St Botolph's Aldgate: The Church by the Plague Pit

England, London · United Kingdom · Church

St Botolph's Aldgate has stood here since at least the twelfth century, in its present form since the 1740s.

It lies just outside the gate in the old Roman city wall that was called Aldgate, and its churchyard was used as a mass grave during the Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century and again during the Great Plague of 1665. Daniel Defoe wrote about the plague pit at Aldgate in his account of the plague year.

The most widely told ghost story concerns a music hall star who was buried from here in 1922 before tens of thousands of mourners, and whose spirit is said to be seen in the church, but it rests entirely on tourist sources. More often discussed is that in the 1980s the church was said to have suffered objects moving on their own, a story that reached the newspapers in 1982. Do not put too much weight on the ghosts here. Think instead about the ground beneath you. This small churchyard received the plague dead in layer upon layer, and that is the real horror: a city that buried so many, so fast, that it forgot where they lay.

FAQ

Where is St Botolph's Aldgate: The Church by the Plague Pit located?

St Botolph's Aldgate: The Church by the Plague Pit is in England, London, United Kingdom.

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Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.

Image: Eluveitie · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons