228 MORTIMER : PRE-HISTORY OF THE VILLAGE OF FIMBER 
tion of a stove in the bod)^ of the church, noticed an accumulation of 
burnt wood and fragments of pottery. The position of these is 
shown by pi. ix., fig. 10, 3, and were in a line with and about 
midway between the two previous discoveries. After an examination 
of that position not disturbed by the workmen, we were able to make 
out that there had been a dome-shaped cavity, pi ix., figs. 11, 12, 
(resembling in shape and about twice the size of an old-fashioned 
beehive) in the base of the barrow existing under the floor of the 
church, which had not been injured by any previous excavation. The 
bottom of this mysterious receptacle reached therubbly chalk surface 
beneath the clayey earth of the barrow ; and its sides were baked and 
deeply reddened by the action of intense heat. We also observed 
remaining portions of two clayey-sided flue-holes, or passages, reach- 
ing about 18 inches from opposite sides, a little above the bottom of 
the dome-shaped structure, in a westerly and an easterl)^ direction. 
Within each entrance, at a point shown by an was what looked 
like the greatly decayed point of an oak stake. In addition to the 
burnt wood and fragments of apparently Romano-British pottery it 
contained, there was a considerable quantity of a vitreous slag-like 
substance in which were small pieces of what seemed to be fuzed 
bronze ; and the action of intense heat was everywhere visible within. 
No trace of bone was observed, but had we been made acquainted 
with this find previous to its partial destruction, probably something 
more would liave been discovered to elucidate the piu'pose it had 
served, which most probably was a crematorium or a sepulchral 
interment. The writer, however, thinks that only fragments of 
pottery had been deposited in this receptacle. 
These fragments represent three kinds of earthenware, all quite 
unlike any British pottery known to us, being much superior, better 
baked, and of a finer and somewhat different texture ; and, as 
previously mentioned, are probably Romano-British. Whatever 
purpose this somewhat oven-formed structure had served, it seemed 
quite certain from its intrusive position in the body of the barrow, 
and the kind of pottery it contained, that its formation was long 
after the raising of the barrow, but, at the same time, anterior to the 
building of the first church. 
