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![This design is dedicated specifically to Crossbones Burial Ground, which inspired the rest of this project. The gravestone is based on designs and imagery from the 17th and 18th centuries.
The background map is the 1746 John Rocque map of Southwark.]()
This design is dedicated specifically to Crossbones Burial Ground, which inspired the rest of this project. The gravestone is based on designs and imagery from the 17th and 18th centuries.
The background map is the 1746 John Rocque map of Southwark.
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![This design is dedicated to those buried at sites that have been redeveloped or cleared and are now unrecognisable as burial grounds, despite the dead still being in place. The gravestone is based on designs and imagery from the 19th century.
The background map is the 1853 Whitbread's New Plan of London.]()
This design is dedicated to those buried at sites that have been redeveloped or cleared and are now unrecognisable as burial grounds, despite the dead still being in place. The gravestone is based on designs and imagery from the 19th century.
The background map is the 1853 Whitbread's New Plan of London.
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![This poster is dedicated to people who died and were buried as unknowns, or were lost to war and never recieved a proper burial. The gravestone is based on designs and imagery from the early 20th century, and traditional war graves.
The background map is the Ordnance Survey One-Inch Tourist Map of London 1921.]()
This poster is dedicated to people who died and were buried as unknowns, or were lost to war and never recieved a proper burial. The gravestone is based on designs and imagery from the early 20th century, and traditional war graves.
The background map is the Ordnance Survey One-Inch Tourist Map of London 1921.
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![This poster would have been displayed at Crossbones Burial Ground, Southwark.]()
This poster would have been displayed at Crossbones Burial Ground, Southwark.
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![This poster would have been displayed at sites like Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel, and Christchurch Gardens, Westminster.]()
This poster would have been displayed at sites like Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel, and Christchurch Gardens, Westminster.
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![This poster would have been displayed at sites such as the Royal Artillery Memorial, and the Tower Hill Memorial, as it references people more than a specific place.]()
This poster would have been displayed at sites such as the Royal Artillery Memorial, and the Tower Hill Memorial, as it references people more than a specific place.
As part of storytelling-driven Studio 2 in my final year at London Metropolitan University, we were given a project brief with the title 'Finding Stories', with the idea being to use an archive to find a piece of history and create something based on our findings.
I used the Museum of London and the London Metropolitan archives to research Crossbones Graveyard (also known as Crossbones Burial Ground, or just Cross Bones), which led to further research on other disused and redeveloped burial grounds around London. These included plague pits, common graves, and wartime graves of unknown people.
I created a trio of posters featuring gravestone designs dedicated to the dead buried in these forgotten or concealed sites. The designs were based on traditional imagery and lettering from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, each dedicated to a different group of people; the first was in a 17/18th century style and dedicated to Crossbones Graveyard specifically, the second was a 19th century style stone dedicated to those in common graves or plague pits; the third was in an early 20th century style and was dedicated to people lost during the war, buried as unknown soldiers or who never had their bodies recovered from battlefields.
The colour choices were based on the inks available to me for riso printing, which was my planned method of production. The limited colour availability aided in creating bold, eye-catching designs, as well as being a low-cost.
The posters were originally intended to be publicly displayed at some of the burial sites that inspired the project. Unfortunately, the country went into lockdown before the project was completed, which restricted how far I could take the final designs.