166 On a Cromlech-tumulus called Lugbury, 
stone, leaning on two pitched perpendicular stones. I suppose it 
was heretofore borne up by two more such stones like the legges of 
a table. Neer to this stone was a little round barrow, before it was 
ploughed away since a.p. 1630.”! In Aubrey’s manuscript work, 
Monumenta Britannica, now in the Bodleian Library, is a rough 
sketch of the barrow, with the trilith at the east end, which shews 
that, two hundred years since, the stones had the same position as 
they retain at present.? 
The barrow is about two hundred yards from the great Roman 
road, the Foss, which traverses nearly the whole of south Britain, 
from S.W. to N.E., from Devonshire to Lincolnshire, and whence 
the legionaries of the Czsars must have often contemplated this 
ancient monument.* Traces probably of earlier occupation exist on 
the opposite Castle hill of Combe; where, within range of cannon 
shot from the Foss-way, is an entrenched camp or hill fortress, 
curiously protected by a series of parallel earth-works, doubtless of 
ancient British construction, though afterwards chosen as the site 
of the Castle of Combe, in Norman times.* 
The barrow, though in the parish of Nettleton, is immediately 
without the boundary of that of Littleton Drew, and it may be 
worth naming that a road or trackway now disused, but evidently 
of great antiquity, leads directly past the western end of the 
barrow to this last-named village, which it connected with that of 
Nettleton. Where it descends the intervening valley, this path is 
hollowed out, so as to form a true “covered way.” Upon this road, 
1 Sir R. C. Hoare, Ancient Wilts, vol. II. p. 99, quotes this from Aubrey’s 
M.S., ‘‘Monumenta Britannica,” written chiefly between the years 1663 and 
1671. See Memoir of Aubrey, by J. Britton, 1845, p. 39—47, 
2 A wood engraving from this sketch, is given in the ‘‘ History of Castle 
Combe,” by G. Poulett Scrope, Esq., M.P., 1852, p. 7. 
3 Collinson, (History of Somerset, 1791, vol. I, p. 101), gives a brief notice of 
this tumulus, which has been copied into the additions to Camden, (Britannia, 
1806, vol. I. p. 119). Collinson adds ‘‘I doubt not that this was the monument 
of some Roman chief who died on the march, and was commemorated in this 
rude manner, for want of time and other conveniences.” This opinion will 
scarcely now be regarded as calling for serious refutation. 
4 Sir R. C. Hoare, ‘‘ Ancient Wilts,” vol. II. p. 301, and ‘‘ Roman Era,” 
p. 102. G. Poulett Scrope, Esq., M.P., ‘‘ History of Castle Combe,” p. 7. 
