The situations chosen by the early inhabitants for the burial of their dead were, in many instances, grand in the extreme. Formed on the tops of the highest hills, or on lower but equally imposing positions, the grave-mounds commanded a glorious prospect of hill and dale, wood and water, rock and meadow, of many miles in extent, and on every side stretching out as far as the eye could reach, while they themselves could be seen from afar off in every direction by the tribes who had raised them, while engaged either in hunting or in their other pursuits. They became, indeed, land-marks for the tribes, and were, there can be but little doubt, used by them as places of assembling.
Sepulchral tumuli are known as barrows, lows, houes, tumps, etc. Barrow is of pretty general use; low is almost universal in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and other districts; tump is in use in Gloucestershire, etc.; and houe in Yorkshire.
In Derbyshire and Staffordshire, the term “Low” is so very usual that, wherever met with, it may be taken as a sure indication of a barrow now existing or having once existed at the spot. As a proof of this, it will only be necessary to say that at about two hundred places in Derbyshire alone, and at about half that number on the neighbouring borders of Staffordshire, which bear the affix of Low, barrows are known to exist or have already been opened. For my present purpose, it will be sufficient to give the few following names:—Arbor-Low, Kens-Low, Ringham-Low, Blake-Low, Fox-Low, Gib-Low, Green-Low, Great-Low, Grind-Low, Cal-Low, Chelmorton-Low, Casking-Low, Larks-Low, Thirkel-Low, Ribden-Low, Har-Low, Bas-Low, High-Low, Foo-Low, Lean-Low, Huck-Low, Borther-Low, Dow-Low, Totman’s-Low, Staden-Low, Stan-Low, Blind-Low, Boar-Low, Bottles-Low, Brown-Low, Caldon-Low, Calver-Low, Cock-Low, Cop-Low, Cow-Low, Cronkstone-Low, Dars-Low, Drake-Low, Elk-Low, End-Low, Far-Low, Pike-Low, Fowse-Low, Galley-Low, Gris-Low, Grub-Low, Herns-Low, Hawks-Low, Horning-Low, Hard-Low, Knock-Low, Knot-Low, Laidmans-Low, Lady-Low, Liffs-Low, Lomber-Low, Lousy-Low, Mick-Low, Moot-Low, Money-Low, Musden-Low, May-Low, Needham-Low, Nether-Low, Ox-Low, Off-Low, Pars-Low, Painstor-Low, Peg-Low, Pigtor-Low, Pike-Low, Pinch-Low, Queen-Low, Ravens-Low, Rains-Low, Rick-Low, Rocky-Low, Rolley-Low, Round-Low, Rusden-Low, Saint-Low, Sitting-Low, Sliper-Low, Thoo-Low Three-Lows, Ward-Low, Warry-Low, White-Low, Whithery-Low, Wool-Low, and Yarns-Low. To some of these I shall again have occasion to make reference. In Yorkshire, the names of William Houe, Three Houes, and Three Tremblers Houes, will be sufficient indication of the local use of the term “Houe.”
Grave-mounds may, naturally, be divided into the three great periods; the Celtic, the Romano-British, and the Anglo-Saxon. This division will be adopted in the present volume, and it will be its aim, while speaking of the characteristics of each, to classify and describe their contents, and to point out, briefly, such circumstances of interment, and such evidences of customs, as they may present, and which may appear to be of sufficient interest and importance to its plan.
Of the forms of barrows, and their characteristics and modes of construction, occasion will be taken to speak in a later chapter.
CHAPTER II.
Ancient British, or Celtic, Period—General characteristics of the Barrows—Modes of construction—Interments by inhumation and by cremation—Positions of the body—Hitter Hill Barrow—Elliptical Barrow at Swinscoe—Burial in contracted position—In sitting and kneeling positions—Double interments.
The barrows of the Celtic, or ancient British, period vary in their form and size as much as they do in their modes of construction, and in their contents. Sometimes they are simply mounds of earth raised over the interment; sometimes heaps of stones piled up over the body; and sometimes again a combination of cist and earth and stone. Generally speaking the mounds are circular, rising gradually and gently from the level of the ground towards the centre, but in some instances the rise is somewhat acute. Now and then they are oval in form. Where elliptical barrows occur (generally known as “long barrows”), they are, I have reason to believe, not matters of original design, but of accident, through additional interments; and I much doubt the propriety of archæologists at the present day continuing the very questionable nomenclature adopted by Sir R. C. Hoare and others. In some cases, however, as in the instances of chambered or walled tumuli, the elliptical form of the barrow can be easily understood. An examination of a very large number of barrows leads me to the opinion that the original form of all was circular, and that no deviation from that form, and no difference in section, can be taken as indicative of period or of race.
The other appellation occasionally used, of “twin barrows,” is further evidence of this—two interments having been made within a short distance of each other, and the mounds raised over them running into and joining each other. It may, however, for purposes of description, and for this alone, be well to retain the names, while discarding much of the theory and of the system which has been attempted to be established regarding them.
The mounds of earth alluded to, present occasionally highly interesting and curious features, and show that, like those of a different construction, they have frequently been used for successive interments. The section of one of these is shown on the next page. It is one of a group of six barrows on Lord’s Down, in the parish of Dewlish, in Dorsetshire. It was eighty-two feet in diameter, and fourteen feet in height in the centre. The primary interment, an urn, was placed in a cist cut in the chalk sub-soil. Over the urn was raised a small cairn of flints, and the cist was then filled in, and raised a little above the surface with chalk rubble. Over this was a layer of earth, upon which an interment had taken place, and in its turn covered with a thick layer of chalk rubble, in the centre of which, in a cist, another interment had again been made. Above this rose another layer of earth, another of chalk, and then a final one of earth, on each of which interments had at different periods been made. Thus the tumulus, which was formed of alternate layers of chalk and earth, exhibited no less than six successive sepulchral deposits.[2] The interments were both by inhumation and cremation.