Bedlam Burial Ground Register
This is a register of over 8,000 people that were buried at the Bedlam Burial Ground at Liverpool Street in the City of London.
In 2015, Crossrail commenced a major archaeological excavation at the eastern ticket hall of the new Liverpool Street Crossrail station. The Bedlam Burial Ground lies beneath this site, with an estimated 20,000 Londoners buried there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Ahead of the excavation, Crossrail’s archaeology team asked a group of 16 volunteers to help compile the first extensive register of people buried at Bedlam. The volunteers reviewed historic parish burial registers across the City of London, identifying the names and backgrounds of over 5,000 Londoners buried at the site. The London Metropolitan Archive has been an invaluable source throughout this research.
This research will contribute to our understanding of the burial ground, the local area and the history of London in the 16th and 17th centuries, one of its most turbulent periods.
The list is not exhaustive; some parish records were destroyed, lost or damaged during the Great Fire and World War bombings. Others have poor legibility. With a few exceptions, parishes outside London have not been researched due to resource constraints.
Download Bedlam burial ground database, July 2018
Notes for using the Bedlam Burial Ground register:
- A question mark in the text indicates uncertainty of transcription.
- Words in a square brackets are supplied by the transcriber.
- A space in square brackets […] means that a word was illegible or missing.
- In most cases spelling has not been modernised or made consistent throughout the database, so the spelling of words/names can differ.
- LMA reference given in the source field corresponds to the manuscript numbers of the parish registers held by the London Metropolitan Archives. These can be accessed on microfilm or digitally in their reading room. Parish records can also be accessed remotely on various genealogy sites for a subscription fee.