View of the Charnel House. © Carole Tyrrell
On a clear summer’s day, if you stand in the Garden of Remembrance in St Helen’s churchyard and look over the wall, the marshlands seem to stretch on and on into the distance. But it’s a view that is constantly changing as new houses encroach on the flat landscape. The marshes lead on as far as Tilbury in Essex and the Thames estuary. St Helen’s is in the hamlet of Cliffe in Kent and has a substantial churchyard which is well worth exploring.
As I wandered through it with my camera , I saw a structure in the northwest corner that looked as if it was for storage. But, as I drew closer, I saw the interpretation board nearby which announced that it was in fact the Charnel House and that it had been built for a much darker, more macabre purpose. I could easily imagine that on a duller day, the cloud low and dark, the wind biting across the marshlands as a group of parishioners carried a body back from the river, it would have assumed a far more sinister appearance.
Charnel House interpretation board. © Carole Tyrrell
According to Wikipedia:
‘The definition of a charnel house is that it is a building in which corpses or bones are piled in a place . The name ‘charnel house’ comes from middle French and also Latin. ‘Carnale’ means graveyard and ‘Carnalis’ means ‘of the flesh’. It was somewhere to store bones either disinterred to enable burial spaces to be reused or unearthed up by gravediggers . ‘
The Cliffe charnel house is a Grade II listed building but it is perhaps a misnomer. It dates from the 19th century and was in fact a temporary mortuary for bodies that were taken from the river. They were the responsibility of the parish in which they washed up whether they died from suicide, drowning or were a sea burial.
‘However, it was clear that if men died on the ships travelling up and down the Thames they would often just be dropped into the river to avoid the expense of burial. In a similar vein the villagers would sometimes push washed-up bodies back into the river in the hope they would be washed further upriver so that another parish would have the expense of dealing with them.’
The Charnel House in St Helen’s… © Marathon :: Geograph Britain and Ireland
At Cliffe, the recovered bodies would be put in the Charnel House to await identification and burial.
The House is supposed to be one of a handful of such buildings along the Kent Coast although an article in the Kent Messenger thought:
‘That it may be the only surviving example of its kind.’
I haven’t seen or heard of another one – yet. Although there was supposed to be a ‘dead house’ at Higham, Kent but is now long gone.
The Cliffe charnel house was built in the mid 19th century from flint with a plain tiled roof. The lantern on the roof was intended to let odours escape through its vents on either side. It was in use until the start of the 20th century when it was closed due to several Public Health Acts. It was then used for storage.
© Carole Tyrrell
The Charnel House was restored in 2008 with £52,000 of National Lottery money. In a photo on the Historic England website there is a pre restoration photo of the House in which vegetation such as ivy almost completely covers it and the churchyard wall. Timber within the structure, including the entrance doors, needed to be replaced as well as the windows. Ivy had invaded the wall, damaging it and that was repaired at the same time together with the flint walls.
It’s a reminder of a bygone time. For those unfortunate souls without identification, then it might have meant burial in an unmarked grave within St Helen’s churchyard. But at least they would have had a final resting place.
©Text and photos Carole Tyrrell unless otherwise stated.
References and further reading:
Charnel House at North West Corner of Churchyard, Cliffe, Medway (britishlistedbuildings.co.uk)
The Charnel House in St Helen’s… © Marathon :: Geograph Britain and Ireland
The Charnel House in St Helen’s… © Marathon cc-by-sa/2.0 :: Geograph Britain and Ireland (view in 2012)
Dry Bones Live: A Brief History of English Charnel Houses, 1300-1900AD (epoch-magazine.com)CHARNEL HOUSE AT NORTH WEST CORNER OF CHURCHYARD, Cliffe and Cliffe Woods – 1085764 | Historic England
shadows fly away 
