As far as skull fragments go, these ones were fairly large.
About the size of a tea plate, and likely more than 150-years-old, two shards of a human skull were unearthed on Baker Street Monday morning, during excavations related to work on the Baker Street parking lot.
The archeological discovery halted the work, as Guelph Police swooped in to investigate, cordoning off and covering up the scene.
The digging also exposed to the light of day a historic brick tunnel that runs underneath Baker Street and east under the parking lot.
The disinterring of human remains on this particular site is not entirely unexpected. Ed Pickersgill, who oversees the organization 40 Baker Street, said most every time an excavator digs below the asphalt on the street or lot, there is a good chance it will uncover bones.
It is well known that the site is the historic grounds of Guelph’s first graveyard, established back in 1827 by Guelph founding father John Galt, and closed in the 1850s.
It was often used as a potter’s field, for the burial of paupers and strangers.
Many of the remains were disinterred and moved to Woodlawn Memorial Park. Many more apparently were not. There are bones remaining below the surface.
Around this time in 2005, a work crew fixing a sinkhole on Baker discovered a human skeleton. Similar work in 2010 unearthed the remains of an infant. Pickersgill, along with a number of visitors to 40 Baker Street’s social programs, watched the activity at the site Monday morning.
Pickersgill said about eight workers arrived at the location early Monday and began digging. The work is part of reconfiguring the parking lot, involving the addition of two automated pay machines, and demolishing the old pay booth.
The digging that unearth bone and tunnel was related to disconnecting water to the booth. The city said in a press release that the water shut off for the booth is located beneath the road in a section of old tunnel.
“We have no other information about the bone fragments at this time, including their origin,” Allister McIlveen, manager of Transportation Services for the City, said in the release. “We have called the coroner and an archaeologist and are awaiting their arrival on site. We will provide an update when we hear back from the coroner’s test and archeological investigations.”
Around 11 a.m. Monday, a police investigator and McIlveen were on the scene, and preparations were underway to cease the work and protect the area. The skull fragments were on the street about two metres from the hole, a small measuring square and a police evidence marker near them.
Pickersgill said it is known that three such tunnels run from 40 Baker Street across to Wyndham Street. The Baker Street building was once home to a power generating station, he said.
While he was not sure what the tunnels were used for, he said they are tall enough for people to pass through them.
