109 



tliat is at present known about them, and quite coincides with my own im- 

 pression of their object, I shall here insert extracts from it. "With respect to 

 the lofty circle which crowns the hill l^Ir. Wayne says, "Some years ago I met 

 with a collier on the Barf,* with whom I had some conversation about it. He 

 said the stone mound was once a wall ; that buried beneath the stones, the wall, 

 'as well-built a wall as you would need to see,' was still to be met with in 

 places ; that he himself had come upon it three times over when making a road 

 through the Vallum, and twice in different parts when getting stones for colliery 

 purposes. I have since spoken with other colliers at work in the Barf, and all 

 agree that it has been a wall, and that the foundations are occasionally laid 

 bare." "The ruin," he continues, "of Abdon Barf is so total, not a trace of 

 a wall being visible, that in the absence of some evidence of a wall no one would 

 perhaps be justified in maiutaining that it had been anything else but a mound 

 of loose stones. But being satisfied that it has been a wall, I was pleased to 

 discover, as I think, the cause of its total overthrow, a cause now at work and 

 which in my memory has produced very visible effects ; it is no other than the 

 never ending pursuit of the innumerable rabbits which seek safety among the 

 stones, and which I suppose peopfe have been getting out ever since the rampart 

 ceased to be kept up as a place of refuge and defence. 



If the present vallum represent what was once a wall of defence 

 it must have had habitations within it, and a work which I have 

 only recently met with, "A Perambulation of the Ancient and Royal 

 Forest of Dartmoor, " by the Kev. Samuel Kowe, confirms the idea 

 that the circles of stones within the vallum are remains of cabins. At 

 page 182, Mr. Eowe describes the remains of an aboriginal "settlement," 

 "town," or "village" on Dartmoor in these words : "Its site is on the slope of 

 the common inclining to the southwest, and the ground over which the circular 

 foundations of houses (circles of stones) are scattered is of considerable extent ;" 

 and at page 44, Mr. Eowe gives a view of Grimspound, a work which bears a 

 striking likeness to Abdon Barf. 



Utterly shapeless as is the mound of stones at Abdon Barf in its present 

 state we might perhaps infer the probability of its having been originally a wall, 

 from a comparison with an enclosure on "Wortlebury-hill, near Weston-super- 

 Mare. Of this latter enclosure I have a more lively recollection from having 

 viewed it with Abdon Barf in my mind, to which it bears a striking resemblance. 

 The wall forming a considerable enclosure near Weston is almost wholly in a 

 state of ruin, as utterly shapeless as the mound of stone at Abdon Barf, but 

 in two or three places there still stands a wall rising, without mortar, from 8 to 12 

 feet or more above the remains accumulated at its base" — and ISIr. Wayne con 

 eludes by suggesting the following questions : "Do you see reason to think the 

 great enclosure contemplated from the summit of the Titterstone Clee-hiU may 



* This is the local name given to the summits of these hills. 



