The Hope Playhouse, Animal Baiting and Later Industrial Activity at Bear Gardens on Bankside: Excavations at Riverside House and New Globe Walk, Southwark, 1999–2000

This slim volume is an excavation report that highlights some of the findings on a site where modern building work was being undertaken. The Museum of London Archaeology undertook excavations where the site was accessible during ground workings and a watching brief (archaeological monitoring) on other parts of the two buildings in the year 2000. The site was close to the
River Thames’s south bank in the Borough of Southwark, and the earliest occupation of the site was in the late medieval period. The Hope Playhouse, Animal Baiting and Later Industrial Activity at Bear Gardens on Bankside focuses primarily on the 16th- to late-19thcentury period. The volume is divided into four chapters that cover the excavation findings over five time periods that, in turn, reflect the different uses of the site. This is followed by a chapter on the Southwark Bankside industries. There are also a few short specialist reports dealing with animal bone, tobacco pipes, and pottery. The
volume presents a discussion of how the site developed over the centuries and reflects the intense use of the land near the Thames.