Oftentimes, in places where no mound is visible in the church garth, the soil still holds relics which denote archaic interments. During the repairs which were made some five-and-twenty years ago, at the East end of Wyre Piddle church in Worcestershire, two skeletons were discovered in a sitting posture. The faces were disposed towards the North-East. With the bones were found the remains of iron shield-bosses. A kind of rough pavement was also reached under the soil of the churchyard. The interments had been made prior to the introduction of Christianity[214], and a mound may once have marked the spot. From the churchyard of Llanbedr, in the Vale of Conway, a somewhat analogous find is recorded. Six feet below the surface, the sexton’s spade struck a flat slab of stone, and underneath this was found a crouching, or kneeling, skeleton, surrounded by boars’ tusks[215]. The district around is rich in British remains[216].
Some forty years ago, when the church tower of East Blatchington, Sussex, was being restored, an urn containing burnt bones and charcoal was discovered. The precise nature of the urn, and its after-history, do not seem to be known. Urns were also discovered during the restoration of Arlington church, in the same county, in the year 1892. Among the Saxon graves which have been disturbed by the modern sexton, two Kentish examples should be noted. In a churchyard at Faversham, the frontal bone of a human cranium and a Saxon tumbler of transparent green glass were dug up in the year 1853[217]. A bell-shaped cup of glass, ornamented with vertical ribs, was found associated with a skull and other human bones in the churchyard at Minster. The bones represented a skeleton which was computed to be eight feet in length[218]. Whether or not the burial-places at Faversham and Minster were ever capped with mounds must remain undecided. It is quite probable that a small “howe” of some kind marked the spot in each case. These Kentish discoveries add enlightenment in another direction. At a meeting of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, held at Norwich, in February, 1910, there was exhibited a polished axe which came from the churchyard of Gresham, in Norfolk. At the same meeting, Mr J. Cox showed a chipped celt which had been built into Gresham church tower. Its presence there was most probably accidental, though it is well to recall the Breton practice of building stone axes into chimneys to ward off lightning. Mr Stephen Blackmore, the aged “Shepherd of the Downs,” who has long been known as a collector of Neolithic implements, informs me that he secured an excellent polished flint hatchet from a depth of four or five feet in East Dean churchyard, Sussex. Again, in the Brighton Museum, there are displayed two fine flint celts, the one polished, the other neatly chipped. They were obtained from South Harting churchyard, Sussex. The chipped specimen came from a depth of three feet below the surface[219]. No further details can be gleaned, but, as the celts are of the types occurring in barrows of the Neolithic and Aeneolithic periods, one may suppose that the church is adjacent to the resting-place of some prehistoric chieftain. This is only a reasonable hypothesis, but the discoveries at Pytchley, Northamptonshire, in 1845, lie outside the domain of guesswork. The church was built in the early Norman period. Situated partly under the fabric itself, and partly under the present graveyard, a British cemetery was found. Although only a small area was excavated, twenty kist-vaens were uncovered. The Rev. W. Abner Brown, who described the graves, believed that the Norman builders were ignorant of the kists over which they placed their foundations, and that the stone graves belonged to Romanized Christians. It does indeed seem strange that pillars should be built over small hollow chambers; yet, interpolated between these chambers and the Norman graveyard, was still another burial ground, which had been used by the villagers long before the Norman Conquest. Again, while it is stated that the bodies lay East and West, “or nearly so,” this alone does not prove Christian influence. A pre-christian date might be inferred from the relics, though these were few. Besides Roman coins and scraps of pottery, the scanty list of grave-gifts included a perforated tusk of the wild boar, and a rude amethystine crystal “eardrop.” British earthenware was also found, and the whole of the data seem rather to point to continuity. We must remember that the surface of the churchyard once stood at a lower level, and a narrow pathway of pebbles was actually found at a depth of six feet. The Norman architects, then, most likely knew that they were building over a graveyard of some kind, even as the Saxons may have been aware that their own cemetery was superimposed upon a still older one[220].
By far the best-known churchyard tumulus, and the one which has most successfully stood the test of exploration, is that of Taplow, in Buckinghamshire. A study of this barrow, which remains in the old churchyard of the village, near Taplow Court, will help to elucidate some of the other difficulties. The church itself is no longer visible, though its ruins remained on the spot until 1853. On clearing away the masonry, it was seen that the foundations of the building passed through an ancient ditch. The church had been erected at the Eastern end of an enclosure, the centre of which was dominated by the barrow. The whole occupied high ground, known locally as Bury Fields[221]. The folk-lorist will note, in passing, how valuable these philological details are, since names of this kind are not uncommon, and they generally seem to preserve the tradition of some actual event. To proceed with the description: from time to time fragments of pottery—British, Roman, and Saxon—together with well-worked flint flakes, had been collected on, or near, the surface of the village graveyard[222]. The evidence showed that the tumulus had been intentionally shut in when the boundaries of the churchyard were first fixed. At a later date, a yew tree had been planted on the grave-hill, and the trunk of this ancient tree was still in existence when digging was started in the year 1883.
Briefly, the following observations were recorded. Scattered throughout the uppermost layer of the soil, to a depth of two or three feet, the explorers found pieces of dressed chalk. These are supposed to have formed part of a Norman doorway, and were doubtless buried when the church was restored, or rebuilt, in the fourteenth century[223]. A confusing feature was the discovery, at various levels, of coarse pottery, bones, bone tools, hammer stones, flint flakes, and flint cores[224]. These objects were found “in larger measure at the top of the mound, but were at no time absent[225].” Yet, at the very bottom of the barrow, scraps of Samian ware and a portion of a Roman “brick” were exposed[226]. These Roman vestiges, lying at the lowest horizon, showed that the mound could not be Celtic. All the objects hitherto described might have been collected, along with the soil, from lower levels when the pile was raised. Are we driven to marvel at the surprising wealth of relics? If so, we must remember that the spot had some strategical importance, and had doubtless been occupied by Britons and Romans long before the occasion of the construction of the barrow. There is no necessity here to relate the engrossing story in greater detail, since this has been fully done by Dr J. Stevens and Mr Reginald A. Smith. It is enough to state that the barrow was heaped up to cover the remains of a Saxon chieftain. This was distinctly shown by the character of the grave-furniture—drinking horns, military trappings, utensils, and ornaments of Saxon date. The circumstances connected with this primary burial, as well as the relics, showed that the interment was of the non-Christian type[227].
For our next example we turn to the history of Ludlow. Down to the close of the twelfth century, the parish churchyard of that town occupied the site of a tumulus. In A.D. 1199, the barrow was cleared away, and there were disclosed sepulchral relics which pointed to a Roman origin. The clergy, however, declared that the remains were those of Irish saints, and thus turned the discovery to good account[228]. This ludicrous ecclesiastical fiction serves one purpose, and by good chance it speeds us in our present business. Through this tale we get a hint that the priests of the Middle Ages were inquisitive about the contents of barrows. Hallowed bones and mythical treasure formed the lure. Canon Jessopp has related numerous instances of this Mediaeval “hill-digging” for treasure in the county of Norfolk[229]. Thomas Wright put the other side of the matter in a way which arrests the eye and ear of every modern antiquary, for he thought that he could adduce, from monastic legends, a hundred distinct examples of the opening of barrows to search for the bones of saints[230]. From this keen dissection of ancient burial mounds, we may infer that even the Mediaeval churchmen imputed sanctity to barrows, although the belief found expression in paradoxical acts of desecration.
In alluding to discoveries like that of Pytchley, we approached the subject of cemeteries, rather than that of barrows. A few instances of pagan burial-grounds lying beneath Christian churches may be cited. The oft-quoted case of St Paul’s Cathedral does not properly fall under this head. It is true that, at various times, a number of ox-skulls and boars’-tusks have been discovered beneath the foundations. Tradition says that the cathedral stands on the site of a temple dedicated to Diana[231]. The legend may be fallacious, for the finding of a heap of animal bones scarcely warrants the assumption of a pagan temple, much less of a pagan burial-place. Rather is the indication towards one of those foundation sacrifices, which might profitably engage attention in another volume. Moreover, the site of St Paul’s has always been a prolific field for Roman relics, hence it is within possibility that the bones are accidental items of a greater depository of rejected remains.
Other records, however, may pass unquestioned. At Lewes, in Sussex[232], and at Mentmore[233], in Buckinghamshire, churches have been built, if not on the actual sites of Saxon cemeteries, at least, very near them. With respect to the Mentmore interments, it is to be noted that those bodies of which the positions were recorded lay East and West[234]. According to the view, now widely held, such a position indicates Christian burial, but, as will later be shown ([p. 248] infra), the rule is by no means absolute. Unfortunately, the concomitant relics were so few as to yield little support to either theory. This difficulty is peculiarly noticeable in churchyard discoveries. Either the records date from the pre-scientific period of excavation, or, from the nature of the case, little modern exploration can be attempted. Thus, numerous relics have been dug up at various times near the West side of another Northamptonshire church,—that of Whittlebury. These relics comprise a bronze celt, Roman coins, an inscribed legionary tile, and several uninscribed tiles[235]. Such articles may suggest a burial-ground, or, at least, an inhabited site, but obviously no systematic excavations can be made.
Discoveries made at Alphamstone, in Essex, near the boundary of that county and Suffolk, and not far from the little town of Bures, deserve some attention. It has been a somewhat lengthy task to obtain the precise particulars relating to the discoveries, which date from the year 1905 onwards, but through the courtesy of Miss A. Stebbing, the Rev. P. Saben, and Mr Arthur G. Wright, the Curator of the Corporation Museum at Colchester, I am able to present an epitome of the finds. On a spur of the hill projecting into the valley, through which flows a small tributary of the Stour, there must have been a kind of cemetery belonging to the Bronze Age. The surface soil is underlain by sand, and this, again, by fine gravel. Workmen, digging for gravel, have, at various times, lighted upon urns, the bodies of which rested in the sandy layer. The specimens have now been secured, by gift or purchase, for the Colchester Museum. Through the kindness of the present rector, the Rev. P. Saben, a group of these urns is shown in [Fig. 22], though it is doubtful whether these were all taken from one grave. With the vessels were associated numbers of white quartz pebbles, which occur naturally in the sand and gravel, but which may have been collected by the mourners who deposited the ashes in the urns (cf. [p. 299] infra). The interest of these Alphamstone discoveries lies in the fact that, some 200 yards distant, on the same projection of the hill, the village
