Memorials of old Derbyshire

by Unknown

Neolithic Barrows

Including several more or less doubtful examples, there are or have been within the last century, remains of about a dozen barrows containing “chambers” in the county. Three of these—at Five Wells, near Taddington, and at Mininglow and Harborough Rocks, near Brassington—have yielded good results to exploration. All three were unfortunately in an extremely ruined condition, but by piecing together their evidence a fair idea can be obtained of their original state.

The Five Wells example (figs. 1 and 2) was excavated by Mr. Salt, of Buxton, and the writer, in 1899.[1] The remaining lower portion of the mound was found to be circular, about 56 feet in diameter, and constructed of quarried stones roughly laid in courses, and so disposed at the margin as to form a wall-like podium, which remained in places to the height of three feet. Near the middle are still to be seen the remains of two chambers, each about six feet long, and constructed of great slabs of stone resting on the old natural surface. Each had a paved floor, and was reached by a tunnel-like passage or gallery, of similar construction to the chambers, from a porthole-like entrance in the podium. Each chamber is somewhat wedge-shaped, the wider end being that into which the gallery opened, and immediately within this end are two pillar-like stones, one on each side, which structurally formed the last pair of side stones of the gallery; but they differed in their greater height. The use of these “pillars” is uncertain, but the writer has suggested that between each pair was a dropstone, which when raised, portcullis-fashion, to allow of access to the chamber, was received into an upper space.

The Mininglow example is larger, is also circular, and appears to have had five chambers, of which two (figs. 4 and 5) closely resemble the above, except that they seem to have lacked the “pillars.” Mr. Thomas Bateman, who examined this tumulus in 1843, found that it had a wall-like podium as at Five Wells, and he traced one of the galleries to its orifice in this podium. Had he pushed his investigations further, it is probable he would have found the mound to be of similar built construction.[2] The Harborough Rocks barrow was excavated by the writer in 1889, but it was too ruined to allow of its shape and the number of its chambers to be determined. One chamber (fig. 3), however, remained, and this also resembled those at Five Wells, but it is doubtful whether it ever possessed “pillars.” A portion of the gallery was traced, as also what was almost certainly a fragment of a podium.[3]

Fig. 2. East Chamber at Five Wells. View From the North-East.

Of the other barrows of the type, little can be said of their structure. Several have been opened or destroyed by labourers, and the rest have only been slightly examined. Mr. Bateman examined examples at Ringham-low, near Monyash; Bolehill, near Bakewell; Stoneylow and Greenlow, near Brassington; Smerrill, near Youlgreave; and a second one at Mininglow. They all appear to have been constructed with stone, and their chambers to have been on a megalithic scale. He makes no mention of galleries, but as his efforts were confined to clearing out the ruined chambers, he might easily have overlooked their remains. With the exception of the first-mentioned, they were all circular, but his plan and description of that barrow leave it uncertain whether its curious outline was original or due to additions. The remaining three barrows—the great one near Chelmerton,[4] one near Wardlow,[5] and one on Derwent Moor,[6] have only a doubtful claim to be included in the chambered class. They were broken into a century or more ago, and the accounts of them are very meagre.

Unfortunately, all the chambers in this county which have been searched from scientific motives had already been rifled, but that at Harborough Rocks had suffered least. Here the mound had been almost entirely removed for the sake of its materials, the capstone of the chamber had been thrown over, and many of the skeletons it contained scattered; but, fortunately, six of these remained untouched. These were laid on their sides across the space, in the usual contracted or doubled-up attitude. Mr. Bateman, in 1843, found in the more perfect of the two Five Wells chambers the remains of about twelve skeletons, all in a state of confusion. He also found a similar number in one of the Ringham-low[7] chambers, and in that at Smerrill, and a still greater number at Stoney-low.[8] The chambers at Mininglow and Greenlow had been too much rifled to yield more than a few scattered bones to his spade. In the Wardlow barrow seventeen skeletons were found, “inclosed by two side walls”; and from that on Derwent Moor a “cartload of human bones occupied a large trench above a yard wide.” The skulls in every case, when sufficiently perfect for their form to be made out, have been of the long or dolichocephalic shape; and all the shin bones that have come under the writer’s notice have exhibited the peculiar flattening known as platycnemism. These Neolithic people had a remarkable immunity from dental caries, although the teeth are frequently so worn down by mastication that they must have been almost level with the gums in life. Out of 148 teeth at Harborough Rocks, many of which were excessively ground down, there were only five or six which showed any signs of caries.

In no case has a bronze or other metallic object been found associated with these interments. The few stone implements which have been found are all of flint, and it is significant that these have consisted mostly of thin and delicately-worked arrow-heads of leaf-shaped form. The clayey floor of the gallery at Harborough Rocks yielded several of these, all excessively thin and beautifully wrought, all either broken or calcined, and associated with fragments of charcoal. Several fine examples were found in two of the Ringham-low chambers, and the point of one at Five Wells; and, in addition, a knife of delicate workmanship was also found with the last, as also fragments of coarse pottery, but these may have been derived from destroyed later burials at a higher level.

Figs. 3, 4, and 5.—Plans of “Chambers.” Fig. 3, at Harborough Rocks; Figs. 4 and 5, at Mininglow, Derbyshire.

This association of numerous skeletons, dolichocephalic skulls, and leaf-shaped arrow-heads in Neolithic chambers has been observed elsewhere in Britain. We need only cross the Derbyshire border a few miles for an excellent example of this. In 1849 a large and little disturbed chamber was opened at Wetton, in Staffordshire, which yielded about thirteen dolichocephalic skeletons and several of these arrow-heads. Further afield, at Rodmarton, in Gloucestershire, the arrow-heads were all broken, apparently intentionally, as seems to have been the case at Harborough Rocks. The placing of things which are useful in life with the dead is both ancient and widespread, and has its roots in the belief in man’s continued existence after death, and that somehow they will still be of use to him. The breaking or burning of them may have been partly to render them useless to the living, and partly by thus “killing” them to set their spirits free to join the departed in the world of spirits. Perhaps, too, there was a sacrificial intention of propitiating the ancestral spirits. The presence of the arrow-heads in the gallery at Harborough Rocks is more suggestive of offerings to the dead than the depositing of objects with them at the burial. Some prehistoric man would, perhaps, for reasons best known to himself, crawl into the entrance to the vault of the family or the clan and there make his offering, and with some appropriate formula dedicate it to the dead by breaking or burning the objects, the enduring arrow-heads and charcoal alone remaining to us as witnesses of the act. The thinness and delicacy of these arrow-heads suggest that they were made, not for use, but for this special purpose, like the amber and jet models of implements which have been found in Continental chambers. A further stage, in which the act has become degraded into a purely representative one, is seen in the imitation cardboard money which the Chinaman burns to enrich the soul of his ancestor.

Assuming that the less known examples correspond with the better known, which seems probable, these Derbyshire Neolithic burial-places constitute, in their circular outlines and their abrupt entrances, a strongly marked local type, contrasting in these respects with the more usual elongated forms and incurved entrances elsewhere. The wedge-shaped plans and inward leaning sides of the chambers at Mininglow, Five Wells, and Harborough Rocks, present another peculiarity. The apparent absence of galleries in some of these remains may not be due to oversight or want of investigation, as this means of access has been proved to be absent from some of the barrows of this period; but it seems to be an essential that the chamber should have some means of access, even if it involved digging, for the whole trend of enquiry goes to show that it was designed for successive burials, and herein it differs from the cists of the barrows we next consider.