the Downs of North Wiltshire. 



327 



21. The simple bowl barrow at the west end of the camp, is 

 about two feet high and surrounded by a slight trench. Near the 

 summit, were a few bones of a sheep and perhaps other rumi- 

 nants, such as are commonly found in this position in the barrows of 

 Wiltshire : they are probably the relics of funeral feasts or of 

 sacrifices over the graves. In the centre, was a circular cist in 

 the chalk rock, two feet in diameter and two feet deep, nearly full 

 of ashes and burnt bones, but without any other relic. At the east 

 end of the camp, the ground has been much disturbed by digging 

 for flints, and no trace of any barrow remains. 



The downs and fields around Avebury abound with barrows ; 

 this locus consecratus, like the later one of Stonehenge, being sur- 

 rounded by its primitive British necropolis. One of the most 

 remarkable groups is on Kennet or Overton Hill or Down, near the 

 site of the " sanctuary " and commencement of the Kennet avenue 

 which led to the great circle at Avebury, and a little beyond the 

 seventy-ninth milestone from London. There are about ten bar- 

 rows in all, seven of which are or have been of conspicuous size, 

 and must be those called the Seven Barrows (seofon beorgas) in an 

 Anglo-Saxon charter of the tenth century referring to Kennet. 

 (Cod. Dip. No. 571). The hill itself went by the name of " Seven 

 Barrowes Hill " as late as the seventeenth century, as appears from 

 a passage in the curious work, "A Fool's Bolt soon shot at Stonage." 1 

 Of this group, seven were opened by Sir R. C. Hoare about 1815. 

 The most southerly of the ten is a low mound, not examined by 

 Sir Richard, or numbered on his plan. 2 It is situated in a ploughed 

 land called "Mill-field," where was the double circle of the "sanc- 

 tuary," which field was enclosed in 1685, as we learn from the 

 curious letter of Dr. Toope of Marlborough. Here, close to the 

 sacred circles, a large number of skeletons were found, with "the 



1 Collected and published by Hearne, with Langtoft's Chronicle, in 1725, and 

 usually attributed to a Mr. John Gibbons. I am, however, indebted to the Rev. 

 Canon Jackson for the information, that a note preserved among the Aubrey 

 MSS., at the Bodleian, shows it to have been written by a Mr. Jay of Nettle- 

 combe, Somersetshire, who died about the year 1675. 



2 Ancient Wilts, vol. ii. p. 70, pi. x. A view of this group of barrows, with 

 a distinct representation of the triplet in the centre, is given by Stukeley. Abury, 

 pi. xxix. p. 56. 



2 X 



