276 South Wilts in Romano- British Times. 



or " castles," only, following the line of the downs from north-west 

 to east : Bratton, Battlesbury, Scratchbury, Knook, Codford Circle, 

 Yarnbury, six places of refuge in about twelve miles for the in- 

 habitants of the open downs and their flocks and herds. The 

 natural lie of the ground accounts for the position of these strong- 

 holds. They are all of the class of fortified hill-camps, and are 

 more effectual than any line of continuous entrenchments could 

 be, and we need not see in their isolation " a low state ^ of 

 civilisation, before the inhabitants of any large district had at- 

 tained to such organisation as was necessary for combined defence."^ 

 Everything points to unbroken continuity of habitation, and the 

 reason for it we shall see when we come to deal with the roads 

 and the ways of communication. But among this thick population 

 the only " Great House " that we know of was near Bishopstrow. 

 This house and the fall of it have been spoken of in a previous 

 paper,^ and attention can only be drawn here to one point, the 

 mosaic pavement, which was of especial interest. It has been said* 

 that " the artists of the mosaics rarely, if ever, ventured even to 

 introduce objects which might be supposed to be drawn from their 

 British surroundings," but confined themselves to conventional 

 Roman types such as Orpheus charming the beasts. But there are 

 a few examples, of which the Pitmead pavement is one, in which 

 local sport appears to be a subject. At Pitmead a hare is figured, 

 just as at East Coker, in Somerset,^ is " a hare flying from a grey- 

 hound, just catching her in her mouth ; at her feet a bloodhound 



' Pitt-Bivers, in Wilts Arch. Mag., xxv., 288, sq. 

 ^ On the difficulty of distinguishing between the three classes of fortified 

 hill-camp, villages surrounded by low banks and ditches, and fortress-town, 

 and the difficulty of settling their nature and date without excavation, see 

 Windle, Semains of the Prehistoric Jge in England, p. 205, tq. Who made 

 the fine earthworks of Battlesbury is yet undetermined. Pitt-Rivers, in 

 Wilts Arch. Mag., xxvii., p. 201. 



•* Wilts Arch. Mag., xxxiii., p. 111. 



'' F. Haverfield, in Social England, Illustrated Edition, i., 151. 



5 Wrongly given as " East Cocket, in Devonshire," in the Gentleman's 



Magazine, and Mr. Gomme's topographical reprint of it : Roman and 



British Remains, part I., s. v., R. N. Worth in Devonshire Association, 



vol. 23, p. 48. 



