England’s Mysterious Bone Church - A Guided Tour of St Leonard's Church, Hythe

In this video, Jessica the Museum Guide (that’s me!) takes you on a guided tour of one of England’s only ossuaries, St Leonard’s Church in Hythe.

Home to thousands of skulls and long bones, this medieval bone store is home to mysteries galore – modern bodysnatching, witch’s marks, Roman circus dwarves, and more. As the entrance sign states – this is a place of hope and light, not despair.


👉🏻Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe. Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts about this bizarre and macabre place.

VIDEO SUMMARY

On today’s tour we visit one of only two ossuaries in the UK – St Leonard’s Church in Hythe, Kent, and investigate a medieval mystery of how they got there.

0:00 - Introduction to the tour
3:23 -The Church Interior - Graffiti and Witch''s Marks
5:41 - The History and Mysteries of the Crypt
7:31 - Whose Bones are these?
11:48 - Medieval Injury, Disease, and Trepanation
13:10 - Anaemia, Malaria, and Sugar
15:59 - Medieval Statuary
16:52 - The Graveyard
18:32 - 21 Skulls Stolen in 2018!

[alanholck]

The Douaumont Ossuary near Verdun, France has the remains of at least 130, 000 (based on the number of skulls) soldiers killed during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. As remains are still being found in the surrounding farmland, they are added to this day. I recall hearing of an old French veteran who had lost an arm in the war; he visited every year because he figured his arm was in there somewhere.

[brandyrose]

I loved this! Favorite parts: John and his lovely shirt, the anemia/malaria connection, and the sign reading, "Everyone and every animal is welcome here" 💜

[JustMe-ksqc]

I think I love John. What a fabulous shirt.

[chrisball]

In the case of the Cinque Ports, Cinque is pronounced 'sink, ' not 'sank'. I.e. the correct pronunciation is the 'wrong' one! I've got no idea why, but apparently they've done it for centuries. Maybe it was the medieval English navy's idea of sticking it to the French by abusing their language. This was an especially awesome video. I had no idea this place existed.

[patbowman]

I'm from America and you are the very best in telling stories about graves and such. I find the history is fabulous and the customs are really cool a little bit strange but cool. Your graves go back many years and you seem to know a lot of facts about them. Thank you for sharing.

[tgill]

New word of the day:) Apotropaic-witch markings. Thanks Jessica🦇

[kingmerry]

Thanks for a fascinating video! 🙂 Back in the 80s, a friend of my parents took up the role of vicar at St Leonard's - he sent us a spooky black and white postcard of the ossuary. Unfortunately, we never went to visit, but what a cool church to be in charge of!

[markedis]

Earthquakes in the UK aren’t uncommon at all, it’s just most of them are below a magnitude 3 in fact we’ve had 31 in the last 60 days with the biggest being a magnitude 2.7 near Cromer. Significant earthquakes in the UK (over a magnitude 4.0) are rare with only 11 in the last 25 years

[azuresea]

Just the right amount of C R E EP Y ! Well done, Jessica! Fascinating always.

[crazy]

I'm from hythe and love your videos, so insightful and educational.

[capt.bart.roberts]

I'm sat not far from Hythe. According to my mum, I was conceived in another of The Cinque Ports, Rye. One of my favourite parts of the world.

[Nephertania]

I thoroughly enjoyed this! Thank you so much for the tour.😊

[monicacallesarenales]

Fascinating! It's a perfect place to study medieval life. I love this skull shirt ;)

[katharper]

I am so pleased that I stumbled across this channel. I have always enjoyed collections of the bizarre and horrifying.

[hopey]

hi there, my name is Hope I'm new to your channel but have watched a fair few of your vids already! Really enjoying them. Keep up the good work-

[CarterSams]

Hello! Just found your channel about 5 minutes ago. I haven’t even finished the video. I just love the concept so much that I wanted to hype you up and encourage you to keep going :)

[iansuehooper]

Lovely to see you back Jessica. Interesting subject matter but that wonderful church building was more appealing. Mother Earth would have been more enriched if all the bones had been crushed up and buried in the soil. Look forward to your next video.

[CrowSkeleton]

I appreciate John's shirt! If you want isotope analysis done, feel free to look up prices and encourage a group of friends to donate to the relevant archaeological unit or university department, I'm sure they'd be ecastic to have the opportunity. There's a guy who donates the price of a radiocarbon date to my unit every year and that ability to get one more, free date means so much to us, both that a member of the public cares about our research and through what being able to date, say, a midpoint between fairly certain layers or a specific event can tell us (and then the public).

As for anaemia, remember that women are also over-represented in the collection, presumably through not dying at sea, and typically have higher rates of anaemia, particularly as adolescents without a decent iron-rich food supply. Also...I think people stealing skulls from their place of care and respect for eBay is more "eesh, that's really sad" than "ooo spooky", really. People shouldn't be sold.

[kimmohekey]

thankyou so much for covering this absolutely stunning church if i could visit anywhere in the world it would be the catacombes and the skull church

[ashtraydekay]

super cool, really liked seeing the old graffiti, also being able to get shown more, right place right time, for you to catch someones attention