on t/ie Marlborough Downs. 



63 



known as the " Old Ditch,* 3 north of Amesbmy : but the best 

 example of all (assuming that it is a Belgic rampart, as is now 

 generally allowed) we have on the Marlborough Downs, in the 

 famous " Wansdyke" a fragment of which we shall cross to-morrow, 

 and which was the last and northernmost of these great earthen 

 barriers, which the encroaching invaders erected. There is no finer 

 specimen throughout England of a boundary ditch of the British 

 period than Wansdyke presents from Blackland Hollow till it loses 

 itself in the West Woods, and those only who have followed its 

 meandering course along the ridge of the intervening hills, over 

 those ten miles, have any notion what an immense work of labour 

 its construction must have been. I should add, however, on the 

 authority of the late Mr. Kemble, that Wansdyke was adopted by 

 the Anglo-Saxons, as had been previously pointed out by Sir Richard 

 Hoare. 1 



(6) "Cattle Pens/' or other earthen enclosures. Scattered over 

 the downs in various directions, but most numerous, as it appears to 

 me, in the immediate neighbourhood of Wansdyke, are the small 

 enclosures, oftentimes square, sometimes oblong, and generally di- 

 vided internally with other ditches or banks, which have puzzled 

 many antiquaries to determine their intention. Elsewhere I have 

 ventured to consider some of the smaller of these enclosures to be 

 Cattle- Pens ; 2 though others again in all probability served as en- 

 trenchments or small camps. They are very numerous on the 

 Horton and Bishops Cannings Downs, and there is a very perfect 

 specimen on the Abnry Downs, which Stukeley calls a " Druid's 

 House " or " Court,'' though (like many other of the assertions of 

 that excellent antiquary) it has no other basis for such designation 

 than the surmise of its author, a surmise founded chiefly (as he tells 

 us) on its being within sight of the great temple, and at a convenient 

 distance from it; hardly sufficient reasons, however, to commend 

 themselves to more prosaic archaeologists. 



The instances which I have given above of the various stone and 



1 Ancient Wilts, page 27. 

 2 Magazine, vol. xi., page 245 — 251. 



