52 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



University of Oxford (afterwards President of Trinity College), in his 

 inaug-ural lecture on the utility of Anglo-Saxon Literature (Oxford, 

 1807), speaks of Stonehenge as "the Heathen burial-place, with its 

 Hippodrome, &c.. on Salishury plain, vulgarly called Stonehenge, a 

 corruption ot Stone-ridge''' (p. 13). He afterwards says (p. 87) : 

 " As I have ventured to give a new interpretation of that Wonder 

 of the World, Stonehenge, though whole volumes might be written 

 with the pompous title of Stonehenge restored, and with fairer 

 claims to public attention than those of Inigo Jones and others, yet 

 at present I shall content myself with reprinting the following 

 document, extracted from Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. iii., p. 857. 

 It is a grant of lands from King Athelstan to Wilton Abbey, ex- 

 tending from the banks of the Nadder along the Pile of Stones to 

 Burbage, Savernak Forest, Oare, and Wansdike to the North, and 

 beyond Westbury along the Old Bath Road to the West. The 

 whole deserves the attention of the future Historian of Wiltshire.^' 

 In a disquisition on a passage in Athelstan's grant to the Abbey of 

 Wilton communicated by William Hamper Esq., F.S.A., in a letter 

 to Henry Ellis, F.R.S., Secretary (Archselogia, xxii., 398), it is 

 shown that, topographically regarded, the " Stone-ridge " of the 

 Chart ulary of the Abbey of Wilton, could not, by any possibility, 

 be Stonehenge. 



Sir Richard Colt Hoare published his magnificent volumes on 

 Ancient Wiltshire in 1813 and 1819. In the first he has treated 

 fully of Stonehenge, and has illustrated his description by beautifully 

 executed engravings from the plans and drawings of Crocker. 

 For the ready and courteous loan of three of the copper-plates of 

 these plans for the illustration of this paper, the writer begs to ex- 

 press his grateful thanks to Mr. Bruce Nichols. His father, Mr. 

 Gough Nichols, had, in the same kind manner, allowed the writer 

 to have some of the plates of Abury copied in lithography in 1857. 

 Sir Richard Hoare attributed the erection of Stonehenge to the 

 '' Celts (from Celtic Gaul) our earliest inhabitants, who naturally 

 introduced with them their own buildings, customs, rites and religious 

 ceremonies.'''' The plates in his splendid volumes are invaluable to 

 the student of Wiltshire archaeology. 



