Grace Reeve first came to Crossbones Graveyard as a child, when her Mum brought her along to a Vigil. Now a student at Goldsmiths, she’s just won Gold in the 2024 BBC Charles Parker Awards for her short audio-documentary: ‘The Outcast Dead and Alive‘. The title is inspired by our name for the dead of Crossbones Graveyard, whom we have come to honour at 7pm on the 23rd of every single month for more than twenty years.
It can be heard on BBC Radio 4 on Friday 16th August at 11.45am (& Sat 17th at 00.30) and on BBC Sounds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021xv3
The Outcast Dead and Alive
Hidden in the heart of Southwark on London’s South Bank, buried between skyscrapers and stations, are a set of iron gates festooned with photos, ribbons and other memento mori which open into a garden – Crossbones, the site of a medieval sex workers graveyard. Known as the Winchester Geese, these women were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester, whose Palace was nearby, and plied their trade in the Southwark streets across the River Thames from the respectable City of London.
In 1997, the writer John Constable had what he calls a ‘visitation’ which showed him the location of the graveyard and, following excavations, it was confirmed as the site of Crossbones.
Grace Reeve’s Gold Charles Parker Prize-winning feature uses extracts from Constable’s Southwark Mysteries and Spark in the Dark to explore the history of the burial site, the battle for its survival and the unique rites and rituals that keep memories alive and create new traditions.
Grace is studying an MA in Audio, Radio and Podcasting at Goldsmiths, University of London. The judges said her Gold Prize winning feature, The Outcast Dead and Alive, was “fantastical, bonkers and rather wonderful. Unusual, profound and embedded deep in the social history of ordinary people: it’s made me want to go visit the graveyard!”
With special thanks to the Bankside Open Spaces Trust and the Friends of Crossbones. The songs, incantations and poetry are by John Constable and performed at the Ribbon Gates by the Heathen Harlots.
Producer: Grace Reeve
A Soundscape production for BBC Radio 4
