Tall tales: A grave question

If, one of these autumnal nights, you should happen across a man in a velvet cape beating a tabor as he processes through the snagged side-streets and former "stews" of Southwark, do not fear, but follow him. He is John Crow, shaman of the borough (known by day as the writer and poet John Constable) and he will lead you to the ancient Cross Bones burial ground on Redcross Way, where the bodies of 15,000 prostitutes, laid to rest there since 1160, are finally being honoured as they never were in life.

The Cross Bones gates appear from a distance as a colourful, flickering quilt. They are densely wreathed in ribbons, feathers, amulets, riddles and remembrances, some for the long-dead young women whose syphilitic skulls were discovered here, some for more recent dead. "Paula. Netty. Tania. Gemma. Anneli. For all that they were/ And could have been," commemorates the prostitutes killed in Ipswich in 2006, while a Mexican skull grins alongside a glitterball, crochet rose, and a sign that sums it all up: RIP the Outcast Dead.

Closed since 1850, the site was rediscovered during the construction of the Jubilee line in the late 1990s. Local poet John Crow felt its call - "The intensity of this place drew me here" - and then discovered the history of the place, recorded coyly as a "single women's graveyard" by John Stow in 1598. Soon the spirit of the Goose was upon him. "I am John Crow and The Goose is my Muse," he declaims. "She maketh me to waketh in my walking talking shoes/ Cross Bones to Clink by Mary Overie dock..."

"Goose" was 17th century slang for prostitute, and here in the Liberty of the Bishop of Winchester, being "bitten by a Winchester Goose" meant receiving a dose of the clap. Although tolerated by law, prostitutes were disallowed a holy burial ground, and the site is still precarious, with attempted development schemes continually "hexed" by local protectors of the place. Woe betide Transport for London if they disallow a community garden. For now, the mass grave is shallow, and human teeth can sometimes be spotted glinting under the topsoil. As the Shard soars behind, and the trains rattle beneath, stragglers will gather outside the Cross Bones' locked gates on the 23rd of this month (not Hallowe'en) to follow their shaman's chant, "Goose may you never be thirsty", to tie cheap jewels to the gate - Goose is happy with paste - and to offer her favourite libation: a nip of gin.