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DESOEIPTIONS OE CRANIA.
correctly deriving the last syllable from the British—^en, head, whüst he traces IiaJc in the
Arabic or Chaldee, in which latter language, he says, accm signifies a serpent. This is absurd
enough: Hakpen is a name not confined to this locality. It occurs as the designation of hills in
both Devonshire and Berkshire. In the east of Devon, to the north of Honiton, the highest
part of Blackdown Hills is so called, with perhaps a slight difference in the vocalisation.
Hoekpen or Hacpen is the name of the highest point of the range of chalk hills to the south
of Wantage, near the weU-known White Horse, which gives its name to the vale in that part of
Berkshire *. Hakpen seems really to signify no more than the highest part of a range of hiUs
—their head or summit—pen, Cymric, head. The first syllable, which is probably redvmdant,
may be also from the Cymric,—uchel, high,—which in later times may readily have been replaced
by the Anglo-Saxon heng, having the same signification f .
Overton or Kennet HUl, the site of our Barrows, as well as Hakpen to the north, is traversed
by a very ancient road or trackway in the turf, generally attributed to the Britons. This road,
which is seen in the foreground of om- view, is called the Midge-way; it skirts the edge of
the escarpment of the chalk through this part of North Wiltshire, and through the whole
of Berkshire, and ending ia a common road, is traced as far as Streatley on the Thames.
This Ridge-way seems to have constituted the Upper Ickneld Way; the pai-allel road of the Lower
Ickneld Way, the military highway of the Iceni, being traced in several places in the valley
below. The great national temple of Abm-y was thus situated close to the intersection of the
British Ickneld Way with the Roman road from Londinium and CaUeva to Aqute SoHs, which,
as Dr. Guest has pointed out, probably itself succeeded to a British trackway f.
The great earthen vallum of the AVansdyke stretches across the country from east to west,
about two miles to the south of Overton Hül. It is highly probable that this magnificent earthwork
formed the last boimdary Une between the intrusive Belg£e to the south, and the Dobuni
to the north, in whose territory the consecrated site of Abury was, in such case, situated. Abury
being thus secured to the Dobuni, nothing is more likely than that the Belgas would construct a
place for sacred rites within their own territory. Such was probably the origin of Stonehenge,
which in its complete form at least, it is clear, must have been the work of a people more
advanced in the arts of life than those by whom the temple of Abury, wonderful as it was, had
been constructed §.
The downs and fields around Kennet and Abury abound with barrows; this locus consecratiis,
like the later one of Stonehenge, being sm-rounded by its primitive British necropolis.
Two of the most remarkable groups of barrows in this neighbourhood axe situated, the one near
the commencement of the Kennet avenue, the other in a similar relation to what was the termination
of that of Beckhampton. Both of these groups were explored by Su- R. C. Hoare ||. Those
tme locality is doubtless that showQ in the Ordnance Map.
Stukelev himself, though deriTiiig the name from the serpent's
head on Overton Hill, to which he boldly applies the designation,
does not absolutely give the latter the name of Hakpen,
but calls it " the southern promontory of Hakpen Hill."
* Camden, "Britannia," vol. i. p. 225. Hoare, "Ancient
Wilts," vol. ii. p. ol. The Wiltshire Hakpen is on a continuation
of the same range of hills.
+ Names, with a reduplication of the same idea, compounded
of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon, are not uncommon in
our local nomenclature. See an excellent paper on this subject,
by J. W. Whitaker, D.D., in the " Journal of the
British Arch Ecological Association," 1850, vol. vi. p. 257.
11.
i: Archseological Journal, 1851, vol. viii. p. 153. Hoare,
" Ancient Wilts," vol. ii. p. 45, and Roman iEra, p. 22. There
is httle doubt that the Ridge-way and the Ickneld Way, one or
both, extended across the Vale of Pewsey to the south to Sorbiodunum;
thus connecting the east with the south of the
island. Dr. Guest has recently thrown much light on the
history of the four great Highways of Britain, of which the
Ickneld is one. Archieological Journal, vol. xiv. p. 99.
§ In this opinion, we follow the views of one of the most
accurate of our antiquaries — Dr. Guest. Archieological
Journal, vol. viii. p. 143-157.
II Ancient Wilts, vol. ii. 1821, p, 91. About thirty other
barrows in the vicinity of Abury were examined by Dean Mere-
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ANCIENT BRITISH—KENNET, NORTH WILTS.
at Beckhampton, now much leveled by the plough, were ten or twelve in number, and are
situated on the west side of the road, nearly opposite to the eighty-second milestone from London.
More than half the number appeared to have been previously opened, and in four only was the
interment found, which in each instance was after cremation. In one the bui-nt bones had been
deposited in a large coarse ui-n of British pottery rudely ornamented; in the others in shaUow
oists in the chalk. With one only were ornaments or objects of any sort discovered, consisting
of two rings and a sort of stud, of jet. The other group, with which we are more immediately
concerned, is that on Overton Hill, immediately adjacent to the double megalithic circle, or head of
the dracontme avenue. Such a situation for a cemetery, near a sacred place of this description,
would natm-aUy be sought after by the more distinguished Britons of the suiTounding tribe. It
IS a remarkable fact, that the whole of the ground adjacent to these cii-cles, when enclosed nearly
two centuries since, was foimd to be full of human remains. In 1678, Dr Robert Toope a
physician then resident at Marlborough, in a letter to John Aubrey, gives a curious relation of
the discovery by labourers of skeletons at this place, which he says had the name of "Millfield."
Dr. Toope terms the double circle " a temple," and describes it as " a large spherical
foundation, whose diameter is forty yai-ds: within this there is another orb, whose sphere is
fifteen yards in diameter: round about this temple a most exact playne; and but little more
than a foot under this superficies laid the bones soe close one by another that scul toucheth scul
I exposed two or three, and perceived their feet lay towai-d the temple. At the feet of the first
order, I saw laye the heads of the next; their feet intending the temple; and I reaUy beUeve
the whole ground is fuU of dead bodies." He adds that the bones were large but much decayed •
though "the teeth were extreem, and wonderfuUy white, hard and sound," upon which he notes'
"no tobacco taken in those days." Dr. Toope says, " I came the next day and dug for them "
(the bones), "and stored myself with many bushels, of which I made a noble medicine th^t
reUeved many of my distressed neighbom-s." Aubrey adds, "this was in 1678, and Dr Toope
was lately (1685) at the Golgotha again, to supply a defect of medicine he hath had from hence* "
Dr. StLikeley says of these skeletons, " They were of the lower class of the Britons that were not
at the charge of a tumulus;" and Sir R. C. Hoare incUnes to the same opiniont Their
mterment, however, so close to the sacred precincts, seems adverse to such a view, and sug<.ests
rather theii- being the remains of the unhappy victims of the deadly superstition of the time
Aubrey states that "sharp and formed flints were found among them,"-the instruments
possibly of destruction.
The barrows on Overton Hill, a little beyond the seventy-ninth mHestone from London
form a group of about ten in number, seven of which were explored by Sii- R. C. Hoare about
wether in 1849. See Proceedings of the Archieological Institute
at Salisbur)', p. 82. The absence of costly ornaments of
amber and gold, in the barrows of this district, is alluded to by
Sir R. C. Hoare, as distinguishing them from those near
Stonehenge, and is borne out by all the more recent excavations
of these tumuli. The immigrant tribe of Belga; were
doubtless more wealthy than the aboriginal Dobuni of North
Wilts, and also kept up a more ultimate traffic with Gaul.
* Hoare, "Ancient Wilts," vol. U. p. 63. Dr. Toope was a
contributor to the philosophical papers of the Hon. Robert
Boyle. Human bones, especially the skull, were long regarded
as a potent remedy in nervous diseases. Pliny alludes to the use
of these and other medicaments derived from the human body,
n .
in terms of just indignation. Artemon and Autfeus, he says,
used human skull in epilepsy and rabie. Pliny adds, "procnl
a nobis nostrisque Uteris absint ista." (lib. xxviii. § 2.) It is
related that the skull of Carolan the Irish bard who died
in the last century, which was deposited at the church at
Kilronan, was resorted to by the peasantry by whom a great
part of it had been scraped away, the powder mixed with water
being used as a cure for epilepsy. Ulster, Jom-nal of Archeology,
1853, vol. i. p. 304. Human skull, " Cranium Hominis."
was an article of the London Pharmacopoeia as late as 174C,
when with such remedies as "Album Graecnm," &c. it was at
last expunged.
t Abury, p. 33. "Ancient Wilts," vol. ii. p. 64.
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