The University of Leicester have researched the area since the discovery of Richard III’s body (Image: Getty Images)
Corpses have been discovered at a heritage leaning centre built in the garden of Leicester Cathedral.
The 12-century corpses were found following the uncovering of Richard III’s remains.
found the bodies a few metres from the cathedral and excavations revealed a narrow shaft filled with the remains of 123 people, reports .
This marks one of the largest pit burials ever excavated in the UK, the bodies are estimated to have been there for more than 800 years.
Researchers do not yet understand why the bodies were put there leaving the site surrounded in mystery.
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Richard III’s body was discovered in close proximity to the burial site discovered in Leicester (Image: Getty Images)
“Their bones show no signs of violence – which leaves us with two alternative reasons for these deaths: starvation or pestilence,” said Mathew Morris, project officer at Leicester University’s archaeological services. “At the moment, the latter is our main working hypothesis.”
suggest the bodies were put into the shaft in rapid succession.
Morris said: “It looks as if successive cartloads of bodies were brought to the shaft and then dropped into it, one load on top of another in a very short space of time.
“In terms of numbers, the people put in there probably represented about 5% of the town’s population.”
This particular pit burial is the only one of its kind found in the UK and other comparable sites are very hard to find, says Morris.
Archaeologists are working on the site to determine the reason the bodies were put there (Image: Getty Images)
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Plans are underway to build a new heritage learning centre at the cathedral and this is what prompted the .
The body of Richard III was found underneath a nearby car park and was subsequently buried in the cathedral in 2012.
Since the discovery of his body, the cathedral has seen an influx of visitors and so the new heritage centre had been approved with this in mind.
In the garden, Morris and his colleagues found 1237 bodies, ranging from those buried in the 19th century, down to those who were interred in the early 11th century.
“It’s a continuous sequence of 850 years of burials from a single population from a single place, and you don’t get that very often,” added Morris. “It has generated an enormous amount of archaeology.”
The team initially assumed the people had died in the but after carbon dating the bodies, they found they had been put there over 150 years before the Black Death.
Researchers are exploring viruses, bacteria or parasites that might have triggered the blight that struck Leicester.
They suggest a “devastating outbreak” which may have had similarities to the pandemic but research remains ongoing.