An archaeological watching brief at St Leonard’s church, Hythe Hill, Colchester, Essex: May 2010

An archaeological watching brief on the contractor’s excavation of trenches for the strengthening of the southern graveyard wall at St Leonard’s Church revealed a brick burial vault and a large quantity of fragmented disarticulated human bone (this was re-buried on site).
The large quantity of bone close to the wall is probably the result of the redeposition of bone collected during an apparent re-alignment of the graveyard wall in the 19th century. This realignment allowed a widening and straightening of Hythe Hill by removing a small area of the southern edge of the graveyard.