DIG DEEP

DURING September 1665, the plague in London reached its very worst peak, with the hot, late-summer weather combining with the disease to create deadly conditions. Parliament and Charles II had fled the capital. At one point during that month, more than 1,000 Londoners were dying, every day.

One was a girl called Mary Godfree, who died on Saturday, September 2. Despite all the images of mass plague pits, of carts loaded high with ‘bring out your dead’, Godfree was accorded a proper burial. We know this because her headstone was discovered five years ago during one of the biggest engineering projects of the 21st century: Crossrail.

‘We had always