St. Giles in the Fields.

The Church of St Giles, once in the Fields but now overshadowed by CentrePoint, has offered comfort and a last resting place for it’s many parishioners for almost a thousand years. Archaeology of the churchyard exposes layers of the often dark history of the parish.

First records of the site are of a twelfth century monastic hospital for Lepers with accompanying burial grounds.
Centuries of increasingly dense and squalid living conditions are marked by extensive mass burial pits, in particular from 1665 when the first outbreaks of the Great Plague occurred locally.
Also, traditionally those sentenced to public execution at Tyburn processed past St Giles, where they were offered a final drink before returning some time later to be laid to rest.

I consider this dark heritage as I remember that a direct ancestor of mine through nine generations, Cecil Calvert, Second Baron Baltimore and Proprietor of Maryland, who lived in Grays Inn and died in December 1675 is also buried, together with his children, somewhere in the much sanitised graveyard I walked across today, He and I both watched over by the elegant spire above.