By the Rev. Preb. W. II. Jones. 



341 



capture that strong fortress were compelled to desist there, and, 

 from inability to conquer the people in the valley, to place their 

 boundary-line within a very short distance of what was naturally 

 the key to the whole position for many miles. I believe that these 

 Grims-dykes are the boundaries thrown up at a time when the land 

 began to be portioned out amongst tribes, or clans, and when the 

 rights of property as belonging to individuals was hardly recognized. 

 There is no reason why they should not be attributed to the 

 Romanized Britons, especially towards the close of the Roman rule. 

 Or perhaps they may have been formed by our English ancestors 

 soon after they obtained a permanent footing in this country. I 

 incline to the former view, because they are many of them in the 

 immediate vicinity of British villages, and so called castles, some of 

 them, as in the case of Whichbury, leading to them. The fact 

 that the English afterwards utilized them as boundary-lines, and 

 gave them a name derived from their own tongue, or superstitions, 

 is by no means inconsistent with this hypothesis. Moreover that 

 they were boundary lines at one time separating races is clear from 

 names that still remain. Thus on the south of Grimsdyke below 

 Salisbury you have Cerdices-ford (now Chardford), and just north 

 of the same dyke you have Brit-ford. The date of these Grims- 

 dykes I should be inclined to place in the fourth or fifth century — 

 certainly some five hundred years after Bokerley. 



IY. — The Old Dyke. This is no doubt a very ancient 

 dyke. It can be traced almost across the county from west to east. 

 Its name would seem to have been given to it as though to dis- 

 tinguish it from another and comparatively more recent work. And 

 this would seem in all probability to be Wansdyke, of which we shall 

 speak presently, which runs a few miles to the north of it, and like 

 it, can be traced across the county. 



There can be little doubt as to the Old Dyke being of British 

 origin, and it well may be anterior to the Roman conquest. It has 

 its foss to the north, so that we infer that it was made by a people 

 coming up from the south. All along its course are remains of 

 British villages and earthworks, to say nothing of numberless tumuli, 

 some of them of large size, and of the shape which, authorities tell 



