A HISTORY OF LONDON Other leaden coffins in the vicinity of London offisr few points of interest. One was found in an east-and-west sarcophagus below the Medical School of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1877, containing the skeleton of a woman but without a lid, the sides being ornamented with cable moulding arranged in a diamond pattern. The bead-and-reel moulding is seen in saltire on the ends of another coffin that had evidently been buried in a wooden casing at Bethnal Green." Verv little can be said of a coffin with iron bands *' found ' in a bank, outside the course of Houndsditch opposite New Broad Street ' (ap- parently between Broad Street and Liverpool Street stations, Plan A, 47), but the bead-and-reel pattern again occurs on a child's coffin found during 1843 in Mansell Street, Whitechapel (Plan A, 48).*' In close proximity were found cinerary urns and leaden ossuaries of the kind already referred to, the latter being represented by a circular lid in the British Museum (Plan A, 63). The above suffice to show that lead was fairly plentiful at the time, and the absence of Christian emblems points to the period 250-350 as the date of manufacture. Cases have already been quoted of cinerary urns being protected with earth by cists or box-like constructions of wood or roofing tile ; and, apart from wooden coffins, which were frequently used for the purpose, there are instances in London of unburnt remains being protected in a similar manner. In 1839 during excavations for a sewer in Bow Lane (Plan A, 49), near the corner of Little St. Thomas Apostle (merged in Cannon Street), a human skeleton was found 15 ft. from the surface, lying north-and-south, and sur- rounded by large drain (roofing ?) tiles placed on edge. Between the teeth was a second-brass coin, much corroded, but subsequently identified as a Domitian (81 — 96).'° This is a typical instance of the classical custom of placing a coin in the mouth of a corpse wherewith to pay the ferryman in Hades. In 1726 Dr. Stukeley saw, on the site of Bishopsgate Church (Plan A, 50), a Roman grave made of great tiles or bricks (each) 21 in. long, which kept the earth from the body ; " and other tiled tombs containing unburnt remains have been met with in Paternoster Row (Plan A, 51) near the corner of Canon Alley (at a somewhat lower level than an adjoining Roman pavement), '^ and St. Dunstan's Hill, Great Tower Street (Plan A, 52), where (to the north- east of ground containing Roman rubbish and under the churchyard wall) was found a mass of concrete, a cavity in which had apparently contained at one time a wooden coffin covered with flanged roofing-tiles. These were evidently Roman, and that the concrete was of the same date is indicated by the presence of pounded brick in the mass, and its extreme hardness. As in Paternoster Row and Bow Lane, an interment discovered in 1852 not far west of Walbrook, in what was then called New Cannon Street (Plan A, 53), was in the immediate neighbourhood of a Roman " Lond. and Midd. Arch. Soc. Proc. 1860-3, P- 7^ ; found containing slaked lime in 1862 at Camden Gardens (replaced by Corfield Street) behind the police station ; now in British Museum. " Coll. Antiq. vii, 180 (fig.) ; two were found at Winchester, one with a coin of Constantine ; F.C.H. Hants, i, 290. " Joum. Brit. Arch. Assoc, ii, 299 ; Proc. Soc. Antij. (Ser. i), i, 57 ; Lond. and Midd. Eten. Proc. i860, p. 80. " Joum. Brit. Arch. Assoc, xxxix, 435 ; but see Arch, xxix, 146. Gough, Add. to Camden, ii, i 7.
- ' Roach Smith considered the burial much older than the pavement : lllus. Rom. Lond. 58 ; Gent. Mag.
1843, ii, 81. So Price : Lond. and Midd. Arch. Soc. Trans, iil, 500. 22
