A watching brief was carried out at the rear of the Town Hall on behalf of Colchester Borough Council during the construction of disabled access facilities. These included steps, paving and a stair-lift, as well as the remodelling of the frontage wall, gate and railings. The site lies at the southern end of the graveyard of St Runwald’s church (which no longer survives) and immediately to the north of the Old Library, which was built in 1894.<1> The contractors used a mini-digger with a toothless ditching bucket to excavate a 3m-wide strip along the southern edge of the graveyard, adjacent to the Old Library. The strip was dug to a depth of approximately 300-500mm from west to east. At the eastern end of the site, a trench was excavated for the base of the stair-lift. This was approximately 3m north-south by 3.5m east-west and 1.65m deep. Over much of the site there was a layer of modern topsoil (L1), up to 0.45m thick. This sealed an extensive, rather mixed deposit of greyish-brown topsoil/dump (L2), over 1m thick. The lower part of this layer was soft and probably included the backfill of graves, although individual grave cuts were not visible during machining. Modern finds were found throughout L2, as well as some earlier material. The natural subsoil was not reached during the watching brief. Parts of two headstones (F2 & F3) were uncovered in situ in the eastern part of the site. The upper parts of the headstones had been broken off. F3 lay only 50mm below the modern ground-level. Both headstones were retained in the graveyard. The lower part of the fill (L2) of the trench for the stair-lift, approximately 1.4 - 1.65m below the modern ground-level, was loose and soft, and contained voids. This was probably due to the effects of settlement of the backfill of graves following the decay of the underlying wooden coffins, including those associated with F2 and F3. Investigation of a void at a depth of 1.65m below the modern ground-level in the northern part of this area revealed well preserved human bone from an in situ inhumation. The bone lay immediately below the proposed level of the concrete slab for the stair-lift. It was covered over and left undisturbed. Well-preserved disarticulated human bone fragments were found frequently during the groundwork. In two cases, in the eastern part of the site, the clusters of bone had clearly been placed in small circular pits (F1 & F4). These pits were presumably dug and filled with the human remains unearthed during earlier phases of building work on the site.