500 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
ON THE DISCOVERY OF AN ANCIENT GRAVE IN 
STILLMAN STREET, PLYMOUTH. 
BY MR. FRANCIS BRENT, 
(Read at the Conversazione, January 13th, 1881.) 
Durine the alterations that have been made by Messrs. Thomas 
Pitts and Son on the premises in Stillman Street, preparatory to 
the erection of their new malt-house, an interesting discovery was 
made of a little grave containing an urn, which once held the ashes 
of the burnt body of one of the early inhabitants of Devonshire. 
The workmen, in excavating for the foundations of the iron pillars 
that were to support the respective floors, came upon some shells— 
mostly those of the oyster, periwinkle, cockle, and mussel—all very 
much corroded and decayed, so that many of them could not be 
preserved, indicating that they had been buried for a great number 
of years, and that probably they were part of an ancient refuse heap. 
The shells were not in very large quantity, but similar shells were 
scattered throughout the adjoining soil, showing that the heap had 
been disturbed in former years, and the contents distributed. In 
clearing further there were found two flat stones, which were taken 
to be the covering of some old drain. These were each about three 
feet long by fifteen inches broad and three inches thick, and consisted 
of what is known as dunstone—not the slate of the district, but a 
hard green rock, which had been brought from a distance—and had | 
the appearance of having been much weathered before they had 
been used for their present purpose. The stones were placed at a 
right angle to each other, thus forming a roof, the gable ends of 
which were crossed by two pieces of stone, each about a foot long, 
of similar description to the cover stones. On raising the stones a 
large urn, composed of black ware, was discovered, placed in a 
small grave or cist, which was about eighteen inches deep by two 
