A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



declivity of a mountain, and covering nearly an acre of land. The place is 

 at a little distance from the river Wear . . . They had probably been hidden 

 there by some deserter, and, in my opinion, are the arms, etc., of a single 

 Roman foot soldier, one of the velites, consisting of five spear-heads or hastae, 

 in sequences of different sizes, part of a sword, fragments of a pectorale or 

 breast-plate, together with all the tools or accoutrements for repairing, 

 sharpening, and burnishing these arms.' 



There can be no doubt that this hoard was a deposit of the bronze age, 

 none of the objects showing any trace of Roman influence. The sword, 

 leaf-shape spear-heads with their rather pronounced midrib, socketed axes, 

 gouge, and portions of what may be decorative discs worn on the breast, point, 

 however, to the later part of that period, when the art of casting and elaborately 

 finishing articles in bronze had reached its highest development. The whole 

 find corresponds, to a great extent, with the articles found in Heathery Burn 

 Cave, and the weapons, etc., are so similar in each case that they might 

 have come from the same workshop. 



The Heathery Burn Cave discovery is justly regarded as one of the most 

 valuable finds of the bronze age ever made in Britain, and it requires a some- 

 what detailed description. The cave was situated a little more than a mile to 

 the north of Stanhope, 800 feet above sea-level, and more than thirty miles 

 distant from the coast. It opened out from the side of a ravine formed by 

 Heathery Burn, a small affluent of Stanhope Burn, a tributary of the Wear. 

 The floor of the cave was about 10 feet above the present level of the burn, 

 which runs through a narrow and steep-sided gorge, clothed, as it probably 

 always has been, with wood. The rock here is carboniferous or mountain 

 limestone, and the cavern has evidently been formed by the chemical and 

 physical action of water passing through a fissure in it. 



As long ago as 1843, when the entrance to the cave was destroyed 

 in making a tramway, eight bronze rings were found. They were plain in 

 character, of different sizes, and similar to other rings which have since been 

 discovered in the cave. They are said to have been placed when found on a 

 piece of bronze wire. 



Further discoveries were made in 1859, and at various intervals between 

 that year and 1 872, but owing to the discontinuance of the quarrying at the spot 

 nothing since then has been found. Before the place where the quarrying 

 ceased was reached all signs of occupation had disappeared; nor is it likely 

 that anything remains in that part of the cave which has not been explored. 

 A good many accounts 1 of the cave and its remarkable contents have been 

 published. The great importance of this discovery consists in the fact that 

 the objects found in the cave constituted the whole equipment of a family of the 

 bronze age. Everything which was in the dwelling-place when the occupants 

 perished, probably by drowning, had remained there undisturbed on the floor 

 under a layer of stalagmite until the time when the various relics were acci- 

 dentally found. 2 More remarkable and valuable than the actual remains were 

 the nature and circumstances of the discovery itself. Other sites have yielded 

 bronze-age objects in greater numbers and of equally skilful workmanship, 



1 Arch. liv. 87-1 14 ; Proc. Soc. Antiq. of Land. (2nd ser.), ii. 127 and v. 426 ; Arch Journal, xix. 358 ; 

 Geologist, v. 34, 167 ; etc. 



* Guide to the Bronze Age Antiquities in the B.M. 



2O2 



