At Palace Green we can see at either side of the green, the two pillars of society the church and state so important in medieval and subsequent times. University buildings flank the remaining sides of Palace Green. The museum and library on the one side and the institute for Advanced Study on the other. In September 2015 analysis carried out on skeletons (discovered in November 2013 during the construction of a new café for Durham University’s Palace Green Library) found in a centuries-old mass grave has led experts to conclude that they are the remains of Scottish soldiers taken prisoner in Durham Cathedral, after the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, on the orders of Oliver Cromwell.

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“Several jumbled skeletons and individual bones suggestive of a mass grave predating the construction of the library in the late 17th Century. The bodies had been tipped into two open pits at the southern edge of what was, prior to the founding of the University in 1832, part of the property of Durham Castle. No personal effects were found with them” www.dur.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/europe/pg-skeletons/site/