294 



" Andover and its Neighbourhood." 



British oppida of Wilts seem to run in the same great range with 

 ours. Our Bury Hill and the neighbouring Worlbury, Danebury, 

 Fosbury, form a line with Sidbury, Ogbury, and grand old Sarum. 

 Andover, therefore, is surrounded by the most ancient of all remains, 

 and may have been a settlement (as its name would imply) of the 

 aborigines of this district. The dwellers here were amongst those 

 who shared in the protection afforded by the neighbouring Bury 

 Hill ; and in all probability when the Belgse drove the people (then 

 dwelling here) from their lands, the people of Andover would be 

 amongst the plundered and homeless. Bury Hill is a fine specimen 

 of the British oppidum. It would seem to me to have been after- 

 wards occupied by the Romans as one of their castra sestiva, and I 

 would ask the visitors to notice on Bury Hill a somewhat extended 

 platform beyond the ditch to the north, an unusual part of such oppida. 

 The Devil's Ditch, beyond Finkley Farm, is a portion of the boundary 

 lines or Belgic ditches, many of which exist in this neighbourhood. 

 I would remark that the theory is given up which would interpret 

 the word Ando, on the reverse of some Celtic gold coins, as Andover. 



It may be well here to give the notices of Andover in pre-historie 

 times which are found in the recent work of Dr. Guest — the " Origines 

 Celticse." The words of such a master have a very high value. 

 He says : — ff We may be allowed to conjecture that the Amesbury 

 mounds were once connected with the Devil's Ditch, east of Andover, 

 and with the Belgic boundary -line, a fragment of which still remains 

 to the south of Walbury."" Elsewhere he says : — " At this ditch, 

 which was raised by the Atrebates, the wayfarer from Old Sarum 

 must have halted and paid the toll/' 1 



1 At a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in 1854, Mr. Akerman read an 

 .account of his researches in Hants during that year. At Wallop (a village not far 

 from Andover) he explored a tumulus known as Kent's or Canute Barrow, in the 

 interior of which was found a cubic yard of rude masonry, the flints of which it 

 was composed were held together by mould, and so firmly set was the mass that it 

 required some force to separate them. Nothing of a similar description has been 

 observed hitherto in England, and it remains a question whether this mass was 

 formed for an altar or a cenotaph. Mr. J. M. Kemble, who was present at the 

 opening of the tumulus, questioned its Celtic origin, but Capt. Durrich and Mr 

 Wylie were of a different opinion. 



