A mass grave of 48 skeletons, including 27 children, from the Black Death era hundreds of years ago has been unearthed in Lincolnshire.
The discovery, which was found beneath the site of 14th-century monastery hospital at Thornton Abbey, is believed to be the largest Black Death burial ground outside of London.
A team of archaeologists and scientists made the discovery in 2013, but they kept on researching and only published their findings seven years later.
Dr Hugh Wilmott, of the University of Sheffield, said the site gave an insight of what impact the Black Death would have had on the small communities who were unprepared to face the disease.
Dr Wilmott said: "Despite the fact it is now estimated that up to half the population of England perished during the Black Death, multiple graves associated with the event are extremely rare in this country, and it seems local communities continued to dispose of their loved ones in as ordinary a way as possible.
"The finding of a previously unknown and completely unexpected mass burial dating to this period in a quiet corner of rural Lincolnshire is thus far unique, and sheds light into the real difficulties faced by a small community ill prepared to face such a devastating threat."
It also suggests the local community had been overwhelmed by the plague and was left unable to cope with the number of people who died.
Dr Wilmott explained: "One artifact that we found at Thornton Abbey was a little pendant. It is a Tau Cross and was found in the excavated hospital building.
"This pendant was used by some people as a supposed cure against a condition called St Antony’s fire, which in modern day science is probably a variety of skin conditions.
"Before we began the dig, the site was just an ordinary green field grazed by sheep for hundreds of years, but like many fields across England, as soon as you take away the turf, layers of history can be revealed by archaeology."
The team were able to take tooth samples from the skeletons and sent them to McMaster University in Canada to extract DNA for further study.
It's revealed that it contained the presence of Yersinia pestis, a zoonotic bacteria which is documented to have reached Lincolnshire in 1349, spring.
Dr Diana Mahoney Swales, from the University of Sheffield’s Department for Lifelong Learning, who is leading the study of the bodies, said: “Once the skeletons return to the lab we start properly learning who these people really are.
"We do this by identifying whether they are male or female, children or adults. And then we start to investigate the diseases that they may have lived through, such as metabolic diseases like rickets and scurvy which are degenerative diseases for the skeleton.
"However for diseases such as plague, which are lethal, we have to use ancient DNA analysis to investigate that further."
