Old Divinity School - St John's Street, Cambridge, UK - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

In March 2015 The Independent website reported the discovery of remains under the Old Divinity School:

University of Cambridge: Remains of 1,300 scholars are found under building.

While the existence of the cemetery has been known since at least the mid-20th century, the sheer scale and extent of the burial ground was unclear until now.

One of Britain’s largest medieval cemeteries containing the remains of more than 1,000 people – many of them scholars fallen upon hard times – has been unearthed under part of the University of Cambridge.

The hospital cemetery was found during excavations beneath the Old Divinity School at St John’s College. Containing about 1,300 burials – including about 400 complete skeletons – it was found as part of the refurbishment of the Victorian building three years ago but details have only now been made public.

While the existence and location of the cemetery has been known to historians since at least the mid-20th century, the sheer scale and extent of the burial ground was unclear until now.

The bodies, which mostly date from a period spanning the 13th to 15th centuries, are burials from the medieval Hospital of St John the Evangelist, which stood opposite the graveyard until 1511, and from which St John’s College takes its name.

Craig Cessford, from the university’s department of archaeology and anthropology, said it was one of the largest finds of its kind in the UK.

The vast majority of burials were without coffins, many even without shrouds, suggesting the cemetery was primarily used to serve the poor. There were very few bodies belonging to women and children – probably because its main purpose was to cater for “poor scholars and other wretched persons” and pregnant women were excluded from its care. Grave goods such as jewellery and personal items were only present in a handful of burials.

The cemetery was found to have had gravel paths and a water well, along with seeds from various flowering plants, suggesting that much like today’s cemeteries, it was a place for people to visit their deceased loved ones.

Despite local rumours linking the hospital cemetery to the Black Death, no evidence of this disease was found on any of the remains and the team did not find any sign of large burial groups from that period of the 14th century.

The Divinity School building is Grade II listed with the entry at the Historic England website telling us:

By Basil Champneys. Neo-Tudor. Brick with stone dressings. Good details and carving. 2 storeys, main hall with two cross-wings. 4 bay screen entrance with buttresses behind and pinnacles with crowns. Ground floor has three light lattice windows, traceried windows to the hall. Staircases inside have attenuated columns and vaults. Bronze doors by Fred Thrupp, 1888, with George Herbert scenes, no longer in use. Professors' rooms have good Art-nouveau fireplaces.

The Victorian Web website has an article about the Divinity School that tells us:

This is a Grade II listed building in a late Gothic or Tudor style, to match St John's College opposite. Building materials: red brick with stone dressings, and sculptural enrichment added in the 1890s. The Divinity School was built on land leased from St John's College, and reverted to it in 1997. In recent years it has been very handsomely restored and refurbished. The location of the building is worth noting. Kevin Taylor writes, "The original Divinity School of c.1400 (now part of the Old Schools) was the centre of the University; and the central location of this successor indicates the continuing importance of the study of theology and related subjects at Cambridge".

Champney's building was praised at the time, with The Building News and Engineering Journal of 2 May 1879 describing it as having been treated "in a free and masterly way" and adding that it is "far beyond any other new work of the kind in Cambridge that we have seen". Later, Nikolaus Pevsner wrote appreciatively, "The style is early Tudor, the treatment lively and not at all pedantic," noting its "nearly symmetrical" front, with a "centre and somewhat projecting sides". Nevertheless, it was not featured among the best examples of Champneys' work in an Academy Architecture review of the architect in 1914 and a recent architectural critic calls it an "undersung building" which "deserves to be better known and appreciated".

The corner tower is a particularly attractive touch, giving an appropriately ecclesiastical feel to the whole. This side of the Divinity School is open to view because All Saints' Church, that once stood here, had been demolished in 1865. This left the open space of All Saints' Garden. Champneys also designed the Gothic memorial cross to the church that stands in the middle of the garden.

The statues were added in the empty niches as a result of the benefaction of a Mr Samuel Sanders. M.A. (Trinity), who in 1890 offered to have them sculpted to fill the niches. The sculptor/s or stone-masons responsible are unnamed. Possibly they were from the firm of Farmer and Brindley, which was responsible for so much of the important architectural sculpture of this time.