In Bekamton town, near the termination of Bekamton avenue, or the snake’s tail, is such another place, call’d Old Chapel or Chapel field. ’Tis full of great stones, many buried under-ground. Richard Fowler, that great depopulator, told me, he demolished one stone standing near the hedge of the pasture. Near it a great stone lies upon the mouth of an old well, as they say, but never remember that it was open, only speak by tradition. This field belongs still to the church.
There is another very pretty place of this sort (for ought I know) between the Wansdike and Via Badonica, running up [Runway-hill]. ’Tis a charming pleasant concavity. An oblong square, with another lesser, as a prætorium within. In the vallum are many gaps at equal intervals. You will see a large part of it in plate XI. called the model of a camp. ’Tis abusing our time to be tedious, either in descriptions or enquiries, about these matters, of which ’tis scarce possible to arrive at any certainty at this time of day. The pleasure arising from them, is in being upon the spot, and treading the agreeable downy turf, crowded with these antiquities; where health to the body and amusement to the mind are mingled so effectually together.
TAB. XXV.
P. 48.
A View near the spot of the Termination of Bekampton avenue Iuly 19. 1723.
Stukeley delin.
The Snakes tail.
In Monkton-fields, directly north-east from Abury, is a monument of four stones, which probably is a kist-vaen. I have exhibited a print of it in [table XXXVII]. These seem to be what Mr. Edward Llwyd calls Kromlechon, or bowing-stones. I believe it was a sepulchral monument, set on a barrow, tho’ chiefly now plow’d up; and that the great covering-stone is luxated.
Table [XXXII], [XXXIII], [XXXIV], are views of another eminent work of this sort, in Clatford-bottom between Abury and Marlborough, which require no further description.
[Table XXXV], two old british urns found at Sunbury by the Thames, shewn at the antiquarian society some years ago. The inscription on the monument of Chyndonax, an archdruid among the Gauls, of which a large account publish’d in french. Father Montfaucon questions the genuineness thereof, but I think his objections are trifling.