Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/280

262 character early Norman, might be of the reign of Edward the Confessor, when Norman arts and customs were introduced rather largely into England.

Mr. Wright gave an account of the opening of a Roman harrow at the hamlet of Holborough (vulgo Hoborow, but in ancient documents Holanbeorge, Holeberghe, &c., which would seem to mean the hollow borough, or the borough with a hollow or cave), in the parish of Snodland, Kent, by Lord Albert Conyngham. The party consisted (besides his Lordship and Mr. Wright) of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Whatman of the Friars, Aylesford, the Rev. L. B. Larking, vicar of Ryarsh, the Rev. H. D. Phelps, rector of Snodland, and Mr. Aretas Akers, of Worcester college, Oxford. The barrow is situated on a rising ground, and is overlooked by an elevated field which is supposed to have been occupied as a Roman station. The barrow was twenty feet high from the platform on which it was raised, which had been cut into the side of the chalk hill. From the nature of the ground it was difficult to fix the exact limits of its circumference: a rough measurement before the barrow was opened gave a circumference of somewhat more than two hundred feet, and a subsequent measurement through the trench gave a diameter of ninety-three feet, but this probably included a part of the raised ground which did not strictly belong to the mound itself.

A trench from five to seven feet wide was cut through the centre of the barrow from east to west. From the discoveries made in this excavation, it appeared that the barrow had been raised over the ashes of a funeral pile. A horizontal platform had first been cut in the chalk of the hill, and on this a very smooth artificial floor of fine earth had been made about four inches deep, on which the pile had been raised, and which was found covered with a thin coating of wood-ashes. The surface of ashes was not less than twenty feet in diameter; among the ashes were found scattered a considerable number of very long nails (which had probably been used to fasten together the frame-work on which the body was placed for cremation), with a few pieces of broken pottery, which had evidently experienced the action of fire. A part of a Roman fibula was also found. No urns or traces of any other funeral deposit were observed during the excavation of the trench, but further researches were stopped for the present by the accidental falling in of the upper part of the mound.

Below the barrow, in a large field on the banks of the river adjacent to the church, are distinct marks of the former existence of a Roman villa, to which the attention of the Committee was called by Mr. Roach Smith on a former occasion. The field adjoining to the church-field bears the significant name of stone-grave field. Some slight excavations were made in the church-field, after leaving the barrow: on the further side of the field from the river, part of a floor of large tiles