Arcliceologia. 311 



was only one foot high by twenty-seven feet in diameter, and in the 

 centre lay, on the surface of the ground, a female skeleton, also 

 doubled up and laid on her left side. The right wrist, as in the 

 former case, was encircled by a bronze armlet. It is described as 

 being " of the most beautiful description, resembling a delicately- 

 formed cog-wheel, with rounded teeth on both sides, the rim be- 

 tween the teeth being ornamented with three grooved lines. For 

 exqnisite preservation, delicacy and beauty of workmanship, high 

 polish, and brilliant patina, this armlet is not to be surpassed." 

 Below the hip were the remains of a plain urn " of a peculiar dark- 

 coloured ware." A hole, or trench, in this tumulus, contained 

 flint-chippings, animal bones, charcoal, and fragments of dark- 

 coloured pottery. The rest of the barrows contained no very 

 remarkable objects ; in one only there were the fragments of a 

 highly ornamented drinking-cup. We cannot quite see the evidence 

 on which the writer of the local reports considers these barrows to 

 belong to the late Celtic period, and why they are fixed at a date about 

 one or two centuries before our era. We have given the description 

 of the objects found in the two principal tumuli from the accounts 

 published in the local papers, and it would be necessary to see 

 them before forming any certain opinion ; but, from the description, 

 we should ourselves hardly judge them to be pre-Roman. In a 

 cemetery at Seamer, in this same district, opened by Lord Londes- 

 borough in 1857, which was undoubtedly of the Anglo-Saxon 

 period, probably of the fifth or sixth century after Christ, the body 

 in one grave lay on its side, doubled up much as described above. 

 An account of it has since been published in the " Journal of the 

 Archaeological Association " ; and we believe that, in the only other 

 grave opened on that occasion, in which nothing but a skeleton 

 was found, it lay in exactly the same position. 



We have just received a new proof of the archaeological activity 

 and knowledge of Mr. Ecroyd Smith, in a pamphlet entitled, 

 " Archaeology of the Mersey District," 1866, reprinted from the 

 "Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire," 

 and containing much interesting matter. Perhaps the most inte- 

 resting article in it is one which seems to fix the position of a 

 Roman Station which has been hitherto doubtful. It appears, from 

 the second and tenth Iters of Antoninus, that a Roman road from Deva 

 (Chester) entered the road which ran from Mancunium (Manches- 

 ter) to Mediolanum (supposed now to be Middlewich, in the centre 

 of Cheshire), at a spot where there stood a town or station named 

 Condate. Several localities have been put forward as the site of 

 this place, but with not very satisfactory reasons. It has now, 

 however, been discovered, by very recent diggings for sand, that 

 numerous Roman antiquities are found at a place named Wilders- 

 pool, near Warrington, which answers to the Condate of the Itine- 

 raries in a very satisfactory manner ; and, as we understand, ap- 

 pears, from other circumstances, to occupy the spot where the two 

 roads met. The works, in the course of which the Roman antiqui- 

 ties are brought to light, are carried on in the present year with 

 activity which promises important resnlts. We owe this identifica- 



