Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/205

 AND THE PROBABLE DATH OF STONEIIENOE. 1 17 IS it were, by the highlands around " Scots Poor," from which ,he greater part of their extent is visible. To this point the ■ountrj rises from the east and south, and also, though more ilowly, from the west. On the southern and eastern slopes ve still find large masses of Avoodland — Collingbourn-wood, 3ole-wood, &c. — and there can be little doubt that these iiffh and barren downs Avcre once encircled with a belt of brest. This description may serve to show the importance )f these heights as a landmark, and in some measure to )X]ilain the fact, that at the present day three counties, and lonie seven or eight parishes, meet in the neighbourhood. During a fortnight of rather inclement weather, I examined he country lying between Westbury and Ludgershall, and (Ucceeded in fincUng most of the ditches described in the ' Ancient Wiltshire." It is to be regretted, that Sir R. !]. Hoare was not more alive to the importance of distin- j;uishing between the trackway and the boundary-dike. His isual phrase " a bank and a ditch," more than once made ne waste a day in searching for wdiat proved, on examination, bund an ancient boundary-line — one clearly of British origin, md perhnjys anterior* to the Roman conquest. I traced it rom the west of " Knook Castle " to within a couple of miles )f Tilshead, when it gradually died away in cultivated land, Ancient roads occasionally entered its ditch, more particu- larly at the salient angles,^ and its mound was broken and pierced in all directions by the trackways leading to the two British villages north of Knook Castle ; but still, amid all the changes of two thousand years, its crest was seen stretching )ver the plain, and could be followed without the chance of a nistake. The next day I found " the Tilshead ditch," within ittle more than a mile from the spot where I had lost the I * There are the sites of two British Coins of Arcadius have been dug up tillages near the boundary line ; and in a among the ruins, but, I believe, no Saxon krag^ling portion of one of them, which remains. We may conduile that the les beyiind the dike, and which, therefore, villages were burnt by the Saxon invaders, ^ust have been built after the boundary- and never afterwards inhabited. ne was sli'jkled (to use a phrase of ■' It may be worth observing that, just tromwell's time), Sir R. C. Hoare found at the angle where the boundary line turns stone-celt beside a skeleton. It is not suddenly to the eastwartl, there lay a large robable that a primitive utensil like this stone on the top of the agger. I had not 'as used after the arrival of the Romans ; time to examine it minutely, nor even to iut the grave may have been there before chip off a fragment to ascertain the nature jie village extended itself beyond the of the stone. !?ger.
 * o be a mere drift-road. North of Heytesbury, however, I