596 A Mediaeval Earthwork near Morgan's Hill. 



of the sheep's bones were found as more or less complete skeletons, 

 is suggestive that the remains were not those of animals that had 

 been used for food, but rather that they were those of animals that 

 had died in the ditch, or whose bodies had been thrown there. 



It is suggested, therefore, that the enclosure was used as a fold 

 or penning for flocks, chiefly perhaps, for sheep, the inner enclosure 

 affording additional protection for the weak and sickly ones, and 

 perhaps shelters for the shepherds. 



The banks and ditches are after all not much larger than the 

 ditches and hedgerow banks to some of our own fields, but being 

 situated on the open uncultivated downs they appear perhaps more 

 remarkable than they really are. Isolated, and now generally 

 abandoned sheepfolds, quite as large, and, if their use had been 

 forgotten, quite as mysterious seeming, as this earthwork, are not 

 uncommon on the Welsh hills. But "Wales being a stony land the 

 enclosures there are of dry built stone walling ; these folds are 

 sometimes angular and sometimes roughly circular, and often have 

 a part divided off in the manner of the " prsetorium." 



Why in this instance the outer enclosure should have had so 

 many breaches in its rampart is indeed puzzling. If the openings 

 were not made by the original owners for some good reason of their 

 own, there is nothing to show why anyone at a later date should 

 have taken the trouble to make them. 



It may be said that, if the original idea had been to have many 

 entrances, provision would have been made for them by leaving 

 the ditch undug at intervals wherever an entrance was intended. 

 But as the original idea must have included at least one entrance, 

 and as even this one was not provided for by a discontinuance of 

 the ditch, the fact that the ditch is continuous in front of all the 

 openings is not therefore in itself evidence that they are not all 

 coeval with the original entrance. 



It is perhaps possible that the work as a whole was made 

 on the communal system, and that each member of the com- 

 munity hurdled off a part of the interior according to his wants, 

 making an entrance by throwing down the bank to fill up the ditch 

 at the spot most convenient to him. The bank and ditch are so 



