 This led to the theory that this was a mikveh or Jewish ritual bath.The interpretation of the inscription was challenged in 2002 and the alternative theory proposed that the bath is too deep for a mikvah and may have been used to cleanse bodies before burial in the nearby Jewish cemetery at Brandon Hill which was established after 1177.A Jewish community was known to exist in Bristol from at least 1154 until the wholesale banishment of the Jewish community from England in 1290.