34 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
character than the hut clusters discovered and described by Mr. 
W. C. Borlase, of which the settlement at Chysoister affords the 
most complete example. These clusters are large ovals with central 
courts, surrounded by chambers nestling in the thickness of the 
wall. The built-up underground passages known as vaus 1 are 
commonly associated with them, and the overlapping stone domes 
called beehive huts. Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have furnished 
kindred antiquities : and their comparatively late date was proved by 
Mr. Borlase by the discovery in those of West Cornwall of Samian 
ware, wheel pottery, and iron implements and weapons ; and their 
connection with early mining by the presence of fused tin, and 
places that seem to have been used for smelting. Eoman coins of 
the third and fourth centuries have also been found around them, 
and there can be little hesitation in assigning some of them at 
least, with Mr. Borlase, to Eomano-British times. 
" With regard to the race by whom these buildings were erected, 
we have not sufficient evidence to show whether they were the 
work of the primitive inhabitants at a later state of culture than 
that of the hut circles, or whether they were the abodes of a party 
of settlers — pre-historic adventurers, perhaps, in Cornish tin mines." 2 
Mr. Borlase is inclined to the latter view, but I do not think we 
are called upon to see in them anything more than a rude attempt 
to imitate a Eoman dwelling, with its court and surrounding cells 
or chambers — such dwellings as possibly existed in Devon, and 
were certainly numerous in Somerset. That the hut clusters, so far 
as Cornwall is concerned, should be confined to the western district, 
is in direct correspondence with the statement which assigns to that 
locality a higher and earlier civilisation in pre-Eoman times. 3 We 
have no hut clusters in Devon, but I cannot help regarding the 
structure known as " Eound Pound," in the parish of Gidley, and 
its fellow at Bovey Combe Head, 4 as in someway related. In both 
there is a double enclosure, and the space between is divided into 
what Mr. Ormerod regards as a series of courts, the whole corres- 
ponding very much in idea with the plan of the clusters, though 
certainly differing in application. 
1 Unknown, so far as I am aware, in Devon, but comparatively common in 
West Cornwall. 
2 Trans. Penz. Nat. Hist. Soc. 1880-1, pp. 31-33. 3 Diodorus Siculus. 
4 G. W. Ormerod, F.a.s., Rude Stone Remains on the Easterly side of 
Dartmoor, pp. 11, 12. 
