St. Botolph Billingsgate cemetery summary
The parish church of St Botolph, Billingsgate, was destroyed in the Great Fire of London 1666. A fifteenth-century chapel within the foundations of the church was excavated at the Billingsgate Market site in 1982 by the Museum of London Department of Urban Archaeology. About 50 post-medieval burials were excavated.
Five of them had hair present on the head. There was also a sealed 15th-century vault, containing the remains of a man and a woman, but these are not included in the study presented here.
Preservation
The human skeletal remains were extremely well preserved (Table 1).
Degree of completeness: information is pending until a more representative sample size has been recorded.
| Preservation | N= | % |
|---|---|---|
| Good | 8 | 72.7 |
| Medium | 3 | 27.3 |
| Poor | 0 | 0 |
Table 1 skeletal completeness
Demography
Of 12 individuals so far recorded only two were sub-adults (Table 2, Fig 1). Of 10 adults, only one was female and the others male (Table 3, Fig 2).
Figure 1 Age distribution (N=11)
| Age | N= | % |
|---|---|---|
| Perinatal | 0 | 0.0 |
| 1-6 month | 0 | 0.0 |
| 7-11 month | 0 | 0.0 |
| 1-5 years | 1 | 9.1 |
| 6-11 years | 1 | 9.1 |
| 12-17 years | 0 | 0.0 |
| 18-25 years | 3 | 27.3 |
| 26-35 years | 2 | 18.2 |
| 36-45 years | 2 | 18.2 |
| >46 years | 2 | 18.2 |
| Adult | 0 | 0.0 |
| Sub adult | 0 | 0.0 |
Table 2 Age distribution (N=11)
Figure 2 Adult male and female distribution (N=9)
| All adults | % | Male | % | Female | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18-25 years | 3 | 33.3 | 3 | 37.5 | 0 | 0.0 |
| 26-35 years | 2 | 22.2 | 2 | 25.0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| 36-45 years | 2 | 22.2 | 2 | 25.0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| >46 years | 2 | 22.2 | 1 | 12.5 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Uassigned Adults | 0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 9 | 8 | 1 |
Table 3 Male and female distribution by age in the adult population
Stature
No females had measurable bones for stature calculation (Table 4).
| Sex | Avg_stat | SD | VAR | MIN | MAX | N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 0 | |||||
| Male | 169.9 | 12.0 | 143.4 | 152.8 | 179.0 | 4 |
| Unsexed | 0 | |||||
Table 4 Stature estimation from femoral length
Pathology
Few pathological conditions have yet been recorded for this small sample.This will be updated in due course.
Pathology table for St Botoloph Billingsgate (Word 28kb)
Vertebral pathology
This section is in course of development (further recording pending).
| All adults | Male | Female | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N | n | % | N | n | % | N | n | % | |
| Osteoarthritis | |||||||||
| Osteophytosis | |||||||||
| IVD | |||||||||
| Schmorl's nodes | |||||||||
| Fusion | |||||||||
Table 5 Distribution of vertebral pathology by sex in adults with one or more vertebrae present
Discussion
Too few skeletons have been recorded from this site for meaningful statistical results to be quoted. The site will be updated shortly.
Site location
Site code BIG82 (St Botolph, Billingsgate)
Recorded by White, B
Latest update: 29 March 2007