STRAY NOTES, PREHISTORIC, SAXON, AND NORMAN. 221 



words, which I quote from his family "Memoirs," as pubHshed by 

 the Surtees Society : 



[V'ol. III., p. 163.] "October 8, 1725. At the Mate Temple, Navestock 

 Common. 



"August 29, 1749. \Ve went by Weald to Navestock Common to view the 

 Akite Temple of the Druids, which I had seen twenty-five years ago. 'Tis on very 

 elevated ground ; we may see St. Paul's Church there, and, down the river, an 

 open heath oregrovvn with fern, erica, and the like plants on a dry, gravelly 

 soil : great woods of oak all around, being on the edge of Epping Forest. The 

 Temple is formed by mounds of earth, a ditch, the earth whereof is thrown out both 

 ways. What I should call the meridian line of it is south-east, regarding the 

 Thames. 'Tis ingeniously designed, the right wing as in action, the whole as it 

 were in perspective. Many names of places hereabouts seemingly retaining to 

 British. Navestock is the old oak by the temple, graph, alatus. Kelvedon hardly' 

 the abode of the Druid that kept the place, whose name, probably, was Kelvis ; 

 Kelweis,^a town upon the River Avon, not far from Abury, Wilts. Doddinghurst. 

 Hurst, a town in Wilts, near Crokewood,^ not far from Devizes ; Hurst, near Isle 

 of Ely, where the old Britons long remained after the Saxons had driven 'em out 

 elsewhere. 



" xMr. Lethulier showed me the many cast celts of brass found near here lately* 

 most of them of the recipient kind, and with rings to hang 'em by. One of the 

 received, but the sides remarkably bent in order to hold the staff the better : 'tis 

 broke, but the sides so much broader than ordinary and so bent, strongly confirm 

 my notion ■ of the use of those celebrated instruments, that the Druids used them 

 to cut down the mistletoe with at their w'inter sacrifice. 



" I observe that our temple is upon the division dike of Chalford* and Ongar. 

 They that laid out these hundreds took the opportunity of this antiquity on a 

 wide and open common, to draw- their ditch near it as a remarkable and known 

 thing. 



" Mr. Lethulier showed me an infinite collection of all kinds of curiosities. 

 . . . The road here is the great Roman road to Camulodunum, or 

 Colchester. 



"The Druids studiously formed the two wings in different attitudes on purpose 

 to hide the appearance from vulgar eyes ; to render it, as it really was, symbolical 

 and mystical ; and to represent it as in action, being, as Moses expresses it, the 

 Spirit of God which moved on the face of the waters. Hence the Egyptians 

 place this sacred character on their canopuses ; hence the alate temple on the banks 

 of the Humber ; and this, though at a distance, regards the Thames' mouth, its 

 meridian line (as I call it) being south-east. Thus the greatest star in the heavens, 

 Canopus, at the bottom of Argo Navis, just skims the horizon, as brooding on the 

 face of the ocean. Plutarch thinks Osiris' soul is in that star, which intimates 

 the building, or rather making, such temples at the sepulchres of great kings as 

 protectors of their ashes, and conductors of souls of heroes to their beatifyed 

 estate, which custom was in time occasion of their deification. The Orientals 

 have a wonderful notion concerning this star of Canopus, and worshipped it. 



[i hard by.— S.C.H.] 



2 Probably Kellaway's, near Chippenham. 



3 Crockwood, east of Potterne. . 



4 Not mentioned among bronze hoards, by Mr. Evans, 111 his work on • Bronze Implements 

 of Great Britain." 



[5 ChaflforJ.-S.C.H-.] 



