ROMNEY MARSH AND 



TART I. 



Bechuaiias of the present day. 1 Numerous traces of 

 ancient habitations of a similar kind have been met 

 with in the southern counties, of which those at Bowliill, 

 in Sussex, are probably the most remarkable. 2 



The valleys and low-lying grounds being then mostly 

 covered with dense forests, the naturally cleared high 

 lands, where timber would not grow, were selected as 

 the sites of the old villages. Tillage was not yet under- 

 stood nor practised ; the people subsisted by hunting, 

 or upon their herds of cattle, which found ample grazing 

 among the hills of Dartmoor, and on the downs of 

 Sussex and Wiltshire, where most of these remains have 

 been found. 3 They are especially numerous along the 

 skirts of Dartmoor, where the hills slope down to the 

 watercourses. The heights above them are mostly 

 crowned by tors, or rude fortifications of earth, which 

 exhibit no greater engineering skill in construction 



1 Their clothing:, when they wore 

 any, consisted of skins; they stained 

 their bodies with paint or ochre, and 

 often marked them with figures, in 

 the way of the South Sea tattooing. 

 They lived in circular huts nearly in 

 the shape of bee-hives, like those of 

 the native Africans, as we may yet 

 see in the remains of these dwellings 

 at Eyton Grange, Harewood Dale, &c. 

 To construct a hut, they dug a round 

 hole hi the ground, and, with the 

 earth and stones cast out in the dig- 

 ging, made a kind of wall, which was 

 surmounted with boughs of trees 

 meeting together at the top to form 

 a sort of roof, over which there might 

 be a covering of sods to protect them 

 from the weather, a hole being left on 

 one side to serve the triple purpose of 

 a door, a window, and a chimney. 

 The fire was placed in the centre of 

 the floor, and the inhabitants sat or 

 lay on the ground around it. Remains 

 of the charcoal of their fires are found 

 in digging in the middle of the hollows 

 that mark the sites of these ancient 

 dwellings. In such wretched huts 

 large families of men, women, and 



children would bo promiscuously 

 huddled together, as is the case with 

 the South African savages; and this 

 mode of life might give rise to the 

 statements of (Vsar and Dion ('assius, 

 that among the Britons it was cus- 

 tomary for every ten or twelve men, 

 and those the nearest relations, to have 

 their wives in common. Dr. Young's 

 ' History of Whitby and its Vicinity.' 



2 See * Notitia Britannia.' P>y VY. 

 D. Saul. 1845. 



:i We have undoubted proofs from 

 history and from existing remains 

 that the earliest habitations were pits, 

 or slight excavations in the ground, 

 covered and protected from the incle- 

 mency of the weather by boughs ot 

 trees or sods of turf. The high grounds 

 were pointed out by nature as tin- 

 fittest for these early settlements, 

 being less encumbered by wood, and 

 affording a better pashm- lor the nu- 

 merous flocks and herds, from which 

 the erratic tribes of the first colonists 

 drew their means of subsistence. Sir 

 It. C. Hoare on the 'Antiquities of 

 Wiltshire.' 





