BARROWS AT HADDON FIELDS, DERBYSHIRE. 55 



peg of the same material from the lower stone and fitting into this hole 

 of the nave. A peg, firmly wedged into the top stone near its edge, 

 would serve as a handle, and the three wedge-shaped piercings would 

 be fed with parched corn from the hand or a suitable vessel, and would 

 be well adapted for allowing the grains to be caught between the 

 stones. 



So far the writer has failed to meet with any other quern of this type, 

 and, therefore, can offer no opinion as to its age. Those to whom he 

 has submitted photographs and sketches of it (Professor Boyd 

 Dawkins, Mr. Augustus Franks, and the above-mentioned two 

 gentlemen), are unanimous in declaring it to be of Roman or post 

 Roman age. Mr. Franks regards it, as to shape, as a Roman rather 

 than British quern ; but the material not being Nieder mendig stone, 

 his statement seems to imply that it might be of British or Romano- 

 British make, but after the Roman model. 



Roman coins have, on several occasions, been found more or less 

 associated with contracted interments, the earliest form of barrow 

 interment in this district ; but the ease with which coins can slip 

 through interstices of a cairn, or be drawn down by burrowing 

 animals, makes them but a doubtful index of the age of the interment. 

 Not so, however, in this case ; the close association of this stone with 

 the interment of Haddon Fields makes it of great value in determining 

 the antiquity of the latter. 



