"302 The Discovery of a Chamber in the Long Barrow at Lanhill. 



8£f t. ; its width just inside the portals at M.M. 4|ft. ; its greatest 

 width at o.o. 5ft. 2in. ; the width between the portal stones 2ft. 4in. ; 

 the stones themselves are from 5in. to 1ft. in thickness, 



The greater part of the roof was found to have collapsed into 

 the chamber, filling it with loose stones, but about 3ft. of roof over 

 the back part of the chamber was intact, and beneath this and 

 above the fallen-in rubble there still remained an open space. 



The part of the original roof still remaining is formed of thin 

 slabs of stone of no great size. On top of the large stones forming 

 the walls of the chamber is a carefully-laid dry walling, the upper 

 layers of which are laid with increasingly large stones towards the 

 top, so placed as to overlap each other, and thus to form a slightly 

 domed roof, somewhat after the fashion of stone-built Irish beehive 

 huts. 1 



As no stone large enough to span the width of the chamber was 

 found among the debris, it seems tbat this device for utilising 

 smaller pieces of stone must have been attempted over the whole 

 space to be roofed in. But unless this overlapping dry stonework 

 was carried up at a fairly steep pitch it could not have formed a 

 very strong covering. Possibly timbers were thrown across onj 

 top of the walls to support the roof over the front part of the 

 chamber. Either the decay of such timbers, or the inherent weak- 

 ness of the roofing would account for its collapse. 



In the angles between the large stones of the wall, where from 

 the irregularity in their shape they do not meet, the spaces are 

 filled up with dry walling. In the north-eastern corner between 

 the stones Nos. 3 and 4, is a particularly neat and pretty little 

 piece of work, executed with evident care and precision, and shown 

 in the accompanying photograph. 2 



1 This form of roofing is not uncommon in long barrows. It occurred at 

 Stony Littleton, Archceologia, XIX., p. 46; at Uley, Arch. Journal, XI., 

 319, 326 ; and at Upper Swell, Greenwell's " Barrows," No. ccxxxl., p. 522, 

 &C. It has been called the " horizontal arch." 



The photograph of the roof here given shows the original overlapping 

 stonework and the large slab supported by iron bars, with which the roof has 

 recently been completed. 



2 Gaps and irregularities in the walls were found to have been made good 

 in a similar manner elsewhere; notably at Uley, Arch. Journ., XI., 317, 

 and at West Kennet, Archaologia, XXXVIII., 410. 



