A word as to the age of the circles. Sir Norman Lockyer deduced from the variation of the obliquity in relation to the avenue and the Friar’s Heel at Stonehenge, that the temple must have been erected about the year 1680 B.C., or within a margin of 200 years of that date. Professor Gowland, as the result of the excavations conducted by him in 1901, arrived at practically the same period, when he inferred that it was constructed by “the men of the Neolithic or, it may be, of the early Bronze Age.”
The assumption in these pages is that Stonehenge was the first and not the last of its series. If that be correct, it follows that the design must have been introduced by the new race, that of the Bronze Age, when they invaded this country from the south. The Neolithic tribes had been here for thousands of years before B.C. 1500, and it is unlikely that they, to whom metal was unknown, attained the architectural skill to erect a colossal and uniform temple. It is true that with one possible exception no trace of metal was found during the recent excavations at either Stonehenge or Arbor Low; but on the other hand, all the interments (with again one exception, and that of late date) found in circles are of the Bronze Age. These interments, of which one instance was in a small circle on Stanton Moor, do not necessarily indicate any sepulchral purpose for these monuments, but rather suggest that sometimes the priest himself would be laid to rest in the shrine of his order. Again, the general character of the numerous tumuli usually surrounding the momuments is of the Bronze period, and there seems to be some affinity between the “cup and ring” designs of the rock carvings and the plan of these circles. One fact is certain—that as a class they are not of any later times, for upon the vallum of Arbor Low stands the great “low” which yielded clear evidence of a burial of one who worked with bronze, and similar proof was furnished by the discovery of a like interment in the summit of Gib Hill.
It does not, however, follow that our Derbyshire circles date from the commencement of the Bronze Age; it is more probable that some of them are hundreds of years later than Stonehenge, and there is every likelihood that their use was continued through the Roman even to early Christian times, only to be stamped out when their original purpose had been forgotten in their mystic pagan rites. There is evidence that the great circles of the country were centres of native population at the time of the coming of the Romans, for the roads of the invaders were driven straight for them, as the maps of Avebury and Stonehenge in the south, and of Arbor Low and the Bull Ring in our county, clearly indicate. In the Anglo-Saxon language the phrase for astrology was circol-crœft, and to-day the horoscope of the fortune-teller is but a survival of our subject.
We who look upon these temples of a bye-gone people are still the slaves of Time, and though we measure it with the science of to-day, it is but a question of degree, for the cause and effect is still the same. True, we no longer worship in the Temple of Time, but we can ill afford to sneer at those who knew no better religion than the praise of the heavenly bodies and the admiration of nature’s handiwork as viewed over the distant scene. Nor can we pride ourselves in our science, which for centuries has failed to read the story of these mystic signs, which the rude workers in bronze could yet devise and set up, to—
“Observe days, and months, and times, and years.”
SWARKESTON BRIDGE
By William Smithard
The deservedly famous old bridge of Swarkeston situated a few miles south of Derby, where in a beautiful verdant and fertile vale the noble Trent sweeps towards the sea in a series of majestic curves.
The river, than which there are but two longer in the country, was of old a convenient rough-and-ready dividing-line across the middle of England; and the frequency with which the phrases “north of Trent” and “south of Trent” were used, shows that the stream was a recognised and familiar boundary to the monarchs and nobles who parcelled out shires and counties for themselves or friends in the Middle Ages.