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Dan Cruickshank visits St. Olave's Church
Dan Cruickshank visits St Olave’s church, where the bodies of the 1665 plague victims have left their mark on the landscape. For the first time in its history, the capital became a virtual ghost town as Londoners locked themselves in their homes and even the Thames fell silent. In five months, the bodies from the rising death toll caused Londoners major problems. At St Olave’s Church, near the Tower of London, so many bodies were buried that the ground level itself was swollen. To this day, visitors enter the church by climbing a short hill and then walking down stone steps to find the original level of the church doorway.