A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
feet wide. On a portion of the northern circuit the rampart has 
disappeared. There were five entrances, on the north-west, north, 
north-east, south-west and south-east, from the last of which two ancient 
trackways led to a long 
Sarvs tumulus on ground 
where Dunstable now 
stands, and tothe barrows 
on the downs, known as 
‘Five Knolls.’ The po- 
lar diameter is 775 feet 
across, and the transverse 
750. Mr. Worthington 
G. Smith kindly allows 
the reproduction of his 
plan from the book 
already mentioned, to 
which I am indebted for 
Me HH 
(las 
a 
cS 
oe 
UT RB se 
ATTEN 
- 
“y 
7 arg, 
My Mey 
Me 
a 
spe 
\ ow /4 
NY, ff the details given above. 
: A He states that ‘the in- 
Ben, # er terior of the camp, and 
on afl : 
tS na the fields outside, are (or 
ae 7! 
1001, 50,8 100 200 1300 400 500 j6c0 708 have been) full of neo- 
Mawen Bower. lithic implements, celts, 
scrapers, arrow-heads, 
hammer-stone fabricators and borers. Bronze tools, and a hoard of gold 
coins have been found, but I have not been able to trace them.’* From 
the number of hut-circles, tumuli, and pre-historic remains which 
abound in the immediate neighbourhood, it is evident that these chalk 
downs must have been the home of man from a very early age. 
The prevalence of this name, Maiden Castle, or Maiden Bower or 
Burh, is a curious fact which should here be noted, as applied to pre- 
historic, or at any rate very early encampments. It does not follow 
that the name is pre-Roman, for out of thirty-two examples which have 
been listed and mapped,’ from Aberdeen in the north to Dorchester in the 
south, it appears only in the country where the Anglo-Saxon speech pre- 
vailed, or in the border lands influenced by it. In purely Gadhelic or 
Cymbric lands where there are many similar strongholds, such as Corn- 
wall, Wales, Ireland or Gaelic Scotland, it does not appear. This is how- 
ever not the place to enter into the vexed question of its significance. 
(3) Quint’s Hitt, ok Quince Hitt, Orp Warpen.—This is a 
mere fragment of a once redoubtable fortification. It stands on high 
ground to the north of the church. The site is so thickly covered with 
wood and undergrowth as to make it difficult even to examine it. There 
appear to be double ramparts and ditches of large proportions, which 
curve round towards the park, where the ground rapidly slopes away 
1 Man, the Primeval Savage, 318, 321. 
2 Antiquary, xxxviil. (1902), 256, and ensuing correspondence. 
270 
