09/09/2026
🪦 While the Beast from the East was the snowy weather-front on everybody’s minds, in 2018 as part of HS2 in conjunction with MOLA, Headland unearthed over 6500 skeletons in the overflow cemetery of St Martin’s-in-the-Bullring, all laid to rest between 1810-1873.
Interestingly, in the north part of the cemetery, burials were simple and at some points overlapping – the ground level had even been raised to accommodate another layer of graves. In the south, however; the burials do not intercut and they have brick-lined tombs.
🧠The rate of child mortality in the northern part was higher too, and contained over 40 individuals whose bodies appear to have been dissected after death. Some of their organs had been replaced by glass jars or bricks, perhaps the dead were sold to cover funerary costs?
🦴These skeletons are an incredible way for us to see the living conditions of those inhabiting industrial Birmingham at this time. Scurvy, rickets, poor dental health, and all sorts of infections were typical of a 19th Century urban population living in poverty.
📖Research into records of who is buried where within this cemetery is ongoing, and it is hoped that biographical information will soon be available about the people buried in Park Street.
🔗Learn more about what we found at Park Street via the heritage talk series here: https://bit.ly/4h0KVuI
