and launched from. So the archaeological excavation on
site is just one part of the project for us, bringing that story to the members of the public
obviously is a very important part of Crossrail's legacy and through preparing exhibitions and
also undertaking a number of community projects, we are able to share these finds directly
with the public and the people of London. We're about three quarters of the way through
the archaeology programme on Crossrail and with still another year to go we look forward
to bringing you some exceptional new finds during the next 12 months.