HUMAN REMAINS have been found during excavations on a building site in Stoke Newington.

Builders phoned the Met and a CID scene-of-crime team raced to the  Church Street renovation to make a detailed examination of a skull. The officers decided the death was not suspicious.

Work on the foundations will cease until an examination of the site is completed by the Museum of London archeological team, which was phoned by the builder, MBS Contracting.

A justice ministry certificate to remove bones will be sought.

The  archeologists will aim to established the gender and age of the remains, and perhaps others will be found. Or perhaps a partner will be found, sleeping peacefully in the clay, as shown in the delightful memorial plaque, pictured above, dedicated to Percival and Agnes Smalpace, in the ancient church of St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, City EC1A 9DS.

Shall we ever learn whose skull it is? A fascinating story may await uncovery by a local historian.

Several world-famous people have Stoke Newington connections.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), whose best-known novels are Robinson Crusoe (often considered the first novel) and Moll Flanders, studied in the then village of Stoke Newington. He can be ruled out because he is buried at Bunhill Fields in the City.

Freaky-creepy writer Edgar Allan Poe went to a now-demolished school in Church Street, but is interred in an unmarked grave in Baltimore, Maryland.

Spookily, a lot of odd things involving his eternal rest happened.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, spent several years teaching at Newington Green. Her remains were lowered into a plot in Bournemouth, Dorset.

Hamish Scott 091114

* Backstory: Shakespearo, hero and Shoreditch 

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