Chapter 8

THE DESTRUCTION OF PREHISTORIC REMAINS

We still find in various parts of the country traces of the prehistoric races who inhabited our island and left their footprints behind them, which startle us as much as ever the print of Friday's feet did the indomitable Robinson Crusoe. During the last fifty years we have been collecting the weapons and implements of early man, and have learnt that the history of Britain did not begin with the year B.C. 55, when Julius Cæsar attempted his first conquest of our island. Our historical horizon has been pushed back very considerably, and every year adds new knowledge concerning the Palæolithic and Neolithic races, and the first users of bronze and iron tools and weapons. We have learnt to prize what they have left, to recognize the immense archæological value of these remains, and of their inestimable prehistoric interest. It is therefore very deplorable to discover that so much has been destroyed, obliterated, and forgotten.

We have still some left. Examples are still to be seen of megalithic structures, barrows, cromlechs, camps, earthen or walled castles, hut-circles, and other remains of the prehistoric inhabitants of these islands. We have many monoliths, called in Wales and Cornwall, as also in Brittany, menhirs, a name derived from the Celtic word _maen_ or _men_, signifying a stone, and _hir_ meaning tall. They are also called logan stones and "hoar" stones, _hoar_ meaning a boundary, inasmuch as they were frequently used in later times to mark the boundary of an estate, parish, or manor. A vast number have been torn down and used as gateposts or for building purposes, and a recent observer in the West Country states that he has looked in vain for several where he knew that not long ago they existed. If in the Land's End district you climb the ascent of Bolleit, the Place of Blood, where Athelstan fought and slew the Britons, you can see "the Pipers," two great menhirs, twelve and sixteen feet high, and the Holed Stone, which is really an ancient cross, but you will be told that the cruel Druids used to tie their human victims for sacrifice to this stone, and you would shudder at the memory if you did not know that the Druids were very philosophical folk, and never did such dreadful deeds.

Another kind of megalithic monument are the stone circles, only they are circles no longer, many stones having been carted away to mend walls. If you look at the ordnance map of Penzance you will find large numbers of these circles, but if you visit the spots where they are supposed to be, you will find that many have vanished. The "Merry Maidens," not far from the "Pipers," still remain--nineteen great stones, which fairy-lore perhaps supposes to have been once fair maidens who danced to the tune the pipers played ere a Celtic Medusa gazed at them and turned them into stone. Every one knows the story of the Rollright stones, a similar stone circle in Oxfordshire, which were once upon a time a king and his army, and were converted into stone by a witch who cast a fatal spell upon them by the words--

Move no more; stand fast, stone; King of England thou shalt none.

The solitary stone is the ambitious monarch who was told by an oracle that if he could see Long Compton he would be king of England; the circle is his army, and the five "Whispering Knights" are five of his chieftains, who were hatching a plot against him when the magic spell was uttered. Local legends have sometimes helped to preserve these stones. The farmers around Rollright say that if these stones are removed from the spot they will never rest, but make mischief till they are restored. There is a well-known cromlech at Stanton Drew, in Somerset, and there are several in Scotland, the Channel Islands, and Brittany. Some sacrilegious persons transported a cromlech from the Channel Islands, and set it up at Park Place, Henley-on-Thames. Such an act of antiquarian barbarism happily has few imitators.

Stonehenge, with its well-wrought stones and gigantic trilitha, is one of the latest of the stone circles, and was doubtless made in the Iron Age, about two hundred years before the Christian era. Antiquarians have been very anxious about its safety. In 1900 one of the great upright stones fell, bringing down the cross-piece with it, and several learned societies have been invited by the owner, Sir Edmund Antrobus, to furnish recommendations as to the best means of preserving this unique memorial of an early race. We are glad to know that all that can be done will be done to keep Stonehenge safe for future generations.

We need not record the existence of dolmens, or table-stones, the remains of burial mounds, which have been washed away by denudation, nor of what the French folk call _alignements_, or lines of stones, which have suffered like other megalithic monuments. Barrows or tumuli are still plentiful, great mounds of earth raised to cover the prehistoric dead. But many have disappeared. Some have been worn down by ploughing, as on the Berkshire Downs. Others have been dug into for gravel. The making of golf-links has disturbed several, as at Sunningdale, where several barrows were destroyed in order to make a good golf-course. Happily their contents were carefully guarded, and are preserved in the British Museum and in that of Reading. Earthworks and camps still guard the British ancient roads and trackways, and you still admire their triple vallum and their cleverly protected entrance. Happily the Earthworks Committee of the Congress of Archæological Societies watches over them, and strives to protect them from injury. Pit-dwellings and the so-called "ancient British villages" are in many instances sorely neglected, and are often buried beneath masses of destructive briers and ferns. We can still trace the course of several of the great tribal boundaries of prehistoric times, the Grim's dykes that are seen in various parts of the country, gigantic earthworks that so surprised the Saxon invaders that they attributed them to the agency of the Devil or Grim. Here and there much has vanished, but stretches remain with a high bank twelve or fourteen feet high and a ditch; the labour of making these earthen ramparts must have been immense in the days when the builders of them had only picks made out of stag's horns and such simple tools to work with.

Along some of our hillsides are curious turf-cut monuments, which always attract our gaze and make us wonder who first cut out these figures on the face of the chalk hill. There is the great White Horse on the Berkshire Downs above Uffington, which we like to think was cut out by Alfred's men after his victory over the Danes on the Ashdown Hills. We are told, however, that that cannot be, and that it must have been made at least a thousand years before King Alfred's glorious reign. Some of these monuments are in danger of disappearing. They need scouring pretty constantly, as the weeds and grass will grow over the face of the bare chalk and tend to obliterate the figures. The Berkshire White Horse wanted grooming badly a short time ago, and the present writer was urged to approach the noble owner, the Earl of Craven, and urge the necessity of a scouring. The Earl, however, needed no reminder, and the White Horse is now thoroughly groomed, and looks as fit and active as ever. Other steeds on our hillsides have in modern times been so cut and altered in shape that their nearest relations would not know them. Thus the White Horse at Westbury, in Wiltshire, is now a sturdy-looking little cob, quite up to date and altogether modern, very different from the old shape of the animal.

The vanishing of prehistoric monuments is due to various causes. Avebury had at one time within a great rampart and a fosse, which is still forty feet deep, a large circle of rough unhewn stones, and within this two circles each containing a smaller concentric circle. Two avenues of stones led to the two entrances to the space surrounded by the fosse. It must have been a vast and imposing edifice, much more important than Stonehenge, and the area within this great circle exceeds twenty-eight acres, with a diameter of twelve hundred feet. But the spoilers have been at work, and "Farmer George" and other depredators have carted away so many of the stones, and done so much damage, that much imagination is needed to construct in the eye of the mind this wonder of the world.

Every one who journeys from London to Oxford by the Great Western Railway knows the appearance of the famous Wittenham Clumps, a few miles from historic Wallingford. If you ascend the hill you will find it a paradise for antiquaries. The camp itself occupies a commanding position overlooking the valley of the Thames, and has doubtless witnessed many tribal fights, and the great contest between the Celts and the Roman invaders. In the plain beneath is another remarkable earthwork. It was defended on three sides by the Thames, and a strong double rampart had been made across the cord of the bow formed by the river. There was also a trench which in case of danger could have been filled with water. But the spoiler has been at work here. In 1870 a farmer employed his men during a hard winter in digging down the west side of the rampart and flinging the earth into the fosse. The farmer intended to perform a charitable act, and charity is said to cover a multitude of sins; but his action was disastrous to antiquaries and has almost destroyed a valuable prehistoric monument. There is a noted camp at Ashbury, erroneously called "Alfred's Castle," on an elevated part of Swinley Down, in Berkshire, not far from Ashdown Park, the seat of the Earl of Craven. Lysons tells us that formerly there were traces of buildings here, and Aubrey says that in his time the earthworks were "almost quite defaced by digging for sarsden stones to build my Lord Craven's house in the park." Borough Hill Camp, in Boxford parish, near Newbury, has little left, so much of the earth having been removed at various times. Rabbits, too, are great destroyers, as they disturb the original surface of the ground and make it difficult for investigators to make out anything with certainty.

Sometimes local tradition, which is wonderfully long-lived, helps the archæologist in his discoveries. An old man told an antiquary that a certain barrow in his parish was haunted by the ghost of a soldier who wore golden armour. The antiquary determined to investigate and dug into the barrow, and there found the body of a man with a gold or bronze breastplate. I am not sure whether the armour was gold or bronze. Now here is an amazing instance of folk-memory. The chieftain was buried probably in Anglo-Saxon times, or possibly earlier. During thirteen hundred years, at least, the memory of that burial has been handed down from father to son until the present day. It almost seems incredible.

It seems something like sacrilege to disturb the resting-places of our prehistoric ancestors, and to dig into barrows and examine their contents. But much knowledge of the history and manners and customs of the early inhabitants of our island has been gained by these investigations. Year by year this knowledge grows owing to the patient labours of industrious antiquaries, and perhaps our predecessors would not mind very much the disturbing of their remains, if they reflected that we are getting to know them better by this means, and are almost on speaking terms with the makers of stone axes, celts and arrow-heads, and are great admirers of their skill and ingenuity. It is important that all these monuments of antiquity should be carefully preserved, that plans should be made of them, and systematic investigations undertaken by competent and skilled antiquaries. The old stone monuments and the later Celtic crosses should be rescued from serving such purposes as brook bridges, stone walls, stepping-stones, and gate-posts and reared again on their original sites. They are of national importance, and the nation should do this.