ANCIENT CHAMBERED TUMULI. 57 



sight of one of tbese sepulchres, and we can enter more 

 fully into the conclition of the people who constructed 

 them, than by reading volumes of conjectural description. 



lt is a subject of great regret, that of the many skulls 

 said to have been found in the Butcombe tumulus, none 

 should have been preserved, as far as we know. The pre- 

 servation of two portions of skulls from the tumulus at 

 Stoney Littleton has enabled Dr. Thurnam to assert the 

 identity of the race of people interred therein with those 

 interred in the tumulus at Uley, in Gloucestershire, and it 

 is not improbable that the skulls found at Butcombe would 

 have also corresponded with them, and enabled us clearly 

 to establish the fact that the same race had constructed 

 these tumuli, as we are inclined to conjecture. If so, it is 

 probable that the Dobuni, in whose territories the cham- 

 bered tumulus at Uley is situated, formerly had possession 

 of Somersetshire, and, it may be, were driven out by the 

 Belgse, who came over from the continent some centuries 

 before the Christian a?ra, and whose boundary is generally 

 considered to have been the Wansdyke. These tumuli are 

 therefore, in all probability, older than Wansdyke, and, it 

 may be, three or four centuries prior to the Christian a?ra. 

 The same race of people that formed the Temple at 

 Stanton Drew may have also formed the interesting cham- 

 bered tumuli at Stoney Littleton, Butcombe, and Uley. 



Mr. Collinson, in a note to bis History of Somerset, Vol. 

 iii., p. 487, mentions three large barrows, called Grub- 

 barrows, which are situated in a piece of land called 

 Battle Gore, which tradition says was the scene of a 

 Woody battle between the inhabitants of the country and 

 the Danes, who landed at Watchet in one of their piratical 

 expeditions, A.D. 918. The Saxons here gained a victory 

 over the Danes, who were commanded by Ohtor and 



