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ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL.
PROM LONG TUMULUS, WITH CISTS, NEAR LITTLETON DREW, NORTH WILTS.
( r e g i o n of t h e dobuni , temp, p t o l em^ i , a.d. 120.)
Cramutnfrom Tumulus near Littleton Brew.—Quarter-size.
The earnest notice of the Littleton Drew tiunulus is by John Aubrey, the antiquary, who says
that in the 17th centiu-y it was oaUed JUigbiiry. " Lugbm-y is in a field in the parish of
Nettleton, but near to Littleton Drew in Wiltshire, over against the ruins of Castle Combe. At
the east end of this barrow is a great table stone of bastard freestone, leaning on two pitched
perpendicular stones. I suppose it was heretofore borne up by two more such stones like the
legges of a table. Neer to this stone was a little round barrow, before it was ploughed away since
A.D. 1630." In Aubrey's MS.,' Monumenta Britannica,' now in the Bodleian librai-y, is a rough
sketch of the barrow and trilith, which shows that, two hundi-ed years since, the stones had the
same position as at present *. They are about two hundi-ed yards from the great Roman road, the
Foss, whence the legionaries of the Cassars must often have contemplated this ancient monumentt.
On the opposite Castle hiU of Combe is an entrenched camp, curiously protected by a
series of paraUel eai-th-works, doubtless of ancient British construction, though chosen as the site
of a castle in Norman tunes i. The barrow is immediately without the boundary of the parish of
" I doubt not that this was the monument of some Roman
chief who died on the march, and was commemorated in this
rude manner, for want of time and other eoufeniences." This
opinion can scarcely now call for serious refutation.
t Hoare, "Ancient Wilts," vol. ii. p. 301, and "Koman
Era," p. 102. Scrope, "History of Castle Combe," p. 7.
(1)
* Quoted from Aubrey by Sir B. C. Hoare, "Ancient
Wilts," vol. ii. p. 99. A wood engraving from Aubrey's
sketch is given in the " History of Castle Combe," by G.
Poulett Scrope, Esq., M.P., 1852, p. 7.
t Collinson, "History of Somerset," 1791, vol. i. p. 101,
copied in the additions to Camden (1806, vol. i. p. 119), says,
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