A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
the Heather Burn and the Longtown and Brampton Road, round Horse- 
gills farmhouse. There is another Esker group between Crofton Hall 
and Thursby, a series of ridges rising occasionally into circular mounds of 
which Torkin, on the north side of Crofton Park, is the most conspicuous 
example. There are Esker ridges between Great Orton and Carlisle. 
These and the Crofton group probably account for the tumuli between 
Carlisle and Wigton. In the west there is another Esker tract between 
Abbey Town and Allonby." The pre-historic races were, however, not 
above taking and improving an Esker or other natural mound as a place 
of sepulchre. Other pitfalls await the unwary and would-be antiquary ; 
some of these supposed sepulchral mounds may be nothing but clearance 
heaps. The Parkhill tumuli in Dean, two in number, are, it is suggested, 
mere archery butts. The great mound at Bleatarn has been proved to be 
modern, piled up to support a summer house; modern pottery and 
tobacco pipes have been found buried at some depth in it. 
In some cases the tumulus has been removed by excavators, or pos- 
sibly by natural denudation, and the cist, or cistvaen, left exposed, too 
frequently the only record. Of the settlement on Barnscar more will 
presently be said, and also of the great cairn in Old Parks, Kirkoswald, 
which was sold to the County Council of Cumberland for road material ; 
from it they obtained 600 cartloads of stone. The starfish cairn at Shiel 
House, Bewcastle, is one of a class of cairns found in Westmorland to 
which that name was given by the late M. W. Taylor, Esq., M.D., F.S.A. 
The projecting rays are later additions to the original cairn, and probably 
cover later burials. The celebrated cairn at Dunmailraise, under which 
the last king of rocky Cumberland is said to lie, is very doubtful. The 
navvies employed on the Thirlmere Waterworks probably opened it, if it 
had not already been opened by shepherds ; they certainly rebuilt it one 
Sunday, and made it into a neat piece of work with a huge flat projecting 
table stone on the summit. This was afterwards undone, and the 
original disorder restored. 
5. CoNTENTS oF GRAVES 
Owing to the dearth of scientific and systematic investigation into 
the burial places of the prehistoric races that once inhabited this district, 
no very certain conclusions can be drawn about these races and their 
modes of life, if the local evidence found within the district is alone relied 
upon. So far, however, as that evidence goes, it goes to show that the 
prehistoric race or races that once dwelt in the district now called 
Cumberland were the same as those that dwelt in the neighbouring 
districts, now called Westmorland, Durham, Northumberland and York- 
shire ; we can, therefore, adopt the conclusions arrived at by Messrs. 
Greenwell and Rolleston in their valuable work on British Barrows, which 
is further continued in Archeologia, vol. lii. It is impossible to give all 
these conclusions, but a few of them are referred to. 
' For information about these Esker groups we are indebted to Memoirs of the Geolgical 
Survey England and Wales, the Geology of the Country round Carlisle, by T. V. Holmes, F.G.S. 
232 
