The Ancient Wiltshire Dykes. 



333 



can have no hesitation in saying, that they were simply boundary - 

 lines. As I proceed I think I shall be able to give some evidence, 

 more or less direct, of this fact, but it may be said at once that to 

 suppose them to be military lines of defence is to the last degree 

 improbable. They might serve occasionally, it is true, to throw im- 

 pediments in the way of a party of freebooters, but to maintain them 

 as, so* to speak, outworks or fortifications, would require an organized 

 body of men to guard them, and the maintenance of such a force 

 would be beyond the means of races only imperfectly civilized. It 

 is freely admitted, moreover, with regard to those camps or fortifica- 

 tions which are to be traced here and there in the neighbourhood of 

 Wansdyke — such as Msesknoll, Stantonbury, and Hampton Down 

 Camp — that they are all appendages to the dyke, and not the dyke 

 to them; — in plain words, the Wansdyke, whatever subsidiary purpose 

 it served afterwards, was originally a boundary line. 



These ancient boundary-lines admit of & three-fold division : — (1) 

 Those defining the limits of the British tribes before the Roman 

 conquest — (2) Those made by the Romanized Britons. — (3) Those 

 thrown up by our English ancestors. 



Have we examples of each of them in Wilts ? General opinion 

 hitherto has, I believe, said " No." Still I cannot help thinking 

 that something may be said on the other side. And as the object 

 of papers published in this Magazine is to invite discussion, and so 

 to elicit truth, I venture, with all deference, even though I may be 

 running counter to generally-received ideas on the subject, to put 

 forth other views, for which I ask a candid consideration. 



Stukeley was, I believe, the first to direct attention to the Wiltshire 

 dykes, and the theory he started respecting them was at all events 

 ingenious, and, for want of a better, perhaps, has found not a few 

 adherents. He considered that they were constructed by the Belgae, 

 who, according to Csesar, came over not very long before his time, from 

 that portion of ancient Gaul which corresponded with modern Belgium 

 and Holland, and portions of Flanders, Picardy, and Normandy, and 

 was by the Romans called GalliaBelgica,and effected a conquest of this 

 part of England, marking their various conquests by these dykes 

 as successive lines of defence. Stukeley enumerated three of these 



VOL. XIV. — NO XLII, 2 B 



