Page:VCH London 1.djvu/46

 A HISTORY OF LONDON importance, though the date is only limited in one direction by the presence of Charon's fee. Of the find in Warwick Square (Plan A, i), to be noticed as a whole later, a cinerary urn of serpentine contained a coin of Claudius (41-54), and the same emperor is represented together with Nero (54-68) in the burials discovered in Borough High Street, near St. George's Church (Plan A, 2), early , in 1898. A fine Celtic (early British) bronze coin is also mentioned, but not further described, and seems to have come from the same burial, as only one cinerary urn is mentioned, with lamps, vases, unguent bottle, and other relics.^'' The extensive Roman burial-ground discovered about 1576 on the east side of St. Mary's, Spitalfields (Plan A, 3), yielded many urns 'full of ashes and burnt bones of men,' each having in it among the ashes one piece of copper money. Some were of Claudius, others of Nero, Vespasian (69—79), Trajan (98-117), Antoninus Pius (138-161), and other emperors not named. The site is noticed below for other reasons, but there can be little doubt that it was an important cemetery from the earliest days of the Roman occupation and that cremation was largely practised there between a.d. 50 and 150 if not later. The record of finds in Well Street, Jewin Street, is not so satis- factory, and of the urns discovered close to the old London Wall (Plan A, 4), in 1847 '^'^^y °"^ ^^ definitely stated to have contained burnt bones. ^° Sixty- eight coins, ranging from Galba (a.d. 68-9) to Faustina the elder (wife of Antoninus Pius), were found in the same street, but their association with the burials was not demonstrated. When St. Michael's Church was removed in 183 i for the construction of the approach to London Bridge, a black ' thumb-pot ' and two shallow pottery pans containing ashes and two coins of Vespasian were taken from the native loam below the southern boundary of the churchyard in Crooked Lane ^^ (Plan A, 5). Finds of coins at Shadwell and Camomile Street are mentioned in another connexion, as their association with burials after cremation is not explicitly stated. Burials no doubt contemporary with these but without numismatic evidence of date have been met with in various parts of London. In the Guildhall Museum is a cinerary urn with a maximum diameter of 1 1 in. that was found in 1879 during excavations on the south side of Cheapside (Plan A, 6), below the pavement and building line, about 100 yards from the west end, and at a depth of 18 ft. The inclosed bones were apparently those of a female, and two were partly inclosed in green glass, evidently the remains of a bottle fused after the body had been reduced to ashes. Hard by, in St. Paul's Churchyard and especially at its north-east corner (Plan A, 7), Wren •* men- tions a number of cinerary urns found 18 ft. deep or more, below inhumations apparently of the later Roman period. The collection of the late Rev. S. M. Mayhew contained a cinerary urn with cover from Newgate Market ^' (now Paternoster Square, Plan A, 8), and another covered urn that appears to have been used as a cinerary, but was found in Bucklersbury (Plan A, 9), not a likely spot for a burial. This and another in Leadenhall Street (to be mentioned under another heading) would if authentic belong to the inner circle of burials round the nucleus of London ; but both may be regarded '' "Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc, (new ser.), iv, 94. " 'Joum. Brit. Arch. Assoc, ii, 272, 274. " Arch, xxiv, 191, pi. xliv, fig. 8. " Parentalia (1750), 266. " Guildhall Museum. 6