Page:Sir Thomas Browne's works, volume 3 (1835).djvu/520

504 The work was square, about two yards and a quarter on each side. The wall, or outward part, a foot thick, in colour red, and looked like brick; but it was solid, without any mortar, or cement, or figured brick in it, but of an whole piece, so that it seemed to be framed and burnt in the same place where it was found. In this kind of brick-work were thirty-two holes, of about two inches and a half diameter, and two above a quarter of a circle in the east and west sides. Upon two of these holes on the east side, were placed two pots, with their mouths downward; putting in their arms they found the work hollow below, and the earth being cleared off, much water was found below them, to the quantity of a barrel, which was conceived to have been the rain-water which soaked in through the earth above them.

The upper part of the work being broke, and opened, they found a floor about two foot below, and then digging onward, three floors successively under one another, at the distance of a foot and half, the floors being of a slaty, not bricky substance; in these partitions some pots were found, but broke by the workmen, being necessitated to use hard blows for the breaking of the floors; and in the last partition but one, a large pot was found of a very narrow mouth, short ears, of the capacity of fourteen pints, which lay in an inclining posture, close by, and somewhat under a kind of arch in the solid wall, and by the great care of my worthy friend, Mr. William Marsham, who employed the workmen, was taken up whole, almost full of water, clean, and without smell, and insipid, which being poured out, there still remains in the pot a great lump of an heavy crusty substance. What work this was we must as yet reserve unto better conjecture. Mean while we find in Gruter that some monuments of the dead had divers holes sucessively to let in the ashes of their relations; but holes in such a great number to that intent, we have not any where met with.

About three months after, my noble and honoured friend, Sir Robert Paston, had the curiosity to open apiece of ground in his park at Oxnead, which adjoined unto the former field, where fragments of pots were found, and upon one the figure of a well made face; and there was also found an unusual