Blackheath

[sianygirl3]

Is it true that people who died of the plague are in mass graves on blackheath and that's where it gets its name from?

[Postdog]

I don't know the answer, and I'm sorry, I can't see why it would be called blackheath because people are buried there.

However, it may be true, as Gravesend gets its name from where they stopped burying plague victims.

[Lonnie]

Yes thats very true, just one of the mass graves around.

[SeaJayPea]

No, if you believe Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackheath,_London

[Mikeyd2]

Ditto Gravesend....

Origin of the name "Gravesend"
The town is recorded as Gravesham in the Domesday Book in 1086 as belonging to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and called "Gravesham": a name probably derived from "graaf-ham": the home of the Reeve, or Bailiff, of the Lord of the Manor. Another theory suggests that the name Gravesham may be a corruption of the words grafs-ham � a place "at the end of the grove". Myth has it that Gravesend got its name because, during the outbreak of Bubonic Plague in the 1600s, the town was the place where victims were no longer buried on land � they were buried at sea (the town sits next to the Thames Estuary).

[Octavius]

I believe the Romans settled here and it was known as 'dark field'. Similarly the Romans referred to a 'deep ford' which became known as Deptford. Most places had names long before the plague.

[raysparx]

don't know about Blackheath but I was led to believe that a lot of the bodies from the plague were buried in what is now Knightsbridge opposite where harrods stands, might have been my dad winding me up though!!

[Octavius]

The idea that Blackheath got its name from its use as a burial pit goes all the way back to the medieval period, when it was almost certainly used for the disposal of the dead during the 'Black Death'. Virtually every part of London has a local tradition about plague pits under, say, the local school or the bakers. Certainly there were pits dug all over the place. The sheer number of bodies meant that the traditional church yards became, as one contemporary put it, 'overstuft' very quickly.

[smartarce]

Sorry to burst your bubble sianygirl3
But Blackheath where people were supposed to be buried because of the 1349-50 plague is just a myth it was called Black heath because it is actually covered in a layer of BLACK Peat....sorry
smartarce