THE SO-CALLED 'CELTIC' CKANIUM. 159 



frequently referred to, it may be well to put here on record such 

 notes as I have been able to gather from the report of persons 

 present at the removal of the stones of which the barrow was made 

 up, and from personal observations made upon the spot where it 

 had been, after its removal. 



Dinnington is a small village about two miles south of Laughton- 

 en-le-Morthen (in the Moorland) in South Yorkshire. A little to 

 the south of Dinnington and on the left hand of the road leading 

 from Dinnington to Anston, and some little way short of the 

 quarries from which the stone for the New Houses of Parliament 

 was taken, there was on the estate of J. C. Athorpe, Esq., a heap 

 of stones about 134 paces in circumference, 43 long, and 35 or 

 a little less in breadth, and 7 or 8 feet in height. The stone was 

 the light porous sandstone common in the neighbourhood ; the in- 

 dividual pieces were of nearly equal size throughout ; and there 

 was no protecting lean-to nor cist anywhere in the tumulus. Up 

 to 1862 the tumulus was covered with turf, had thorn shrubs 

 growing upon it, and had rabbit burrows in it. In the autumn 

 of that year Mr. Athorpe began to dig away the turf and 

 stub up the thorn bushes, and finally to cart away the stones for 

 wall-building. It was in doing this that the workmen came upon 

 the skeletons, of which there were in all as many as twenty-two, 

 twelve lying in the centre of the cairn, near to each other, but not 

 piled one upon the other, and without any orientations, ornaments, 

 weapons, flints or pottery. Some of the skeletons were at as great 

 a depth as 12 feet, one skeleton, however, was no deeper than 

 2 J feet. The workmen said, ' the skulls lay between the legs ; 

 'the thigh-bones were at the back of the neck;' and I suppose 

 consequently that the bodies had been buried in a sitting posture. 

 Only one skeleton was extended, and its head lay at the north- 

 west. The barrow itself had its long diameter, which however 

 was only the longer by a very few yards, and may have become 

 so by virtue of the paring to which it may have been subject 

 in agricultural processes, lying east and west. At its east end a 

 skeleton was placed far apart from the rest, a point of importance 

 to be noted, as Sir It. C. Hoare (cit. ' Crania Britannica,' i. p. 330) 

 has put on record that the deposit in the long barrows he excavated 

 was usually at the east, which was also the broader end. A con- 

 siderable proportion of these skeletons had belonged to aged indi- 



