I 



CUMBERLAND. 



The succeeding pages contain a record of a series of barrows 

 opened in the counties of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumber- 

 land, and Durham ; the first three prolific in barrows and other 

 remains of pre-historic times, although but a very small number of 

 their sepulchral mounds have as yet been carefully examined. 

 Inasmuch as in each of the three counties specified many of the 

 grave-mounds have been made with stones — being what ai*e 

 usually termed 'cairns' — it is not a matter of surprise that most 

 of them have disappeared under the extension of the area of 

 cultivation, their material having been employed in the making of 

 walls and for draining purposes. In the greater number of cases 

 no record of what was discovered during this course of destruction 

 and removal has been preserved, but in a few instances the finding 

 of an urn, an implement, or a skeleton has attracted the attention 

 of some person in the vicinity more curious and enquiring than his 

 fellows, and who has given an account of their occurrence in 

 the local newspaper. 



In Northumberland, where, upon the higher land principally 

 utilised as sheep-walks, large numbers of sepulchral mounds are 

 found, nearly the whole of them have been rifled by the shepherds, 

 partly in the vain quest of buried treasure, and partly to while away, 

 in the gratification of an unintelligent curiosity, the long hours spent 

 on the hill-side when in charge of their flocks. Had we been still 

 in possession of the great number of cairns and barrows which 

 remained untouched to within a hundred years of the present day, 

 a minute and critical examination of them might have solved many 

 a problem connected with the early history of the inhabitants of 

 pre-Roman Britain, which can now only be vaguely and doubt- 

 fully dealt with by tentatively placing together, with many links 

 of connection wanting, the scattered facts collected by the careful 



