V. 



English Lake Dwellings. 



THE records of pile dwellings in England are not numerous, and 

 by far the most important is the one discovered a few years 

 ago in Holderness by Mr. Thomas Boynton. Other examples have 

 been found, principally in the Eastern counties, where, as in Holder- 

 ness, meres and morasses were formerly abundant. In 1856, a small 

 sheet of water was drained at Wretham, in Norfolk, and indications 

 of a pile dwelling were found, which were described by Sir Charles 

 Bunbury (i). Ten years afterwards General Pitt-Rivers (2) recorded 

 the occurrence of numerous timbers driven into peat outside London 

 Wall, and in Southwark, together with numerous bones and pottery, 

 mostly Samian, and some Roman coins. An extremely interesting 

 description of the remains is given. The Rev. H. Jones explored a 

 pile dwelling at Barton Mere, near Bury St. Edmunds, in 1867 (3), and 

 Dr. S. Palmer described the discovery of oaken piles dug out of a 

 bog on Cold Ash Common, in Berkshire. In each instance, wooden 

 piles, more or less pointed, were found driven into boggy ground, in 

 some cases, as at Barton, supported by large stones. Associated with 

 them were large quantities of bones of animals used as food, some- 

 times pottery and implements of bronze or iron. An isolated example 

 of a pile dwelling has been found in Llangorse Lake, in South Wales 

 (4, p. 660), it consists of an island of piles supported by stones, about 

 thirty yards in diameter, in a depth of three feet of water, forming a 

 central platform round which are arranged other piles in groups, from 

 which it is inferred that the dwellings were arranged in groups round 

 a central platform. Bones of the pig, cow, sheep, and horse, with 

 those also of the red deer and wild boar, were found in great abun- 

 dance. At this period the horse evidently formed an article of food. 

 Some fragments of pottery were found with the bones. 



Holderness, the south-eastern portion of Yorkshire, is a low-lying 

 district whose almost uniform flatness is only relieved by occasional 

 rounded hills of gravel and sand. Until about eighty years ago, it 

 was marshy, boggy, and little cultivated ; it was then drained, the 

 water being conveyed to the sea by drains at low tide and prevented 

 returning at high tide by an arrangement of sluices. The series of 

 plant-laden semi-stagnant meres, connected with each other by 

 equally sluggish streams, have given place to fertile, highly culti- 

 vated plains. The ground is highest near the sea-shore, immense 



