observances, of the Ancient Britons, are perfectly familiar; made so by the frequent contributions of various antiquaries and topographers, from the times of Stukeley and Gale, and perfected by the researches and discoveries, in the kindred districts of Wiltshire, of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, under whose guidance we may now traverse our downs and waste lands with an interest before almost unknown, and in direct communion, as it were, with the character and domestic habits of their primitive inhabitants.

Although, for obvious reasons, the most numerous traces of a nomadic and pastoral people would be found upon the open districts and superior pasture lands of the chalk downs, there is no reason for supposing, with Sir R. Hoare, that they had not made advances into what are now the more cultivated parts of the country, before the arts of Rome had taught the rude barbarians to extend their operations farther inland. Unreclaimed forest, doubtless, then occupied the greater part of our interior, but there is still sufficient evidence remaining of the preoccupation of our sandy lands and river borders. The stone and copper axes which I deposited, some time since, in the Chichester Museum, were found by the gravel-diggers upon our commons; sepulchral barrows are not rare; and I have now to notice another curious specimen of Celtic economy from the same locality.

In the summer of 1818 or 1819, I pointed out to my then neighbour and friend, the Rev. Edmund Cartwright, the continuator of Dallaway's History of Sussex, two remarkable mounds upon an elevated part of Nutbourne Common, in the parish of Pulborough, with the remark that they were broader and lower than the usual run of sepulchral barrows. They lay within twenty paces of each other; the southernmost measuring 90, and the northern 80 feet diameter, and were perfectly circular.

"Mr. Cartwright conjectured they were sepulchral; and, under his directions, cross sections were made in the larger one; but it appeared to be composed entirely of sand, and there were no signs of sepulture; the search, therefore, was abandoned, and no further attempt made to investigate their nature. A labourer, who remembered the circumstance, came to me two or three months ago, and told me he had accidentally dis

covered, when searching for stone, that the northern tumulus was partially surrounded with stones set endways in the turf, above which they here and there protruded. Finding this to be the case, I directed him to clear away the earth, and endeavour to complete the exposure. In doing this, we not only

found that the circle was complete, but that it was also the outer line of the foundation of a wall four feet in thickness, the remainder being packed in without1 cement; with a doorway to the east four feet in width, the stones there being wanting.

"Within this circle of stones the mound rises to about three feet perpendicular in height, into a platform, with a depression in the centre, like the pond-barrows of the South Downs. "Upon the supposition that a smaller concentric circle.

This important word was misprinted "with" in the Garland.

might have existed upon the crown of the mound, the search was continued in that direction; but a few stones only were found, packed in upon that part of it, facing the doorway in the wall.

"Cross-sections were then made to the bottom, and into the undisturbed sand-rock, but nothing more was discovered, save a few fragments of pottery, like coarse Roman ware, and a fragment of a quern or millstone; both near the surface, and near the centre of the mound.

"It was thus satisfactorily proved that neither of these tumuli was sepulchral. What, then, was their purpose; and what was the use of the wall, or the circular layer of stones?

Before I attempt to give an answer to this question, I will proceed shortly to describe the situation of what I believe to be a British settlement, about a quarter of a mile south of these mounds. It is a triangular headland of sandy soil, partly waste and partly arable, now called Winterfield, enclosed on two sides by streams which flow through low meadows, in earlier times unquestionably woody marshes, like the neighbouring unreclaimed peat bogs. On the third it is defended by a broad ditch and vallum, having the perfect character of the Celtic encampment, not improved, as many of them were, by subsequent Roman works. The area of the peninsula thus enclosed may be about six or eight acres. I do not know that any relics of the Celtic or Roman character have been ploughed up in the cultivated part of it, but on the adjoining lands of Hurston and Wiggonholt, Roman coins, pottery, and other marks of the habitation of Romanised Britons, have been discovered.

"This encampment of Winterfield exactly corresponds in character and situation with the more important one of Burpham, near Arundel, which is in like manner defended by a morass on one side, the river Arun on the other, and at the base of the triangle by a ditch and wall twice the size of the work in question. Arundel itself, the ad Decimum Lapidem of the Romans, was originally a British town of the same character, with the river on one side, a marshy and woody ravine on the other, and a fosse and vallum traversing the neck of land between the two, still to be seen, intersected by the London road, just without St. Mary's Gate.

"To return to our British fastness of Winterfield. It is, as I before observed, about a quarter of a mile south of the walled tumulus, and will serve to connect it and its companion with Ancient British associations.

66

'My first thought was, that they might be religious circles, and that the place of the large stones, generally used in the construction of Druidic temples, was here supplied by the wall of small stones, afforded by the surrounding wastes, at a time when all these wastes were mostly open glades, and would probably afford a plentiful supply of the angular boulder-stones, still to be found under the turf.

"In support of this proposition, I may appeal to the authority of the enthusiastic but credulous Stukeley, who has left descriptions of religious works of various kinds. In that part of the Itinerarium Curiosum which was published after his death, I find figures of walled circles in Ireland and Anglesey, as they existed in his time.

There can be no question that the construction of the religious circle varied with the circumstances of the country in which it was situate. The mud-wall temple at Barrow, in Lincolnshire, is an important instance; Stonehenge, with its gigantic imposts, is an advance toward the walled building, from the single-stone erections of Abury, Stanton Drew, Rowlritch, &c. And it cannot be supposed that any populous district would be without its religious edifice, more or less important, according to the means of its inhabitants.

Having these thoughts of our monument, and supposing that the singularity of a walled tumulus would not be uninteresting to the venerable historian of Wiltshire, I addressed a description of it to Sir R. Hoare, whose observations in reply are these:

"I have seen several earthen circles in Wilts and Somersetshire with a single entrance to them, but no one with a wall. Circles of stone enclosures are also frequent on Dartmoor, and I think they may be deemed religious, and were surrounded by a slight vallum of earth, where stone could not be procured, as on our downs.

"The difference between religious earth-works and those for defence consists in the former having the fosse withinside instead of outside.

"I find also that sepulchral barrows were sometimes surrounded by a circle of single stones; and, as they could not have answered the purpose of a fence, no other motive but their implied sanctity can be assigned for their erection.'

"More, perhaps, might be said in favour of the religious nature of these mounds, still, it must be confessed that the case is very doubtful. The larger of them has no stone-work; they are not exactly alike, like the twin circles of Abury; and they are not enclosed in a common vallum, as they probably would have been if they had constituted one temple.

"Let us, then, consider what other uses they may have served, and how these appearances may be reconciled with the known habits and conditions of a rude and primitive people.

"Amongst the earth-works often seen upon our downs, and so minutely described by Sir R. Hoare, is what he has called the 'pond barrow.' It does not differ materially from our walled mound, except that it is not quite so elevated. It is thus spoken of by the above-mentioned author (I quote from his Ancient Wiltshire) :—

"VI. THE POND BARROW.-I can form no conjecture. about these tumuli that carries with it the least plausibility; they differ totally from all the others, and resemble an excavation made for a pond; they are circular, and formed with the greatest exactness, having no protuberance within the area, which is perfectly level. We have dug into several, but have never discovered any sepulchral remains. We generally find one or more of these barrows in the detached groups, and on Lake Downs there is a group of four or five of them altogether. I once thought that the Britons might have adopted this method of preparing their barrows for interment, by thus marking out the circle, and throwing out the earth on the sides; but the very great regularity of the vallum militates against this idea.'

"Elsewhere he supposes they were appropriated to the females in some way, having often found trinkets and articles of domestic use in them.

"In looking at these constructions, I have always been inclined to think that they were the sites of British habitations, perhaps of the superior order.

"I suppose the shallow excavation to be the area of the