A leading historian is calling for medieval remains unearthed at a building site to be re-buried in Preston Parish Church.
Thirty graves, 12 of them containing virtually complete skeletons, have been discovered at a development site behind the city centre's privately-owned Brunel Court halls of residence on Marsh Lane. Experts from Oxford Archaeology North believe the graves are the likely remnants of a medieval friary located in Preston from 1260 to 1539. And now an order of Franciscan monks, similar to the ones who used to reside in Preston, have expressed an interest in burying the skeletons in their own cemetery in London. But historical experts today said the bones were part of Preston's heritage and should stay in the city.
Stephen Sartin, associate curator for Lancashire County Museum Service, said: "If you start moving bones around which have been there since medieval times, where does it stop? If we are going to move them at all I am sure that order of monks would have wanted to be interred at the site of the most historic church in Lancashire – Preston Parish Church."
David Ward, curator at South Ribble Museum, said: "There are rules and regulations about the handling of human remains. The accepted thing is they should be reinterred at their original site or at a suitable local graveyard."
Stephen Sartin, associate curator for Lancashire County Museum Service, said: "If you start moving bones around which have been there since medieval times, where does it stop? If we are going to move them at all I am sure that order of monks would have wanted to be interred at the site of the most historic church in Lancashire – Preston Parish Church."
David Ward, curator at South Ribble Museum, said: "There are rules and regulations about the handling of human remains. The accepted thing is they should be reinterred at their original site or at a suitable local graveyard."
(Matthew Squires, Lancashire Evening Post - 4 April 2007)
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