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Conisbro to Crookhill. It had been common until recently, 
and the brake and the ferns which had grown over it had 
been removed. On closer examination I found these hollows 
were not natural on the surface, but ranged on a carefuUy 
devised plan. They were exactly similar in shape, and 
situation, and size to those I had met with in other places. 
Fortunately these interesting relics of other days and an 
earlier race had fallen to the lot, in the enclosure award, of a 
gentleman whose family residence is close at hand ; by his 
permission I have had them accurately surveyed and laid 
down upon a plan and a scale, and am able to produce to you 
this thoroughly well-executed drawing from your townsman 
Mr. Brundell's office (see plan). The pits laid down upon 
the plan are in number about fifty, but there are existing 
besides, the traces of many others in the grass fields which 
border on Clifton common . These pits are of a circular form, 
from 12 to 20 feet in diameter. This transverse section shews 
you how they lie on the side of the hill ; you are to suppose 
a trench driven through it and you standing looking on the 
divided section. These fields were in the memory of man 
thickly overgrown with wood, and old Sherwood as we all 
know, with its yew, and its holly, and its oak indigenous to 
the soil, ran along this district, photographed in our memories 
in the opening pages of Ivanhoe, and linked by the same 
story to our boyish recollections of Walter Scott, beginning: 
"In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered 
by the river Don, there extended in olden times a forest 
covering the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between 
Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster." The name 
of the settlement is retained literally translated into our 
English language by a word common everywhere, Clifton, or 
town of the cliff", and the older form of Gaelic, or its Idndred 
dialect Celtic ; "Crookhill,'^ still holds to the earlier word 
" crag." There is a singular witness here to the value of 
