A charnel house (Med. Lat. carnarium) was a place for depositing the bones which might be thrown up in digging graves. Sometimes, as at Gloucester, Hythe and Ripon, it was a portion of the crypt; sometimes, as at Old St Paul's and Worcester (both now destroyed), it was a separate building in the church-yard; sometimes chantry chapels were attached to these buildings.

Viollet-le-Duc has given two very curious examples of such ossuaires (as the French call them), one from Fleurance (Gers), the other from Faouet (Finistere).