ANCIENT EARTH-WORKS. 



117 



4. Nodule of iron pyrites 1^ inclies in diameter, wMch. 

 may have been used with a flint for a strike-a-light. I was told 

 that several of these balls had been found within the ramparts 

 and also near the barrows on the hill opposite. This circumstance 

 is probably the origin of the local belief that they were musket 

 balls fired from one place to the other during a battle. Similar 

 nodules are said to have been ploughed up within the Ring at 

 Poundstock.^' 



5. A number of sea pebbles, all of about the same size 

 (If ins. by 1-J ins.) and colour, and found in most of the trenches 

 which I cut within and without the ramparts. These were, 

 perhaps, slingstones. Some were near the surface and others 

 3 feet, and more, below it. 



6. At F on the plan is a quarry opened up about 16 years 

 ago. The cart track to it was cut through the adjoining rampart. 

 I sunk a trench along this track and found under it, near the foot of 

 the outer slope of the rampart, the rough foundation lines of two 

 walls 4 feet apart, and a fireplace surrounded by blackened 

 stones and wood ashes. On removing the back stone of the 

 fireplace an oven was disclosed 2 feet wide by 18 inches deep, 

 full of wood ashes. Its sides were formed by upright stones, and 

 its bottom of burnt clay rounded off like a dish. In the loose 

 rubble within the wall lines I found a well made fragment of 

 the upper portion of an urn of blackened earthenware which, 

 Mr. Eead says, " seems to have been lathe turned, and is there- 

 fore not probably of pre-Eoman date." In 1896 a workman 

 quarrying stone in the above mentioned quarry found near the 

 surface a bronze coin which he gave to me soon after he picked 

 it up. Mr. H. A. Grrueber, the keeper of the coins in the B.M. 

 to whom I sent it, pronounced it to be Roman, bu-t said its state 

 of preservation would not admit of more minute identification. 



7. In most of the trenches sunk within the ramparts at A 

 were little clumps of wood ashes from 3 feet to 3 feet 6 inches 

 below the surface. These may have been the ends of hut posts. 



8. At one spot on and under the surface and on the outside 

 face of the southern rampart I found a quantity of what is 

 locally known as "quince coal," a substance like refuse from a 



* Also elsewhere, e.g., Cam Brea. — Edd. 



