A HISTORY OF LONDON wrought with divers antiques about them ; some three or four images made of white earth about a span long. This description is exact enough to enable us to identify the Gallo-Roman red-ware usually called ' Samian,' the lamps frequently found on brackets " at the angles of cists containing cremated remains, and the pipeclay figurines of Venus *^ made at St. Remy-en-RoUat (Dept. AUier) in the early part of the first century. Though their association is not stated, it is practically certain that the bulk of these subsidiary vessels belonged to cremated burials of the first two centuries. The main point is that at Spitalfields the inhumations, if separated at all from the cinerary urns, were not far distant, and show no such revulsion of feeling as would render the burial-ground of their predecessors repugnant to those who buried their dead in coffins and had given up what came to be regarded as the distinctively pagan rite of cremation. A stone coffin,*^ now in the Guildhall Museum, was found near Seacoal Lane (Plan A, 38), which formerly joined Snow Hill and Fleet Lane, running along the left bank of the Fleet. It lay at a depth of 1 2 ft. from the surface, and was of unusual dimensions, being 7 ft. 9 in. long, 4 ft. 21 in. wide, and 3 ft. deep ; and had, as usual in the Roman period, been hewn from a solid block, the material being ragstone. Within was found a skeleton that had been buried in the ordinary way surrounded with lime. Adjoining the tomb were observed evidences of another interment, with fragments of pottery, &c. ; but the direction of the stone coffin is not stated, nor is it clear whether the second interment was that of a burnt or unburnt body. As at Spitalfields, coffins of stone and wood have been found together at Notting Hill,°* all with the head at the north end of the grave. Other stone examples are also known from the London area primarily dealt with in this volume, but the records are anything but satisfactory, and their Roman origin , is not above suspicion. During excavations made in 1722 for the foundations of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (Plan A, 39), 'a Roman brick arch was found with several ducts, 14 ft. under ground, and Sir Hans Sloane had a bell-shaped glass vase that was found in a stone coffin among ashes in digging the founda- tions of the portico.' *^ This glass was probably a cinerary urn that had been inclosed in a cist like that found at Winchester House, Broad Street (Plan A, 69), which doubtless contained cremated remains. In the Guildhall Museum is a coffin ^^ of bastard Portland stone, found containing a skeleton 13 ft. below the surface of Bishopsgate Street (Plan A, 40), opposite Widegate Street and Artillery Row, about the centre of the east front of Liverpool Street Station, close to the site of a similar discovery in 1875 (see Topog. Index) ; and another in the same collection was discovered near a bastion of the Roman wall in Castle Street (now Goring Street, Plan A, 41), Bevis Marks. Nothing further is known of the Roman sarcophagus found in the cellar of an apothecary named Rogers, at the corner of Howard Street, Strand (Plan A, 42), and reported to the Society of Antiquaries in 1741." " As at Avisford, Suss. ; Coll. Anttq. i, pi. xliv. "' Specimens figured in CoU. Antiq. vi, 48. " An illustration of the coffin before removal is given by J. E. Price, Rom. Antlq. 52. " Gent. Mag. 1 84 1, ii, 499. " Brayley, Beauties of England and Wales, x, pt. i, 91. An arched vault 14 ft. deep, with large equilateral Roman bricks, was found during the rebuilding of Bishopsgate Church, containing two perfect skeletons ; Gough, Add. to Camden, ii, 1 7. ^ Closely resembling one found in the goods yard south of Old Ford station. '" MS. Min. iv, 109. 16
