In the summer of 2009, the Museum of London’s Archaeological Service (MOLA) dug a trench on the Arnold Circus hillock, close to the bandstand. The gardens at the centre of the Boundary Estate had been closed for a big replanting and resurfacing project, which gave the Museum the opportunity to settle once and for all the famous local rumour: that the rubble of the Old Nichol demolitions lay beneath the raised gardens.

The MOLA moles unearthed not just spoil from the Nichol buildings but detritus that suggests the space was used as a local dump as it lay exposed, while the Estate was under construction (see pic at the bottom, from the London Metropolitan Archives’ collection).

The shells of seafood snacks, plus broken clay pipes (both of which are very common finds on most London digs) were everyday throwaway items in the 19th century; think fag-ends and Pret-A-Manger wrappers. More site-specific were the footwear offcuts: shoe-making and cobbling were among the major trades in the Nichol (along with clothing and furniture manufacture), which explains the discovery of many soles, uppers and buckles; the earliest find was a satin slipper from the 18th century, its kitten heel still attached.

All sorts of crockery, from different decades – much of it extremely pretty – was found, as well as animal bones from food preparation. A single human metatarsal turned up – the most enigmatic find of all. Speculations about clumsy resurrectionists or a psychopathic killer in the Nichol must be set aside, however, as the most likely explanation is that a dog or fox had disturbed the earth in one of the local graveyards and dropped the footbone in the area where the gardens now stand.

The 42-page story of the dig and the indepth analysis of the finds, with some fab pictures and maps, is available to read here (4.8MB PDF file).

Thanks to the MOLA team’s Karen Thomas, Jo Lyons, Natasha Powers, Sophie Jackson, Alison Telfer, Dan Nesbitt; and to Lis Clegg for the pipe photo on the right.