Prince Rupert was to bring four thousand horse and two thousand foot to Durdham Down, and the royalists in Bristol, who were estimated at two thousand, were to seize the Frome-gate and admit Rupert's forces.
In the autumn of 1834, the surgeon Henry Riley and the curator of the Bristol Institution, Samuel Stutchbury, began to excavate "saurian remains" at the quarry of Durdham Down, at Clifton, presently a part of Bristol.