632 Notes. 



Hut Circles (?) at Old Shepherd's Shore. On the sloping 



hillside close to Old Shepherd's Shore there are a series of low ring 

 mounds that, allowing for the difference of material, bear a striking 

 resemblance to the hut circles of Wales and Cornwall. 



The mounds are in Bishop's Cannings parish (Ordnance 6in. Map, 

 Sheet xxxiv. N.E.), on the northern or outer side of the Wansdyke, 

 between the points where the dyke is intersected by the old Bath to 

 London road, and the elbow where it turns sharply in its ascent towards 

 Morgan's Hill. Some of the mounds are within a few yards of the old 

 road, and two are so close to Wansdyke as actually to encroach on the 

 slight counterscarp. 



There are twenty-two of these mounds scattered about without any 

 apparent order, all within a few yards of each other, with the exception 

 of one mound that stands alone about 60 yards to the north of the rest. 

 They are from 17ft. to 20ft. in diameter, and about 1ft- in height, and 

 all have gaps or openings more or less distinct facing towards the north- 

 east. Before excavation some were fairly well defined rings, like very 

 small ring-barrows, but others apparently less well preserved appeared 

 only as low flat mounds more or less depressed in the centre. 



These mounds were all examined in 1909 by sections cut across them 

 from side to side, or by sections embracing the central part of them, 

 carried in every case down to the undisturbed chalk. They seemed to 

 have been formed by simply piling up rings of turf, and no ditch or 

 indeed any excavation reaching to the chalk had anywhere been made, 

 but there appeared to have been a shallow encircling trench cut in the 

 turf only, from which no doubt the material was taken to build the 

 ring. 



Unfortunately nothing was found that can be said to give any 

 satisfactory clue as to the date of these hut circles — for hut circles of 

 some kind they certainly seem to be. 



The only finds were three stems of tobacco pipes, an iron nail, a piece 

 of iron knife blade, a fragment of bronze, and three small pieces of 

 pottery. The pottery may be Komano-British, and one piece has ash 

 mixed in its paste, a peculiarity that General Pitt-Rivers noticed in 

 some of the pottery found in his excavations in the Wansdyke. The 

 finds were, however, too superficial and too insignificant to afford any 

 evidence of date, one way or the other. 



Outside some of the circles there are small mounds a few inches 

 high and from 3ft. to 4ft. in diameter ; it was hoped that these might 

 prove to be rubbish heaps, and several of them were cut through, but 

 nothing was found in them ; two of these small mounds had, however, 

 been the site of fires, and a quantity of burnt wood fibre was found 

 under the turf, the earth being scorched and reddened. 



On account of the mounds being so close to the Wansdyke it has 

 been suggested that they were perhaps the site of huts occupied by the 

 builders of the dyke. Some of the mounds, however, are so close to 

 the edge of the ditch that they would certainly have been in the way 

 when the work was going on, and it does not seem very likely that the 



