Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/30

16 Castle, on the side of the Beacon pasture below the Little Beacon Tower; it then turned down the hill towards the tumuli, being in some places several yards wide; it passed round the tumuli on the south side, then ascended the hill to the Beacon, thence to the tower on the Tower Brow; and proceeded past the cairn on the north side of the Tower Brow.

About a quarter of a mile westward from the last-mentioned tower, is a small conical green mound like a tumulus. It is situated on the north side of the syke, nearly opposite the Wintershields. This mound, however insignificant it may appear, may nevertheless contain the relics of some Tower Brow chieftain whose bones are now crumbled into dust.

About two miles to the north-west from the Tower Brow, near a place called "the Birkbush," are some small mounds full of black slag, where the smelting of iron has been carried on at some former period. Whether these mounds are of Roman construction is certainly doubtful, but at all events they point to a period after the discovery of the art of smelting ores, and the consequent substitution of metallic implements and weapons for those of stone. The ore has been smelted with charcoal, and the slag is therefore very heavy, a great part of the iron being left in it. If it was necessary to use charcoal now, so great is the demand for iron, that nearly half the surface of our island must be devoted to the growth of wood for our iron manufacture alone. In the beginning of the seventeenth century an attempt was made to smelt iron with coal, which succeeded, and the iron trade, which had been almost extinguished for want of fuel, revived, and progressed with the most astonishing rapidity.

On the Tower Brow, and other hills over which the Maiden Way passes, may be seen a great number of small circular holes or pits. They are generally in groups, and range in a continuous line. Can they have been the dwellings of some ancient inhabitants of this district? Sir R. C. Hoare, in his valuable work on "Ancient Wiltshire," describes these earlier habitations as pits or slight excavations in the ground, covered and protected from the inclemency of the weather by boughs of trees and sods of turf; and he says that occasionally flint arrowheads are found, mixed with