CHARNEL HOUSE. A place for the storage of human bones, specifically that rendered necessary by the fact that many crowded mediaeval cemeteries were used again and again, so that each new burial unearthed the bones of people long dead. Charnel houses were sometimes situated in church crypts, and sometimes as separate buildings in the church yards; chantry chapels were occasionally added. (See Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonne de l'architecture, s.v. ossuaire.)