16 



The Thirty-Fourth General Meeting. 



or second Celtic invasion. Here also, Mr. Green, in his 1 Making 

 of England/ proves that the West Welsh withstood the Saxons for 

 some time after the latter had penetrated as far as Wilton. Across 

 this region, also, but a little to the east of the boundary defined by 

 the barrows, runs the great Bockerly Dyke, about which much has 

 been written, but nothing known. Its direction and position show 

 it to have been a line of boundary defence thrown up by a western 

 people against invaders from the north and east, and the proper 

 examination of it hereafter will be of much interest. 1 On the whole the 

 district in question is one which is especially worthy of the attention 

 of anthropologists and of archaeologists. The evidence to be derived 

 from the tumuli is now nearly exhausted, for although more remain 

 to be opened, the majority have already been rifled, and it is to the 

 vestiges of the Romanised Britons that we must now turn for in- 

 formation. Happily the antiquities of this hitherto almost un- 

 explored period present themselves here in great abundance. All 

 over the hilly district Sir Richard Hoare describes the villages of 

 the Romanised Britons. He did not examine them carefully, as I 

 have already said, but he made plans of a number of them, which 

 are to be seen in his great work. Two of these villages are on my 

 property, close to Rushmore, and during the last six years I have 

 thoroughly excavated them, trenching over every foot of ground 

 and bringing to light all the pits, ditches, and relics of the in- 

 habitants that were to be found beneath the surface. The results 

 of the first of these villages, viz., that on Woodcuts Common, have 

 been put together in the 4to volume, containing seventy-four plates, 

 which I am now issuing privately on the occasion of this meeting, 

 and I hope to have the pleasure of conducting some of the Members 

 of the Society over the villages themselves, and the Museum at 

 Farnham, which contains the models of them and the relics found 



1 Since writing this, General Eivers has cut a section 34ft. wide completely 

 through the ditch and rampart of Bockerly Dyke, and from the Eoman pottery, 

 fibulae, and coins of Claudius Tetricus, and Constantinus, found deep in the body 

 of the rampart, he considers it conclusively proved that the dyke was thrown up 

 in late Roman or post-Roman times. The results of these excavations will be 

 given in a second volume of his " Excavations near Rushmore." 



