Bunker Hill dead may lie under gardens

In Boston, history is always just below the surface. And in Charlestown, underneath a row of genteel gardens, in the middle of a teeming city, is believed to be a mass grave containing the bones of possibly dozens of British soldiers killed in one of the most important battles in American history.

The site, part of the sprawling Bunker Hill battlefield, has been pinpointed by a curator from Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and a Charlestown historian who are confident they know where the bodies were buried - 15 feet underground in what had been a rebel-dug ditch that featured some of the day's most ferocious fighting.

Above ground, few residents on quaint, stately Concord Street appear to know they might be living atop a historic, makeshift grave.