LONG BAEEOWS. 



The class of barrows, the examination of some of which I am 

 about to describe, is one not by any means common in Yorkshire, 

 nor indeed, save very exceptionally, in any part of Britain. They 

 occur, however, in very considerable numbers in some of the south- 

 western counties of England, and are especially abundant in Wilt- 

 shire, Gloucestershire, and Dorsetshire ; they are also found, but 

 more sparingly, in Caithness. To this class of sepulchral mound, 

 on account of its form, the name of Long Barrow has been given. 

 The long barrows of one district in the south-west of England, 

 namely North Wiltshire and Gloucestershire (and the same may be 

 said of those in Caithness), having many points of resemblance with 

 those I have examined in Yorkshire and Westmoreland, possess one 

 distinctive feature which is wanting in the latter counties. They 

 are frequently found to contain a chamber, of varied shape and of 

 greater or less extent, constructed of stone, within which the 

 primary interments have taken place. The chamber has in many 

 instances a passage or gallery leading into it from, or near to, the 

 exterior of the barrow. This feature is entirely wanting, within 

 my experience, in the Yorkshire long barrows, as it is in those of 

 South Wiltshire and Dorsetshire. This important difference is 

 not, however, in all probability, due to any diversity in time or 

 people, but to local circumstances and other conditions by which it 

 was regulated. For while large blocks of stone, suitable for erect- 

 ing such a structure as I have mentioned, are abundant in North 

 Wiltshire and the adjoining county, they are not met with in South 

 Wiltshire and the neighbouring district in Dorsetshire, any more 

 than they are in some of those localities where the long barrows I 

 have examined are situated. For the same reason the smaller 

 receptacles of stone (cists) so common in many parts of Britain are 

 all but unknown on the chalk-range of the Yorkshire Wolds ^. I 



' It would be well if a clear distinction in terms could be made between the two 

 classes of receptacles for interments which are met with in the barrows. The one. 



