A watching brief consisting of three monitoring visits was carried out during the digging of the drain and soak away for the new toilet at St James Church, East Hill, Colchester. The narrow drain trench was dug to between 250 and 400mm depth and the soak away trench was dug to 950mm depth. The whole trench was 7m long and extended from the eastern wall of the vestry into an area of church burials. The drain trench was dug along the northern edge of a stone-lined grave. Although some fragments of human bone were retrieved from the topsoil the trench was too shallow to disturb the contents of the grave. The 1m x1m soak away trench was dug deeper and disturbed a burial, remains of which have been removed and kept for reburial. An iron coffin handle and coffin nails, presumably associated with the human remains were retrieved by the contractors from approximately 450mm below ground level. One sherd of medieval pottery was found at 900mm. <1>