Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 2.djvu/196

412 dexterity by our men to the removal from the chamber, and subsequent replacement, of the second cap-stone, weighing more than three tons, which had fallen in during the excavations. By the opening thus obtained, the chamber was in part cleared, and two days later another party of men entered it from the opposite side, having successfully tunneled under the large eastern cap-stone. The portion of the gallery which was cleared out was nearly fifteen feet in length, and averaged three feet six inches in width. Its walls are formed of rude upright blocks, four or five feet in height, and above these by smaller blocks placed horizontally, giving an additional height of from two to three feet. The entrance to the chamber is formed by two large uprights, that on the south, which projects most into the gallery, being nearly eight feet in height, whilst that on the north, being of less elevation, is made up at the top by two horizontal stones, somewhat overhanging the whole, forming with the large incumbent stone a perfect but narrow doorway. This opens into a chamber of nearly quadrangular form, measuring about eight feet in length from east to west, and nine feet in breadth. It is about seven feet nine inches in clear height: the construction of its east and west ends has already been described. The north and south sides are each formed of one large upright slab, about nine feet in full height, and somewhat more than five feet wide. The angles between the uprights are completed above by flat overhanging blocks, below which the chalk rubble, of which the barrow consists, fills up the interspaces. At two points, however, within the chamber, on its very floor, and at two in the gallery, just without the entrance, these angles, to the height of one foot, are filled up with dry walling, of tile-like stones of calcareous grit, a stone not to be found within a less distance than the neighbourhood of Calne, about seven miles to the west. A bit of the coarse oolitic stone called coral rag, probably from the same locality, was also found. The floor of the chamber and gallery consisted of the gravelly clay, which here forms the natural subsoil; and the upright stones, which had been sunk a foot or two in the earth, were supported by small blocks of sarsen stone, closely rammed down in the floor.

Both the gallery and chamber were filled with chalk rubble, covered at the top, to the depth of about a foot, with recent rubbish, which had found its way under the cap-stones. In clearing out the gallery, a few scattered bones of animals,