EARLY MAN 



Camp in the parish of Newbottle, near King's Sutton, and the earth- 

 work called by Morton Castle Yard. This lies a few hundred yards 

 to the south of the remains of the Saxon burh, now called Castle Dykes, 

 in Farthingstone parish. Morton mentions ' lumps of cinder ' as being 

 found here. Since Morton's date several hundredweight of scoriae of 

 iron have been found, also the iron ' socket of a spear ' and an iron 

 object like a flat spoon with a long handle. Both the spoon-like article 

 and the scoriae of iron have their analogues in the finds from Hunsbury 

 Camp. So far as the writer has been able to learn, no Roman remains 

 have been discovered at this spot. On Borough Hill near Daventry 

 is a very large camp, rather oval in shape. Morton considered this 

 a Roman camp afterwards used by the Saxons, but, like Rainsborough 

 Camp, it was probably pre-Roman in construction. 



There is also a small camp in Thenford parish called Arbury Hill. 

 Like Hunsbury it lies at the side of the Banbury Lane which follows the 

 old British trackway, but until researches are made into these camps 

 the exact period to which they belong can only be conjectured. Some 

 very slight evidence in regard to Rainsborough is forthcoming, for in 

 the neighbourhood, the hamlet of Charlton, in which the camp is situ- 

 ated, was found in 1842 a bronze article of unknown use bearing Late 

 Celtic designs ; and Morton in his account of Rainsborough quotes 

 from some MSS. of Anthony A. Wood, preserved in Mr. Ashmole's 

 museum, as follows : ' Within the Memory of Man the Land within 

 the inward Fortification together with the inward Fortification itself 

 hath been plow'd up by several persons, each having his lot allow'd him, 

 and a certain Person of Charlton who had the middle Part allow'd him, 

 did not plow the middle part, but levelled the inward Fortification so 

 far as his share went as in here shewed. In digging down the said 

 Apartment or Allotment, there were discovered several Iron Pots, 

 Glasses, Ashes.' 



It has been already stated that it was during this period that 

 coinage was first introduced into Britain. There are two kinds of 

 British coins, uninscribed and inscribed. The earliest coins found in 

 Britain are those called uninscribed, on account of their not bearing any 

 trace of letters. They were copied from the coins of the nearest Gaulish 

 tribes. Sir John Evans in his work on ancient British coins says that 

 in the reign of Philip II., King of Macedon, the father of Alexander 

 the Great, he acquired certain gold mines at Crenides (the Philippi of 

 the Bible) which yielded about >r250,ooo worth of gold per annum, 

 and a large number of gold staters of Philip were struck. These bore 

 on the obverse the head of Apollo with a laurel wreath, and on the 

 reverse a man driving a two-horsed chariot, with the name of Philip 

 underneath. At this time Marseilles was the centre of a colony of 

 Greeks (who were then the great traders of the Mediterranean), 

 among whom many of the gold staters were current. These coins of 

 the Greeks were copied by the Gauls in the neighbourhood of 

 Marseilles, or of Massilia as it was called ; these in turn were imitated 



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