Page images
PDF
EPUB

flake, but is elaborately chipped all over both surfaces." From another cist in the same barrow, "two very beautiful leaf-shaped arrow-heads of white flint" were obtained.1

Another instance, also recorded by Mr. Bateman, is from a mound described as a long barrow, in Yorkshire, near Heslerton-on-theWolds, in the East Riding. Near the centre, was a pile of about fifteen skeletons, with the skull of one of which "was a small and neat flint arrow-head," which, from a sketch by Mr. Ll. Jewitt, I find is leaf-shaped. It is rather broader in proportion than those from the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire long-barrows, from which it likewise differs in retaining both its points. It measures 12 of an inch in length, by in breadth.'

During the summer of 1865, I had an opportunity of opening a long barrow of great extent on Fyfield Hill, near Pewsey, Wiltshire, locally known as "the Giant's Grave." It is not less than 315 feet in length, by 70 feet in width at the east, and 50 feet at the west, and is about 7 feet high at the east end. A moderately wide trench runs along each side, but is not continued round the ends of the barrow. On the natural level, near the east end, a heap of three or four skeletons was found, the only perfect skull from which is of a remarkably long and narrow form, the breadth being as '69 to the length taken as 1.00. One of the other skulls had been forcibly cleft before burial. The only object of antiquity with the skeletons was a finely-chipped arrow-head of flint, of a beautiful leaf-shape, and weighing forty-three grains: the point of its more tapering extremity was broken off when found, as represented in the woodcut. It has measured 2 inches in length, by inch in breadth; or 51 by 23 millimetres.

Leaf-shaped Arrowhead of Flint, from Long

(Actual size.)

The repeated discovery of simple leaf-shaped Barrow at Fyfield, Wilts. flint arrow-heads in the long barrows, must, I think, be regarded as something more than a

1 Ten Years' Diggings, pp. 95, 96, 2 Ibid, pp. 230, 276. Comp. p. 227.

coincidence. It seems, indeed, to indicate the concurrence of the earliest type of finished flint weapon with probably the earliest form of sepulchral tumulus in this part of the world. The more advanced and complex barbed flint arrow-heads, which are not unfrequently found in the circular barrows of the age of bronze and of burning the dead, have never been found in the long barrows. It would be no objection to this view if leaf-shaped arrow-heads were frequently met with in the round barrows. Indeed, we know that the simpler and earlier varieties of all objects of utility frequently continue in use long after the invention of the more elaborate and costly forms. As regards the Wiltshire barrows, however, it may be observed that Sir R. C. Hoare nowhere records the discovery of a leaf-shaped flint arrow-head in any of the numerous round barrows which he explored. In the Museum at Stourhead there is only one such among many beautiful ones of the barbed form. It is much thicker and clumsier than any of those I have described above; measures 1 inch in length, and bears the number "83." I have not been able to obtain access to the Catalogue to which, no doubt, this number refers; but possibly, this is one of the "two rude arrow-heads of flint found near the head" of a skeleton, in a circular barrow near Tytherington. may belong to a period when leaf-shaped arrow-heads were no longer used by the chiefs, and when less pains were bestowed on their fabrication.

It

The flint heads of missile weapons, when chipped into form at all, were no doubt of a shape for which, in the first instance, the foliage of some tree or plant supplied the ready type. This shape

1 See the barbed arrow-heads found in round barrows, described by Sir R. C. Hoare, sometimes with the entire skeleton, "Ancient Wilts," i., p. 211, pl. xxx., p. 239, pl. xxxiv. (in the latter case with a fine bronze dagger blade); and sometimes with burnt bones, "Ancient Wilts," i., 183, pl. xxii. In two or three other instances, there is nothing to shew whether the arrow-heads were of the barbed or simple leaf-shape. [Ibid, i., 104, 209, 242.] The examination of the Museum at Stourhead, makes it probable that they were of the barbed form.

2 Ancient Wilts, i., 104.

was never departed from as regards the blades of javelins and spears, it being the most suitable for the purposes of those weapons; but was, for the most part, replaced by the barbed form for the heads of arrows. When I speak of the leaf-shaped as the long barrow type of arrow-head, I desire not to be understood as restricting it to that form of tumulus, but as indicating it as that which is alone found there.1

The long barrows are a remarkable class of tumuli, which stand apart from all others. The narrow and elongate (steno- or dolichocephalic) character of the skulls found in them contrasts strongly with the prevailing broad and short (brachycephalic) form of the skulls from the round barrows. Again, many of the long-barrow skulls are cleft in all directions; having been shivered, as would appear, by the stroke of a stone axe, wielded perhaps by a sacrificial priest or Druid, in honour of the obsequies of some primeval British chief. Another feature, derived from the form of the associated flint weapons, may now, I think, be added to the characteristics of a class of tumuli, which there are many reasons for regarding as the oldest sepulchral monuments of this part of Britain.

1 Such a discovery as that by Mr. J. R. Mortimer, of leaf-shaped arrow and javelin heads in a circular barrow on Bishop Wilton Wold, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and which has been described by Dr. J. Barnard Davis in the "Reliquary." (vol. v., p. 185,) and since brought by him under the notice of the Society of Antiquaries, (May 17th, 1866, Proc. Soc. Antiq. 2nd series, iii., p. 323) is by no means inconsistent with the conclusions arrived at in this communication.

2 Since this was written, I have ascertained that the fictile remains in the long barrows are of a quite distinct and peculiar type Pottery of any kind, however, associated with the primary interments, is of very rare occurrence in them.

VOL. XI.-NO. XXXI.

E

FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS RELATING TO THE

Ancient State of the Town of Wokingham,

IN THE COUNTIES OF BERKS AND WILTS;

By the late F. A. CARRINGTON, Esq.,

Recorder of Wokingham.*

HE Parish and Town of Wokingham, are both partly situate in the counties of Berks and Wilts. They are in extent 8131 acres, and at the census of 1851, their population was 3752. The Berkshire portion of the town and parish lies in the Hundred of Sonning, the Wiltshire portion of both, including the church, being in the Hundred of Ambrosebury, now Amesbury, in the county of Wilts. The name of the place is sometimes spelled Wokingham, sometimes Okingham; though probably till of late years it was pronounced without the initial W; being sounded as in the counties of Wilts, Gloucester, Worcester, and Salop, and perhaps others; where W. is not sounded before o, or oo. Thus we hear of 'ooster, and 'oolverhampton, and at Gloucester, we should be told that "Jemmy 'ood" (the celebrated Gloucester miser) once ad a present of an 'oodcock;" and in the ancient cuckoo song, in the British Museum [Harl. MS. No. 978] written in the reign of Henry the Third, the word "Wood" is spelled “Wde.” 3

This Article was not completed at the time of Mr. Carrington's death: but the MS. having been kindly sent to me by his relative Mrs. Marklove, I have arranged it and added a note or two. With these exceptions it is printed just

as the author left it. J. E. Jackson, Leigh Delamere.

In the year 1845, under the statute 7 & 8 Vict. cap. 66, detached parts of counties were annexed to the counties by which they were surrounded.

2 Oaksey in North Wilts is constantly written in very old documents Wokkesey. J. E. J.

3 A coloured fac-simile of this song with music and words forms the frontispiece of Vol. 1. of Mr. Chappel's admirable work on the "Popular Music of the olden time." Any young Lady could play and sing it from the original MS., or the fac-simile, without the smallest difficulty. The music is in the key of F, and written in the fourth line tenor clef, the same in which music of the Handel period is printed for the tenors in our Cathedrals.

The name of the place, (as I am informed by my friend Mr. Akerman, F.S.A. and Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries,) is derived from two Anglo-Saxon words Uuoccing and Ham: the Woccings being an Anglo-Saxon tribe, and Ham a meadow waterbound, of which the Ham at Gloucester and the Ham at Tewkesbury, are instances. Ham is also a town. These however, should not be confounded with the Anglo-Saxon word Ham, with a long accent over the a (pronounced Hame), which means a home.

THE PLACE BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

That the place existed before the Norman Conquest, there seems every reason to believe. "Uuoccingas," in a charter of Offa, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), no doubt meant the territory of the Wokings.

By this charter, Offa grants to his prefect Brorda, some liberties of his church, "sita est in loco ubi dicitur Uuoccingas" (situate in the place where it is called Uuoccingas).

The late Mr. J. M. Kemble, another very high authority in Anglo-Saxon antiquities, in his "Saxons in England," [App. A.] treats the name "Uuoccingas" as meaning both Wokingham and Woking; and Mr. Akerman suggests that probably the lands of the Uuoccing tribe extended from Wokingham to Woking, in the same way that the lands of the Hastings' tribe extended from the present town of Hastings to a very considerable distance around. Mr. Kemble also suggests that Uuoccingas formed what was termed

"Mark," that is, a place where the landowners held the land in common. It is highly improbable that a town if it were founded in the Royal Forest of one of our Norman Kings, should have had a name compounded of two Anglo-Saxon words; after the Conquest everything was Norman, the proceedings in our Courts of Justice were Norman, and children in our schools were taught in the Norman language, till about the reign of Richard the Second. Ralph Higden, in his Polychronicon, translated about the year 1385, says that Englishmen had from the beginning "thre 1 Codex Diplomaticus, vol. i. p. 168.

2 Cited in the History of the English Language, prefixed to the Rev. H. J. Todd's edition of Doctor Johnson's Dictionary.

« PreviousContinue »