The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery

by John R. Wise

Besides these, I opened a solitary barrow situated between Handycross Pond and Pinnock Wood, close to Akercombe Bottom. It measured twenty-seven yards in circumference, and three feet in height. After digging into it near the centre, we found in the white sand, of which the mound was chiefly composed, a good deal of charcoal on and below the level of the ground, but failed to discover any traces of an urn, although we went down to a considerable depth.

Further, a solitary oval mound stood on the south side of South Bentley, half way between it and Anses Wood. It measured two feet and a half in height, twelve yards in length, and seven in breadth. This also I opened, but failed to find even any remains of charcoal, and, from the easy-moving nature of the soil, am inclined to suspect that it was modern, and raised for some other purpose than that of burial. On the east side was a depression filled with water, from whence the soil was taken.

The most remarkable barrow, if it can be so called, in this part of the Forest, is at Black Bar, at the extreme west end of Linwood, measuring nearly four hundred yards in circumference, and rising to the height of forty feet or more. It is evidently in part factitious, for upon sinking a pit ten feet deep we reached charcoal mixed with Roman pottery, but not of a sepulchral character.

In its general appearance the mound is not unlike the famous Barney Barn’s Hill, in Dibden Bottom, and close to it rises another, known as the Fir Pound, not much inferior in size. I made other openings on the top and sides, but discovered nothing further. To excavate it thoroughly would require an enormous time, and would in all probability not repay the labour. It looks, however, by the depressions on the summit, as if it had once been the site of Keltic dwellings. And this is in some measure corroborated by a small mound close to it, where, as if apparently left or thrown away, we found placed in a hole a small quantity of extremely coarse pottery—the coarsest and thickest which I have ever seen. Again, too, in a field close by, known as Blackheath Meadow, we everywhere met traces of Romano-British ware, very similar in shape and texture to that in Sloden, described in the next chapter.

The whole district just round here is most interesting. About a mile to the north is Latchmoor Stream and Latchmoor Green, marking, doubtless, some burial-ground; and not far off stands one of those elevated places, common in the Forest, with the misleading title of Castle.

I must not, too, forget to mention some barrows on Langley Heath, just outside the present eastern boundary of the Forest, and especially interesting from being situated so near to Calshot, where, as we have seen, Cerdic probably landed. Seven of them were opened by the Rev. J. Pemberton Bartlett. The mounds, averaging about twenty yards in circumference, were, in some cases, slightly raised, as much as a foot and a half, though in others nearly on a level with the natural surface of the soil. In them all was found a single grave, though, in one instance, two, running about three feet in depth, and containing only burnt earth and charcoal. They thus exactly corresponded, with the exception of the slight mound, with those on Bratley Plain.

With this we must conclude.[248] It would not be difficult to frame some theory from these results. I, however, here prefer to allow the simple facts to remain. As we have seen, the barrows in this part of the Forest, like all others of the same period, contained nothing, with the exception of the single stone-hammer, and the slinging pebbles, and the flake of flint, but nearly plain urns, full of only burnt earth, charcoal, and human bones. No iron, bronze, nor bone-work of any sort, was found, which would still further go to prove their extreme early age. Curiously enough, too, no teeth, bones, nor horn-cores of animals were discovered, as so often are in Keltic barrows.[249] Like all others, too, of an early date, there seem to have been several burials in the same grave, though this, as on Fritham Plain, is very far from being always the case. Some little regularity evidently prevailed with the different septs. Some, as at Bratley, placed the charred remains in a grave from two to three feet in depth; others, as at Butt’s Plain, on the mere ground. On the other hand, a good deal of caprice seems to have been exercised as to the materials with which each barrow was formed, and the way and the shape in which it was built, as also the arrangement of the charcoal.

Further, perhaps, the different grades of life and relationship were marked by the presence and position of the urns. Whether this be so or no, it is certain that the mounds here which contained mortuary vessels were, as a rule, more elevated, and in nearly all instances placed by themselves. The fact, too, of the cube-shaped mound with its remains of four urns should be kept in mind.

Little more can with certainty be said. The flint knives which have been picked up in the Forest, the stone hammer in the grave, the clumsy form and make of the urns, the places, too, of burial—in the wide furzy Ytene, in after-times the Bratleys, and Burleys, and Oakleys, of the West-Saxons—all show a people whose living was gained rather by hunting than agriculture or commerce.