Graves found beneath church parking lot

Underneath a church parking lot off of James Street North, are believed to be hundreds of graves of past parishioners.

Christ Church Cathedral must dig up the human remains before going ahead with a multi-million dollar condo development on the land.

The grave markers are all that remain of the cemetery that opened in 1832. There is a main vertical stone for Richard Beasley- one of the founders of Ancaster.

The cemetery closed in 1852 and many of the 763 bodies were moved to the Hamilton cemetery. But not all of them.

“However as time has gone on we’ve come to realize that the process by which they undertook was not as thorough as we’d expect today.”

As many as 400 bodies could still be behind the Christ Church Cathedral buried under the parking lot.

“The exact figure nobody really knows. The investigation has just revealed that some remains are likely present here.”

The bodies were found by using ground penetrating radar to search underneath the asphalt.

“These are Hamilton’s ancestors, members of the Cathedral congregation and members of the wider community buried at this site.”

There are even additional gravestones in the church basement.

The plan is to build a $50 million condo development with retail and community space.

“All the heritage features, schoolhouse and cathedral, will remain intact and be preserved in our revitalization project.”

But the bodies have to be moved first, and that could cost over a million dollars.

“Any remains found on the property will be carefully and reverently transferred through provincial process to another site.”

There are over a dozen other grave stones in the church basement and part of the process will be identifying the remains.