CHALBURY RINGS AND RIMBURY. IQI 



a general burying ground a quarter of a mile from Chalbury 

 Rings. This can hardly be other than the common resting 

 place of its dead. This burying ground, taken with the apparent 

 signs of dwellings in Chalbury Rings, seems to shew that it was 

 a village, not a camp of refuge to be held only during a raid by 

 the enemy. The burying place was on Rimbury, a hill south- 

 east of Chalbury, or rather a spur of the same hill. During the 

 clearing of the top of Rimbury for the plough, the labourers 

 found between thirty and forty urns, which they promptly pelted 

 to bits. The farmer, as soon as he heard of this discovery, 

 stopped the clearing, and told three antiquaries of the find 

 Mr. Warne, Mr. Hall, and Mr. Medhurst. They made a careful 

 search and found over fifty more urns. Judging by * two 

 specimens in the Dorset Museum, and by Mr. Warne's speaking 

 of the absence of much difference among the urns, they were of 

 the flower-pot shape, with very slight ornament. Most of them 

 were placed mouth uppermost, and each was covered with a thin 

 flat stone. On the under side of one of these stones there was 

 seen a small line corresponding to the rim of the urn below. 

 This stone is in the Dorset Museum, but not the urn belonging 

 to it. It is believed that this circular groove was formed by 

 chemical action set up by decay of the burnt bones in the urn. 

 But why should this happen only in one case, as far as is known ? 

 Another curious feature in this burying ground was the existence 

 under the urns of many unburnt skeletons. To Mr. Warne, 

 with his large experience, this appeared " a singular and most 

 interesting peculiarity." Several of the skeletons were in kist 

 vaens, and apparently a good many of the urns in kists. These 

 terms, as used by Warne, are taken both to mean receptacles 

 made of flag-stones, the kist being roughly cubical, the kist- 

 vaen oblong, f Of the former an excellent and quite perfect 

 example was discovered by Mr. Cunnington in a barrow on 



* Case xii., 39, 40, 40. 



f The Encyclopaedic Dictionary differs, making the kist-vaen consist of six 

 stones only. 



