Se está realizando una gigantesca excavación que se espera desenterrar 60.000 esqueletos de un cementerio de Londres que tiene 230 años.

Hasta la fecha, se han exhumado 1.200 huesos de personas del cementerio cerca de la estación de Euston para dar paso al nuevo ferrocarril de alta velocidad entre Birmingham y la capital.

La principal excavación muestra que los arqueólogos publicaron recientemente fotografías limpiando la arcilla espesa de los ataúdes y quitando la tierra de los restos. Forman parte de un equipo arqueológico en la ruta HS2 de 150 millas que actualmente está profundizando en 10.000 años de historia británica.

Los arqueólogos de campo trabajan en la excavación de un cementerio de finales del siglo XVIII y mediados del XIX bajo los jardines de St James, cerca de la estación de tren de Euston en Londres, como parte del proyecto del tren de alta velocidad HS2. – Escondido detrás de una de las estaciones de tren más concurridas de Londres, un pequeño ejército de arqueólogos palean arcilla espesa mientras limpian un vasto cementerio para dar paso a una nueva línea de tren.  

Land at St James’s Gardens – the former site of a late 18th and 19th-century burial ground – is needed for Euston’s expansion. With tens of thousands of skeletons to be removed, protests and a memorial service have been held at the site where people were laid to rest from 1790 to 1853.

HS2 project bosses say that an estimated 60,000 people are buried there, including notable people such as Lord George Gordon, who in 1780 called for the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act and a return to the repression of Catholics.

A field archaeologist uses a brush on a skeleton in an open coffin during the excavation of a late 18th to mid-19th-century cemetery under St James Gardens near Euston train station in London as part of the HS2 high-speed rail project.

He led a 60,000-strong crowd from St George’s Fields to the Houses of Parliament, which prompted anti-Catholic riots. Also buried at St James’s Garden is Matthew Flinders, one of the world’s most accomplished navigators who was born in England, entered the navy at the age of 15 and served with Captain Bligh.

After sailing for Australia just five years later, he made detailed surveys of the country’s coastline and islands – becoming the first person to circumnavigate it.

Machines have been used to remove the topsoil, stopping once coffins or human remains are exposed. Archaeologists then carry out further excavation by hand.HS2 bosses said that “all artifacts and human remains will be treated with due dignity, care and respect.”

They have been working with Historic England, the Church of England and the local parish to “put appropriate plans in place for reburial”.

A London Inheritance said that it was “unusual for a public park and an old burial ground to disappear, however, this has been the fate of St James’s Gardens.“It will be a major task for the exhumation and reburial of such a large number of bodies.”

The website has photos of the gardens, to record “a historic space that will soon be lost from the landscape of London forever.”Research will be carried out into how cemeteries have developed, and the burial practice in terms of the treatment of bodies and coffins compared to other excavation sites.

A planning document on this and other planned digs said that: “St James’s seems to represent a typical late post-Medieval London cemetery… but on its own is unlikely to provide significant insights.”So far, sites along the rail route have revealed Neolithic tools, medieval pottery, and Victorian time capsules.

In total, more than a thousand archaeologists are set to explore more than 60 separate sites, from prehistoric and Roman settlements to those from the Industrial Revolution and the Second World War.

Mark Thurston, director ejecutivo de HS2, dijo: “Antes de que perforaramos los túneles, tendiéramos las vías y construyéramos las estaciones, ahora se está llevando a cabo una cantidad de investigación arqueológica sin precedentes entre Londres y Birmingham”. Esta es la mayor exploración arqueológica jamás realizada en Gran Bretaña. empleando un número récord de arqueólogos capacitados y especialistas en patrimonio de todo el Reino Unido y más allá”.

Los sitios arqueológicos que se investigan a lo largo de la ruta incluyen un sitio prehistórico de cazadores-recolectores en las afueras de Londres, una ciudad romana británica en Fleet Marston, Aylesbury, una iglesia medieval demolida de 1.000 años de antigüedad y un cementerio en Buckinghamshire y un señuelo de bombardeo de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en Lichfield