appeared to form the covering of a chamber, the uprights of which jutted up below them. To the east of these was a space, whence the cap-stones seemed to have been removed,—two or three, of large size, perhaps these very stones, lying on the mound at some distance. Nearer to the east the stones were scattered in a confused heap, but beneath them appeared the tops of two projecting uprights, separated by little more than a foot's space, and probably indicating the narrowest part of the gallery leading to the chamber. At the very end of the barrow, scarcely, if at all, raised above the natural level, was a large flat slab, nearly twelve feet square, partly buried in the turf. Near the north-east and south-east angles of the tumulus two stones remain standing, and we found traces of two or three others, which had fallen or been broken away, and were partially buried in the turf. These stones, doubtless, formed part of a peristalith, by which the entire barrow was originally surrounded, just as was the great chambered cairn of New Grange in Ireland. Some of the chambered long barrows of the West of England, such as those of Stoney Littleton and Uley, have been inclosed by a dry walling of stone in horizontal courses, carried to a height of from two to three feet.[1] The peristalith of the long barrow at West Kennet, as the writer has found was the case with similar tumuli in the same district, seems to have united both methods, and to have been formed by a combination of ortholithic and horizontal masonry. This was ascertained by digging between the stones at the north-east angle of the tumulus.
Fig. 4. Peristalith. (Scale 10 feet to an inch.)
Here, at one spot, were several tile-like oolitic stones, the remains, no doubt, of a dry walling, by which the spaces between the sarsen ortholiths had been filled up, after the manner shown in the accompanying wood-cut, (fig. 4.) though carried, probably, to a greater height. In the present year the writer made an excavation in a long barrow on Walker's Hill (Alton Down), about three miles to the south of West Kennet. At the base of this large mound, near the east end, is an upright of sarsen, and below the turf, at a little distance on each side, another fallen ortholith was uncovered. Between these, on each side of the remaining upright, was a horizontal walling of oolitic stones, neatly faced on the outside, five or six courses of which remained undisturbed. Long barrows of the large proportions of those near Avebury, finished with a peristalith of this description, must in their original condition have possessed a certain barbaric grandeur. Though apparently more important monuments, they call to mind the tumuli of ancient Greece, such
- ↑ Ante, p. 406, note c. For a description of the inclosing wall of the tumulus at Stoney Littleton, see the Rev. H. M. Scarth's paper, in Proceedings of Somerset Archæological Society, vol. viii. p. 52.
