In most cases it was unlikely that any one parish (rural anyway) would
ever have filled up the local charnel; in any event, we cannot be sure
just how careful people were to retrieve all bones from any one grave (if
anybody in a rural setting even knew exactly how many bones there were
supposed to be). The graveyard scene in Hamlet is, in this sense, quite
accurate.
There remains, to my knowledge, one surviving medieval charnel in England with
bones still *in situ*. This is at St Leonard's at Hythe in Kent. The skulls
are stacked on shelves while the bones are piled up with, evidently, no care
taken to be sure all those of one individual were kept together. There is
an illustration in Nigel and Mary Kerr's _A Guide to Medieval Sites in
Britain_ (Diamond Books, London, 1989 rpt 1992), p. 17. At present there
are said to be 8000 thigh bones (i.e., theoretically 4000 individuals),
but only 2000 skulls in the crypt. All are considered to date from before
1540.
This same system of arrangement (skulls on shelves, I mean) is still used
in remote mountain areas of Switzerland where land available for burials
is quite limited. The original earth burial is temporary (I don't know for
how long); then the fleshless bones are transferred to a charnel where the
skulls have the name of the deceased painted on the forehead.
John Parsons
On Wed, 24 Dec 1997, Patsloane wrote:
> > In the West there were "charnal houses" to accept disinterred bones when
> > new burials disturbed old ones.
> >
> Tom,
>
> What happened when the charnel house filled up? build another charnel house?
>
> pat
>
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