A much-battered fragment of relief sculpture at the Guildhall may, I think, be a remnant of a sepulchral banquet; it shows the upper part of a man in a recess with the point of what looks like the arm of the usual sofa-like bench behind him.
Chests and Coffins.—In earlier Roman Britain bodies were cremated and the ashes disposed in urns, lead boxes, and in other ways. There is in the British Museum a truly magnificent urn of hard porphyry-like stone which was found in Warwick Square. At the Guildhall is part of a sarcophagus-like chest about 2 ft. by 2½ ft. (Fig. [47]). Its discovery was recorded by Price thus: “A coped stone of a marble tomb has been discovered near to the west door of St. Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate; associated with it was a coin of Constantine Junior, A.D. 317-340” (London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc. Trans., vol. v. 413). The material has shining particles, and seems to be white marble. In this respect it should be compared with the gladiator relief already described, and the fine Clapton sarcophagus mentioned below. The association with the coin must have been accidental, for this chest cannot, I think, be later than the second century. It would have contained an urn holding burnt bones; compare a rude stone cist from Harpenden in the British Museum.
Fig. 47.
An excellent account of London graves is given in V.C.H. Stow described the finds in Spitalfields in his day thus: “Divers coffins of stone, and the bones of men without coffins, and great nails of iron were found a quarter of a yard long. I beheld the bones of a man lying, his head north, and round about some such nails, wherefore I considered them to be the nails of his coffin.” Many plain coffins of stone have been found in the City and suburbs. In an old MSS. collection which I have, is the note: “About Dec. 1717, was taken up out of ye ground near ye new church of Rotherhithe, a stone coffin of prodigious size in which was ye skeleton of a man 10 foot long” (!). A Minute of the Society of Antiquaries (July 28, 1725) reads: “An ancient glass vase of bell-shape found in a stone coffin, 14 ft. under the ground by the portico of St. Martin’s Church [in the Fields]; ’tis now in Sir Hans Sloan’s collection.” The “vase” was doubtless one of the little ⊥-shaped bottles. Price described a stone coffin found in Fleet Lane nearly 8 ft. long, containing a skeleton in lime.
The wooden coffins must have been still more common. Conyers, about 1670, recorded the finding of one in an excavation at Fleet ditch. “About ye middle of the new ditch as low as ye bottom of ye old wall there were found an oak coffin turned black, of boards with bands, a man’s length from ye old ditch wall, upon the old wharfing, or, as I suppose, natural ground wharfed upon. In this coffin was a glass vial in ye fashion ⊥ [an expanded base with long neck], and brass like a hinge, these lay amongst the bones, the glass I have by me” (Conyer’s MS.). This was evidently one of the chests described by Mr. Ward: “Wooden coffins or chests were in common use, as the presence of iron nails, iron or bronze bindings, hinges, and other mountings prove.” An oak coffin was found in Moorfields in 1873, the objects from which are now in the British Museum.
Two stone coffins are preserved in the Guildhall collection. Two containing lead coffins were found at Pie Corner, St. Bartholomew’s, in 1877 (London and Middlesex Archæol. Soc. Trans., vol. v.). Lead coffins were usually ornamented, and will be further considered. It is probable that some of the coffins of wood and of stone were Christian burials.
The coffins of stone described were roughly wrought, and they were buried in the ground. Others, however, have been found which are handsome pieces of workmanship, and bear inscriptions.
Fig. 48.