Crannog in Llangorse Lake, near Brecon, South Wales.
In Keller's book on Lake-Dwellings,[54] there is a notice of a "crannoge, or stockaded island, in Llangorse Lake, near Brecon (South Wales)," by the Rev. E. Dumbleton, M.A., in which the author describes an island 90 yards in circumference, the highest part of which is 5 feet above the level of the water, on which "some small trees and brushwood have fastened," and around which numerous cleft oak-beams have been detected. In examining the interior by perpendicular openings, they invariably led down to the shell-marl, "showing first a stratum of large, loose stones, with vegetable mould and sand, next (about 18 inches above the marl) peat, black and compact; and beneath this, the remains of reeds and small wood. This fagot-like wood presented itself abundantly all round the edges of the island, and in the same relative position, namely, immediately upon the soft marl; the object of it being, of course, to save the stones from sinking." Pieces of charcoal, broken bones, "a piece of leather pierced with several holes, in some of which, when discovered, the remains of a thong might be observed," three or four scraps of pottery, and a stone that seemed to have been ground, are the only indications of human occupancy recorded. Remains of log platforms, which were observed, are also described in this article. Some of the bones were sent to Professor Rolleston, of Oxford, who wrote that "the chief points of interest respecting these were: first, the presence of two varieties of horse—one small, such as a Welsh pony is; and the other large (as I am informed large horses appear to have existed, as well as mere Galloways, in the very earliest human periods in this country); and, secondly, the smallness of the then ordinarily eaten mammals, Sus, Bos, Ovis. The horse was eaten formerly, especially by the Pagans, and it may have been eaten by the inhabitants of your crannoge; but there is no evidence, from splitting or burning, that they did so." "Some other bones, found subsequently, were exhibited at the meeting of the British Association at Exeter, and were examined by Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins, who pronounced them to be those of the red deer, the wild boar, and the Bos longifrons. He stated that the group altogether, from the greater percentage of wild than domestic animals, indicated a remote period."
Barton Mere, near Bury St. Edmunds.
Professor Boyd Dawkins, under the heading Habitations in Britain in the Bronze Age, writes as follows:—"Sometimes, for the sake of protection, houses were built upon piles driven into a morass or bottom of a lake, as for example in Barton Mere (explored by Rev. Harry Jones in 1867,—Suffolk Inst. of Archæology and Natural History, June 1869), near Bury St. Edmunds, where bronze spear-heads have been discovered, one 18 inches long, in and around piles and large blocks of stone, as in some of the lakes in Switzerland. Along with them were vast quantities of the broken bones of the stag, roe, wild boar, and hare, to which must also be added the urus, an animal proved to be wild by its large bones, with strongly-marked ridges for the attachment of muscles. The inhabitants also fed upon domestic animals—the horse, short-horned ox, and domestic hog, and in all probability the dog, the bones of the last-named animal being in the same fractured state as those of the rest. Fragments of pottery were also found. The accumulation may be inferred to belong to the late rather than the early Bronze Age, from the discovery of a socketed spear-head. This discovery is of considerable zoological value, since it proves that the urus was living in Britain in a wild state as late as the Bronze Age. It must, however, have been very rare, since this is the only case of its occurrence at this period in Britain with which I am acquainted."—(Early Man in Britain, p. 352.)
Professor T. Rupert Jones on English Lake-Dwellings.
In 1878, Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., communicated to Nature a short notice on "English Lake-Dwellings and Pile Structures," in which, after drawing attention to the previously published articles of General Lane Fox and Sir Charles Bunbury, he writes as follows:—
"Since writing the above I have been informed that Mr. W. M. Wylie, F.S.A., referred to this fact in 'Archæologia,' vol. xxxviii. in a note to his excellent memoir on lake-dwellings. I can add, however, that remains of Cervus elaphus (red deer), C. dama? (fallow-deer), Ovis (sheep), Bos longifrons (small ox), Sus scrofa (hog), and Canis (dog), were found here, according to information given me by the late C. B. Rose, F.G.S., of Swaffham, who also stated in a letter dated August 11th, 1856, that in adjoining meres, or sites of ancient meres, as at Saham, Towey, Carbrook, Old Buckenham, and Hargham, cervine remains have been met with; thus at Saham and Towey Cervus elaphus (red deer), at Buckenham Bos (ox) and Cervus capreolus (roebuck); at Hargham Cervus tarandas (reindeer).
"The occurrence of flint implements and flakes in great numbers on the site of a drained lake between Sandhurst and Frimley, described by Captain C. Cooper King in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, January 1873, p. 365, etc., points also in all probability to some kind of lake-dwelling, though timbers were not discovered.
"Lastly, the late Dr. S. Palmer, F.S.A., of Newbury, reported to the 'Wiltshire Archæological Society' in 1869 that oaken piles and planks had been dug out of boggy ground on Cold Ash Common, near Faircross Pond, not far from Hermitage, Berks."—(Nature, vol. xvii. p. 424.)
Holderness, York.