4 Bradford-upon-Avon. 
of Bradford is, as a glance at an old map will shew at once, just 
between two large forest-ranges, the one, the Coit-mawr or Sel- 
wood, i.e. the ‘Great Forest’ as Asser interprets the name, extend- 
ing to the south by Wingfield, Pomeroy, Frome, &c., and the other, 
to the north east, through Holt, Blakemore, Pewsham, and so on 
through Wilts, as far as to Braden Forest. It will appear more 
than once in the course of this paper, that in olden times, the wood- 
land bare a far greater proportion than now to what was arable or 
pasture land in our parish. The same thing, indeed, may be ob- 
served, though of course in a lesser degree, by inspecting maps of 
comparatively modern date, that is, of not more than a hundred and 
fifty years ago. 
The question naturally arises, “Have we any traces or memorials 
in our immediate neighbourhood of these, its earliest inhabitants?” 
As yet none have been found to which we can, with anything like 
certainty, assign so great antiquity. The habits of our British fore- 
fathers were such, that it is hardly likely they would leave behind 
them any lasting tokens of themselves, except in the names of places, 
or in their places of sepulture, their cromlechs or barrows, as they 
are called. Our river still bears its British name,—the Avon. We 
are at no great distance from some works which are undoubtedly 
British, as, for example, the Celtic burial-ground at Wellow, and 
Stanton Drew, one of their ancient hypzthral temples—a ‘/ocus 
consecratus’—which, to those who occupied the western part of the 
province of the Belgze, was what Stonehenge was to those who lived 
in the eastern part.!_ But within the limits of our parish we have 
discovered no remains at present of so distinctive a character, as to 
warrant us in definitively pronouncing them to be British. Ina 
field which forms part of the Belcomb estate, called Temple Field, 
lying on the high ground to the north-west of the town, there are 
sundry large stones, ranged together on the brow of a hill, in such 
a manner as may at first sight seem to warrant a conjecture, that 
1 On the subject of British remains within a few miles of our town, the reader 
is referred to an interesting paper on ‘ Ancient Earthworks in the neighbourhood 
of Bath,’ communicated by the Rey. H. M. Scarth, M.A., to the Journal of the 
British Archwological Association, June 1857, p. 98, 
