xlvi. CAME AND OWERMOIGNE. 



the party were met and greeted by the Rev. G. W. Butler, rector 

 of Broadmayne, whom the Hon. Sec. invited to tell the Club the 

 local traditions about the stones. 



The Rev. G. W. BUTLER confessed that, being no antiquary, 

 although he had lived at Broadmayne 29 years, he had never, 

 until receiving Mr. Pentin's letter, actually walked round to locate 

 and inspect all the stones. They were called locally the Little- 

 mayne Rocks. An old lady, who used as a girl to come out and 

 play among them, told him that one large stone was called " The 

 giant without a head." 



Dr. H. COLLEY MARCH, a recognised authority on the subject, 

 and the author of " The Ritual of Barrows and Stone Circles," 

 here gave, in a spot sheltered from the wind, a long and learned 

 address on the subject. 



He reminded the club that when last year, in the course of the ' ' Barrows and 

 Bridehead " meeting, they visited the Gorwell stone circle, he asked the question 

 " Why are its constituent stones so small when there are much larger stones 

 lying all round about ? " The answer was that in all these cases the men of old 

 who made the circles used the stones they found on the spot. He produced a box 

 of worked flint implements and flakes illustrating his point. They were of 

 Portland chert, Tertiary pebbles, and chalk flint. Thus in the Isle of Portland, 

 where there was no native flint, they used the local chert ; on Blagdon, which is 

 covered with Tertiary pebbles, they used them, and close by Maiden Castle chalk 

 flint. The stones here at Littlemayne were sarsens (i.e., " saracens" or 

 strangers), belonging to the Tertiary formation, with which the country was at 

 one time covered, either as gravel, or the stones cemented together by silica. 

 Pointing to a thick cluster of stones close to the hedge on the south side of the 

 road, Dr. March said that they looked to him more like a collapsed dolmen than 

 stones of a stone circle. He proceeded to expound, in elucidation of the subject, 

 the " law of parcimoiiy " formulated by Sir Wm. Hamilton. 



The HON. SEC., as Vicar of Milton Abbey, recalled the fact 

 that Littlemayne Farm was given by Abbot William Middleton 

 for the founding of the Grammar School of Milton Abbas in 

 1521, and it had remained in the possession of the Governors 

 ever since. In the endowment deed there was mention of the 

 "free chapel of Littlemayne," and he enquired of Mr. Butler if 

 he knew of any remains of this pre- Reformation chapel or of 

 traditions concerning it. 



