Mr. Tate on the Celtic Town at Grcaces Ash. 309 



Querns. — Of primitive hand mills, three bottom stones 

 ^verc found in the town at Greaves Ash ; and an upper and 

 under stone at the Chesters. Three of them are made of a 

 variety of syenite with large crystals, which is abundant 

 enough in large rolled blocks in the channel of the Breamish ; 

 and the other two are made of sandstone. The syenitic 

 Querns are rude and clumsy, being 15 inches diameter and 5 

 inches in thickness. Both sides of the sandstone Quern from 

 Greaves Ash had been used in grinding, for there is a central 

 hole on both surfaces to receive the axle, round which the 

 upper stone would turn. Very probably all the Querns 

 belonged to the tribe which originally inhabited Greaves Ash ; 

 but it may reasonably be inferred, that the Quern which 

 has been applied as a flag to a hut floor, was coeval with 

 the primitive people who gave to the town its structural 

 peculiarities. 



Miniature Quern ? — A curious relic made of a fine grained 

 sandstone, of a squarish form rounded at the angles, was 

 found in a hut circle in the Chesters camp ; it is nearly 1 i 

 inches across and rather more than \ an inch in thickness ; 

 the upper surface is flat and has a deepish hole in the centre ; 

 the other is somewhat convex ; it looks like a diminutive 

 Quern. {Plate ^,fig. 5.) I have neither seen nor heard of any 

 such relic. Small circular flat stoues perforated in the centre, 

 and with hollows or pits in the disk have been taken out of 

 the Picts houses in Scotland ; and perforated stone balls or 

 beads have been found along with remains of an early period, 

 and are supposed to have been used either as weights to the 

 distafl", or as personal ornaments. Our relic differs, however, 

 from these, as the central hole does not pass through the 

 stone ; its use cannot with certainty be determined. That it 

 may have been a plaything for children readily suggests it- 

 self; yet it would be an odd sort of toy — not likely to amuse. 

 As we have now small appliances for domestic purposes, such 

 as nutmeg graters, why may this not be the bottom stone of a 

 hand-mill for grinding small seeds, Avhich were used as con- 

 diments to food ? In the middle ages, as the records of the 

 Fame and Lindisfarne monasteries show, there were pepper 

 and mustard Querns; and in the Museum of the Society of 

 Antiquaries for Scotland there are very small Querns — one 

 being only 3 inches across. The idea is but fanciful, yet its 

 expression may be permitted in the absence of more reason- 

 able conjecture. 



Iron Knife. — The iron knife — Plate 8, fg. 4 — found 



