The Fulwell Giant (c.NZ384599)

From a letter which appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine of October 1763:-

A few weeks ago a gentleman from Durham shewed me some large teeth and two Roman coins. The teeth, he said, he took out of the jaw of a gigantic skeleton of a man, and the coins were found in the grave near it. The account he gives is in the substance as follows: Upon Fulwell hills, near Monk-Weremouth, within a measured mile of the sea, there are quarries of lime, which he rents of the proprietor. In the year 1759 he removed a ridge of lime-stone and rubbish upon one of these quarries, which was about twenty-five yards in length from East to West; its perpendicular height about a yard and a half, its breadth at the top was near six yards, and the sides were sloping like the ruins of a rampart. In the middle of this bank was found the skeleton of a human body, which measured nine feet six inches in length; the shin bone measuring two feet three inches from the knee to the ankle; the head lay to the West, and was defended from the superincumbent earth by four large flat stones, which the relater, a man of great probity, who was present when the skeleton was measured, and who himself took the teeth out of the jaw, saw removed. The coins were found on the South side of the skeleton, near the right hand. (Signed) “P. Collinson.”