This peaceful, if slightly ramshackle, garden is an unconsecrated burial ground where those living on the margins of society were buried until 1853. It's estimated that some 50,000 people were buried here over the centuries, most of them women (who worked as prostitutes) and children. Volunteers have fought for decades to preserve the site from development and transform it into a garden of remembrance in honour of the 'outcast dead'.
Crossbones Garden
South Bank
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
22.11 MILES
The world’s largest and oldest continuously occupied fortress, Windsor Castle is a majestic vision of battlements and towers. Used for state occasions, it…
1.49 MILES
A splendid mixture of architectural styles, Westminster Abbey is considered the finest example of Early English Gothic. It's not merely a beautiful place…
0.37 MILES
One of London's most amazing attractions, Tate Modern is an outstanding modern- and contemporary-art gallery housed in the creatively revamped Bankside…
3.62 MILES
With its thunderous, animatronic dinosaur, riveting displays about planet earth, outstanding Darwin Centre and architecture straight from a Gothic fairy…
0.72 MILES
Sir Christopher Wren’s 300-year-old architectural masterpiece is a London icon. Towering over diminutive Ludgate Hill in a superb position that's been a…
0.8 MILES
Few parts of the UK are as steeped in history or as impregnated with legend and superstition as the titanic stonework of the Tower of London. Not only is…
0.33 MILES
Seeing a play at Shakespeare's Globe – ideally standing under the open-air "wooden O" – is experiencing the playwright's work at its best and most…
1.78 MILES
With almost six million visitors trooping through its doors annually, the British Museum in Bloomsbury, one of the oldest and finest museums in the world,…
Nearby South Bank attractions
0.17 MILES
For a thousand years, a market has existed at the southern end of London Bridge, making this still-busy ancient gathering point a superb spectacle…
0.23 MILES
Southwark Cathedral, a mostly Victorian construction but with a history dating back many centuries earlier, was the nearest church to what was once the…
0.23 MILES
This one-time private jail, known as the Liberty of the Clink, was used to detain debtors, prostitutes, thieves and numerous Protestants and Catholics…
4. Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret
0.23 MILES
This unique museum, 32 steps up a spiral stairway in the tower of St Thomas Church (1703), is the unlikely home of Britain's oldest surviving operating…
0.24 MILES
The Rose Playhouse, for which Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson wrote some of their greatest plays and in which Shakespeare learned his craft, is unique:…
0.25 MILES
Step aboard this replica of privateer Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde, the warship that circumnavigated the globe in 1577–1580. Kids will love exploring…
7. London Bridge Experience & London Tombs
0.28 MILES
In the vaults beneath London Bridge, this historical if somewhat tacky attraction takes you on a whistle-stop tour of London’s dark past. Things ratchet…
0.3 MILES
Puncturing the skies above London, the dramatic splinter-like form of the Shard has become an icon of the city and is one of the tallest buildings in…