"Sailing by the island one day in 1867, I observed that the stones which stand out on the south and east sides were strangely new looking, and most unlike the water-worn, rounded fragments that on the main shore have been exposed to the action of the waves; neither did there seem to be any original rock-basis at all. It was, in fact, nothing less than a huge heap of stones thrown into water two or three feet in depth. Was this the key, I thought, to the old tradition of a city in the lake? In the summer of last year, my brother, then living in the neighbourhood, first discovered a row of piles or slabs; some standing a few inches above water, for the lake was very low. We have together made some investigations during the past month, the results of which I will detail.
"The island, as now above water, measures 90 yards in circumference, its form being that of a square with the corners rounded off. The highest part is nearly in the centre, and is 5 feet above the water-level. The sides most exposed to weather, where also the water is deepest, are composed of stones sloping into the water, and extending to the distance of fifteen yards from the edge. Under the water, however, they are not nearly so thickly strewn as above. It is remarkable that on the leeward or northern side, about one quarter of the island is almost destitute of stone protection with which the greater part is covered. There is simply a surface of vegetable mould, inclined towards the water. Neither in the water, which is there very shallow, are there more than a score of stones to be found on that side. I must now speak of the piles. These are of two sorts, the most obvious being either at the margin or within a few feet of it. Like the stones, they are most numerous where the action of the storm would be most felt, and upon the shallow side they disappear entirely. They have been disposed in segments of circles, the stones being heaped inside them, and thus saved from being torn away by the waves. These piles (or rather slabs) are of cleft oak, and have been pointed, as it seems, by cuts from a metal adze. We have counted about sixty. They have been driven tightly into the shell-marl, to the depth of four feet. There are also other piles, which are round, generally of soft wood, and are found outside the present edge of the island. Several are in water two feet deep, and are driven into the marl only twelve or eighteen inches. These would have been quite powerless to confine the stones, and were evidently for another purpose.... Is it not likely that the island itself was central common ground? and that the habitations were projected from its edge towards the water and were supported by these thick round piles? Something like a ring of these is found near the oak slabs before mentioned; and traces of a second set are at the distance of twelve or fifteen yards, in water about two feet deep. Between the two, small wood is found abundantly, a few inches in the marl. At about ten yards from the shore, and in two feet of water, there appear to be the actual remains of a sunken platform. Three trunks of soft wood lie nearly parallel to one another. A 6 feet stem of oak, which I cannot account for, was with them. The top of this we sawed off, as it exhibits the marks of some heavy cutting instrument where, in modern days, a saw would have been used.
"I have to add to this subject the discovery of two much more perfect platforms in a perplexing situation, namely, within the oak slabs. They were composed of eight straight trunks, about six inches in diameter, lying side by side. Their direction is from the centre to the water; their ends, towards the shore, are thrust against the slab piles; others are closed in one case by a transverse oak beam....
The examination of the interior would, of course, unfold the process of the construction. We therefore made several perpendicular openings; and these invariably led us down to the shell-marl, showing first a stratum of large, loose stones, with vegetable mould and sand; next (about eighteen inches above the marl), peat, black and compact; and beneath this, the remains of reeds and small wood. This faggot-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.
"On digging through the before-mentioned low portion of the crannog a different order of materials exhibited itself. As I said, the stones are very few; the depth is 3 feet instead of 5; 18 inches of vegetable mould; 6 inches of earth mixed thickly with charcoal; and 1 foot of peat, small wood or reeds. I may here say that this charcoal is found under water, in very frequent small fragments, on this north-eastern side; and is covered, not with marl or stones, but with sand. Bones are found in numbers amongst the stones where the water is quite shallow; every spadeful of marl, in some parts, would, as the water dripped off, show one or more small bone fragments or teeth."
The osseous remains were more or less identified by Professors Owen, Rolleston and Boyd Dawkins as belonging to Bos longifrons, horse (small and large variety), red deer, and wild boar.
LAKE-DWELLINGS IN BERKS, ETC.
In 1878, Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., communicated to Nature a short notice of "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 tarandus (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.