86 On the Barrow at Lanhill near Chippenham. 
to that effect ; though at first, on reading Aubrey’s narrative, this 
might perhaps be thought. The fact appears to be, that Aubrey, 
and his friend Sir Charles Snell, and perhaps Anthony A’ Wood, 
finding, in some very uncritical chroniclers and historians, the 
statement that Hubba fell near Chippenham, and was buried there 
under a heap of stones, looked round for some barrow in the neigh- 
bourhood, which might be assigned as his probable grave. The 
tumulus at Lanhill, now a defaced and irregular heap, was in 
Aubrey’s days, (as proved by the sketch of it, in his Monumenta 
Britannica,) a conspicuous mound, and is situated not more than 
between two or three miles to the west of Slaughterford, where 
there was a genuine tradition of a great battle with the Danes. 
With no better grounds probably than these, Sir Charles Snell, 
who lived in the neighbourhood, seems to have pronounced this 
barrow to be Hubbaslowe. In such ways, do we find what may be 
called spurious traditions arising even in the present day; which 
are much more difficult to deal with, and contain generally less 
truth than the genuine traditions of the vulgar. Had Hubba even 
fallen near Chippenham, it is hardly probable, that after so com- 
plete a defeat, his countrymen would have raised any great tumulus 
over him. We have, however, seen good reasons for concluding 
that this barrow is of much greater antiquity than the time of the 
Danes in England; and that it must be attributed to some of the 
earliest inhabitants of our country, and to a tribe whose history is 
lost in remote antiquity.! 
1 Since the foregoing pages were struck off, the writer has seen an anonymous 
essay, entitled ‘‘Cursory Notes as to the Defence of Wessex, A.D. 851-878,” in 
which the events considered in the foregoing paper are discussed at considerable 
length and with much ability. The essay deserves attention, in a critical and 
topographical point of view, though in placing Ethandun, (after Milner) at 
Heddington, near Calne, the author has adopted, to say the least, one of the less 
probable conclusions. See ‘‘ Niagara, Jephthah, Remarks upon the Defence of 
Wessex, by Alfred the Great,” &c. Brewster and West, 1848, 
