Our second Historic New England stop was Otis House, which sits right at the foot of Beacon Hill, in Boston. What I didn’t know about Beacon Hill was that it was once one of three mountains in this part of Boston. The other two were taken apart for fill, and Beacon Hill itself had about sixty feet taken off its top. I’d always know that parts of Boston were built on fill, but I’d never seen a map – that was included in the setup to the tour, and was rather eye opening. Quite a bit of Boston wasn’t there five hundred years ago.