St Leonards Church

The church of St Leonard sits on a hillside inside the pretty coastal metropolis of Hythe in Kent, overlooking the English Channel. Its history is going returned at the least 900 years, perhaps even in addition – a iety of the church buildings in the vicinity have pre-Norman origins. It’s a stunning and implementing constructing – however in case you visit the church’s crypt you may discover yourself coming head to head with a few unexpected people. The crypt is domestic to an ossuary – a house of bones. Hundreds of human skulls peer out at the tourist from cautiously-stacked shelves, and plenty of the crypt is taken up by means of a sizeable pile of bones, dotted right here and there with grinning skulls.

These are antique bones. It’s concept that lots of them were exhumed from the churchyard when the church turned into extended inside the 13^th century. Others came from churchyards within the place that belonged to churches that had been closed and demolished all through the medieval length – while the land became bought, the ones buried inside the churchyards were exhumed. All of the bones are at least 700 years vintage – a few may be plenty, an awful lot older. It’s quite feasible that a number of Hythe’s Roman citizens are staring out at us from the cabinets of the crypt. St. Leonard's church is open to traffic every day from eight within the morning until at least 5:15 inside the afternoon, and frequently later. It is known as the church with the bones, and is well-known for its ossuary, that's open at Easter after which from May to September every year.