The HS2 site near Euston [Simon Lamrock]

HS2 has begun digging up the dead again as a new phase of exhumations began on its main construction site.

A huge tent is being constructed on compulsory purchased land where Cardington Street used to be with the latest round of archaeological works expected to last until the spring. Viewing holes from the street to the worksite have been temporarily plugged out of respect for the dead.

Tens of thousands of human remains have already been disinterred from the former church burial ground, St James’s Gardens and moved to a cemetery in Surrey .

The gardens – one of the only green spaces in the heavily polluted Euston – was bulldozed to make way for the new train station.

This triggered protests from environmental campaigners.  HS2 said this week that they had to wait for a water main and sewer beneath Cardington Street to be diverted before the second phase of exhumations could begin. In 2023, HS2 held a prayer service at a memorial in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, after 14,000 remains were buried there.

In 2019, the bones of an explorer credited with naming Australia, Captain Matthew Flinders, were reinterred from the HS2 construction site to St Mary and the Holy Rood Church in Lincolnshire where he grew up and his family is buried. The requirement for mass exhumations of Camden graves due to HS2 was first revealed in the New Journal in 2012.

HS2 plug up the viewing portholes in their hoardings [Simon Lamrock]

The family tomb of Camden’s historic family of undertakers, Leverton’s, was one of many that had to be dug up. HS2 works in Euston were paused two years ago after the government said it was looking at reducing costs of the project. There are still no detailed plans for the main HS2 station or to what extent the surrounding land will be redeveloped.

The works in Camden are not expected to be complete for at least another 10 years. The Labour government has thrown its full support behind bringing HS2 to Camden. Sir Keir Starmer overturned a decision by Rishi Sunak to cancel the stretch of railway between Old Oak Common and Euston unless the tunnelling could be funded entirely through private investment.

The last two tunnel-boring machines needed to dig HS2’s tunnels from Old Oak Common are set to start their journey towards Euston “fairly soon”, the rail minister said this week. Lord Hendy said that “we have cracked Euston to Old Oak Common, at least, because the Government are going to fund the tunnelling machines and they will start fairly soon.”

A HS2 spokesperson told the New Journal: “As part of our preparatory work to bring HS2 to Euston, we are completing the excavation of the burial ground which was located on the HS2 station site. All human remains are treated with due care, dignity and respect and will be reinterred with the rest of the buried population at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.”

The Archbishops’ Council, St Pancras New Church, Historic England and Camden Council have been kept informed, HS2 added.