162 REV. G. E. HALL ON A BARE.OW 



long, by one foot three inches wide. The southern cist had one 

 of its side-slabs rather shorter than the other — three feet five 

 inches, and two feet nine inches respectively, the end slabs being 

 one foot eleven inches, and two feet one inch in length, so that the 

 average width of the cist was two feet. Here, as in that at the 

 centre, was a bottom slab at about two feet six inches below the 

 cover, which gave hopes that some portion of the inhumed skele- 

 ton might have been recovered. Very small fragments of bone, 

 not sufficient to show anything definite, mingled with the dark 

 unctuous matter as in the other cases, and with tiny pieces of 

 charcoal, alone remained. As none of the cists could be perfectly 

 water-proof, though plainly constructed with great care, it is 

 only left us to infer that the carbonic acid, held in solution by 

 the water gradually percolating through the layers of stones and 

 sand had been enabled, in the long period which must have 

 elapsed since their original formation, to dissipate even the osse- 

 ous substances of the human frame, and bear away almost every 

 vestige of the interred body into the sub-soil beneath. The 

 sources whence the massive slabs forming the various cists had 

 come, were clearly the adjoining pools in the North Tyne. Mr. 

 Hutchinson, indeed, of Warkshaugh, holds to the opinion that 

 the great covering slab of the south cist could be taken only 

 from the Park House quarry. At all events, these huge unhewn 

 blocks (chiefly of freestone, except in the case of two slabs in the 

 central, and one in the southern cist, which were of a crumbling 

 bastard whinstone,) must have cost the ancient barrow-builders 

 a vast expenditure of time and labour, with their primitive me- 

 chanical appliances, before they could be placed in situ. In the 

 south cist, it should be added, protecting slabs were even placed 

 edgewise like a roof over the cover. The relative level of the 

 cists, measuring from the top of the perpendicular slabs to the 

 surface of the soil, was as follows — central, nine inches ; eastern, 

 three feet seven inches ; south-eastern, one foot six inches ; and 

 the southern, three feet three inches : the average depths of the 

 cists themselves being about two feet. 



The urns and flints found in or upon the barrow, and thus 

 assisting, above everything else, to determine the age and race 



