52 PAPERS, ETC. 
containing the skeletons of two children, about eight or 
nine years of age. 
“ The following statements will show that previous dis- 
coveries of this kind have been made in the same locality. 
“In the year 1818, during some excavations made at 
No. 11, Russell Street, “three perfect skeletons were found 
lying beside each other (one of immense stature), with 
several copper coins of Vespasian.” In November, 1836, 
at No. 12, ‘a stone coffin was found, and beneath it two 
entire human skeletons.’ 
“The ground on which this street stands was originally 
a botanic garden, formed by David Russell, an apothecary, 
who died in 1765—from whom the street is supposed to 
have taken its name. This fact is further corroborated by 
reference to an old deed of a house in the neishbourhood, 
wherein it is expressed as being situated on land ‘called 
Russell’s Close, otherwise Holdstock’s Garden.’ 
“As the mode of burial in stone coffins seems to have 
prevailed in Bath and its neishbourhood, perhaps it may 
not be uninteresting to mention a few of the other sites in 
which they have been found :— 
“In the lane leading from Lansdown to Weston, a 
stone coffin may be seen serving the purpose of a watering 
trough. 
“March, 1808, in digging the foundation of a new house 
at St. Catherine’s Hermitage, near Lansdown Crescent, 
some stone cofiins were discovered. ‘ The first was found 
below the walls of the old building, the head to the N.E. 
In it was a complete skeleton, very perfect, six feet long: 
close to the bones of the feet were a number of iron rivet 
nails, some held together by a substance like thin plates of 
iron, the nails in general half-an-inch to the point ; some 
fragments of black pottery and a few long nails were seen 
