Harrow before the Conquest. 47 



Thursday, July I6th, 1868. 



The Society held their Forty-eighth Meeting at the President's 

 House. 



This being the last Meeting of the Term, members were 

 nominated for the vacancies about to occur in the Committee and 

 offices of Secretary and Treasurer. 



Leaf was elected Secretary, and Elgood Treasurer ; Bridgeman, 

 Evans, Balfour, Clarke, and Welch members of the Committee. 



The President mentioned that Mr. Evans had kindly presented 

 j£lO. to the Society to be expended in Prizes. 



A unanimous vote of thanks to him was passed. 



The following were the Exhibitions : — 



Dried Plants collected by Everard and Faulder, to whom Prizes were 

 awarded . . . . . . By Mr Farrak. 



Coralline, with Starfish in it, from Barbadoes . . By Mr. Leaf. 



Evans then read the following Paper on 



HAKROW BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 



Some of my hearers may well be amused at the very title of this 

 paper, and no one can be better aware than myself that, in under- 

 taking it, I am labouring under the very obvious difficulty that " ex 

 nihilo nihil fit." If, then, the scarcity of data in my possession has 

 made me take refuge too much on theoretical ground, I must 

 apologise at the outset. No great discoveries of antiquities, no 

 reminiscences of history are present to enlighten us ; all, therefore, 

 that I can endeavour to do is to weave together the few materials 

 that have come down to us, and, in fact, to make the most of them. 

 First, then, we will consider the traces of ancient British habita- 

 tion that still exist in our neighbourhood. Of these there is, 

 perhaps, only one remaining — namely, the earthwork near Pinner, 

 which I will proceed to describe. It commences on the other side 

 of the railway, not far from Pinner station, and stretches nearly to 

 Barnet — an enormous distance — but the only portion of it that I 

 have been enabled to explore is that between Pinner station and 

 the end of Harrow Weald Common, describing roughly in this part 

 of its length a semicircle, convex on the Hertfordshire side. At 

 Harrow Weald Common a large break occurs, beyond which I have 



