ANCIENT EARTH-WORK AT NORTON. 41 
church,* and one worthy gentleman has, as I under- 
stand, decided that it is nothing but an old lane ; in 
which case our ancestors must have had a strange 
predilection for going round and round; and the 
anonymous writer whom I have before mentioned, 
supposes it to have been a stronghold of the Cangi, 
whom, on the authority of Camden, he states to 
have been the inhabitants of this part of Somerset- 
shire, in the reign of the emperor Claudius, about 
the middle of the first century. In cases of such 
remote antiquity, where we have no documents to 
guide us, and particularly in a country, the surface 
of which having been under cultivation for many 
hundred years, must have undergone very extensive 
alteration since the time of the aboriginal Britons, 
it is evident that conclusions drawn from data so 
slender as those which have come down to us, can 
at best be very little more than guesses. I will, 
however, proceed to lay before you the reasons 
which lead me to incline to the opinion, that the 
ramparts on Norton hill do mark the site of an 
ancient British town of considerable importance. 
Mr. Phelps, the historian of Somersetshire, speak- 
ing of the unfinished earthworks near Elworthy 
Barrows, informs us, that the Romans under 
Östorius, having subdued the Belg® and driven the 
Silures beyond the Severn, marched towards the 
west, to the territory of the Cangi, who occupied the 
* To this tradition I shall have occasion to refer presently. 
a 
