Two boreholes and a pit were excavated by engineers in January 2000 to test ground conditions in advance of a proposed extension to the east side of the vestry at St Botolph’s Church. The borehole work produced one noteworthy item: a piece of offcut leather which was found among silty material withdrawn from a depth of 4.2m in Borehole 2. The borehole’s location is likely to be close to the course of a stream shown on John Speed’s 1610 map of Colchester, and this may account for the unusual depth of organic material encountered here.