St James' Gardens Burial Ground, London Euston.

St James’ Gardens Burial Ground

Archaeologists working on the HS2 project in Euston discovered the remains of Captain Matthew Flinders. The Royal Navy explorer led the first circumnavigation of Australia and is credited with giving the country its name.

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Uncovering the site

Given there were 50,000 human remains at St. James’s, our archaeologists weren’t confident that they were going to find him. Luckily Captain Flinders had a lead depositum (breast plate) meaning it would not have corroded. We’ll now be able to study his skeleton to see whether life at sea left its mark and what more we can learn about him.

Over two hundred years after his death, Captain Matthew Flinders will be going home to Lincolnshire.

Captain Matthew Flinders

Flinders’s achievements

Captain Flinders made several significant voyages, most notably as commander of H.M.S. Investigator, which he navigated around the entire coast of Australia. This made him the first person to sail around the country in its entirety, confirming it as a continent. He is also credited with giving Australia its name. He was not the first to use the term, but his work and publications popularised it. His surname is associated with many places in Australia, including Flinders Station in Melbourne, Flinders Ranges in South Australia and the town of Flinders in Victoria.

Flinders died in 1814 and was buried in the St James burial ground. Following the expansion of Euston station westwards into part of the burial ground in the 1840s, his headstone was removed and it was thought that his remains had been lost. For a long time, there was an urban myth that Captain Flinders was buried under platform 15.

The journey home

His final resting place will be in at the Church of St Mary and the Holy Rood in Donington, near Spalding, where he was baptised, and where many members of his family are buried.

There is currently no set date for when his body will be reburied at the church. However, the diocese of Lincoln has given planning consent to the reburial and, now HS2 have announced the news, the Parochial Church Council is expecting to work speedily to submit the details of a suitable memorial.

A specialist team from HS2 will transfer the remains to the Diocese of Lincoln for safekeeping until further burial arrangements can be made. Details of which will be announced at a later stage by the diocese.

The scientific study of human remains from St James burial ground will better our understanding of life and death in London’s 18th and 19th centuries, shedding light on health and disease, social status and lifestyle. Those buried in the long since demolished chapel and burial ground include individuals from all walks of life: paupers and nobility, artists and musicians, soldiers and sailors, inventors and industrialists, as well as victims of accidents, disease, suicide and murder. Additionally, in 2017, two Victorian time capsules were uncovered, marking the opening of the UK’s first “sober” hospital.

Working with the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, we agreed with Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey that the remains would be reinterred. To honour the deceased, a memorial monument has been erected within a new landscaped garden. The design of the monument takes inspiration from the form of the gravestones and ledgers found at St. James’s Gardens.

An exhibition revealing the life stories of Londoners during the 1700s and 1800s offers something different for a London day out this spring. Visitors were able to enjoy an interactive art installation exploring the lives of five people who were buried at St James’s Burial Ground next to Euston Station.

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