40,000 Rejected Souls Lie Forgotten In This artificial Hill.

Ballast Hills Burial Ground Project : https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/ballast-hills... Channel support : Patreon :   / railsandrevolutions   Channel Membership :    / @railsandrevolutions   Socials: Facebook group :   / 560199370035565   Instagram :   / railsandrevolutions   Beneath a quiet hill above the Ouseburn Valley lies one of Newcastle’s most forgotten burial grounds. At Ballast Hills, around 40,000 people were buried between the 1600s and 1853. The poor, the dissenters, the plague-stricken, and those rejected by the Church were laid to rest here, often without names or marked graves. This hill is not natural. It was formed from ship ballast during Newcastle’s industrial rise and later became a cemetery for those denied consecrated ground. Over time, graves were overcrowded, headstones removed, and the site was eventually repurposed, leaving tens of thousands beneath the soil. In this Rails and Revolutions documentary, we explore the hidden history of Ballast Hills Burial Ground, the people buried here, and what this forgotten place reveals about Newcastle’s past. The film also looks at ongoing efforts to recover the names and stories of those once erased from memory. The ground is quiet, but it is not empty. 0:00 Ballast Hills Burial Ground in Newcastle 1:14 Ouseburn Valley and Newcastle Industrial History 3:23 How Ballast Hills Was Formed 4:05 Rejected by the Church Burial Ground 5:29 Forty Thousand Buried at Ballast Hills 7:21 Executions Grave Robbing and Fear of Burial 10:50 Cholera Closure and Forgotten Graves 11:38 Remembering Newcastle’s Forgotten Dead 12:59 Ballast Hills Burial Ground Today #BallastHills #newcastlehistory #ForgottenGraveyards #hiddenhistory #RailsAndRevolutions