Another, formed of basalt, 614 inches long, the sides slightly hollowed, from Chesterford, Cambridge,[1] was in the possession of the late Mr. Joshua Clarke, of Saffron Walden.
Another, 5 inches long, was found in the Thames off Parliament Stairs, and passed with the Roach Smith Collection into the British Museum. One, 534 inches long, from Cumberland, is in the Christy Collection.
One of sandstone (412 inches) was discovered at Northenden,[2] Cheshire, in 1883.
In the Greenwell Collection is one of greenstone, 634 inches long, found at Millfield, near Sunderland. The hole is somewhat oval, and tapers inwards from each side. There is also one of basalt, 414 inches long, with an oval hole and slightly convex sides, from Holystone, Northumberland. The edge, as usual, is blunt.
An axe-head of this kind, from a chambered tumulus or dolmen at Craigengelt, near Stirling, Scotland, is engraved by Bonstetten.[3]
Fig. 126.—Potter Brompton Wold. 12
One with flat sides (614 inches) was found in the Tay, near Mugdrum Island, Perth,[4] and another (7 inches) at Sorbie, Wigtownshire.[5]
Implements or weapons of this character occasionally occur in Ireland,[6] but the sides are usually flat.
The exact form is rare in Denmark and North Germany. Lindenschmit[7] engraves a thin specimen from Lüneburg. It occurs also in Styria. A specimen from Lithuania, more square at the butt, is engraved by Mortillet.[8] I do not remember to have met with it in France.
In one of the barrows on Potter Brompton Wold,[9] Yorkshire, explored by Canon Greenwell, accompanying an interment by cremation, he found a beautifully-formed axe-head of serpentine (?) the surface of which was in places scaling off from decomposition, arising from its having been partly calcined. A single view of it is given in Fig. 126. The hole is about 114 inches in diameter on each side, but rather smaller in the middle. The cutting edge has been rounded as well as the angles round the sides, but this process has been carried to a greater extent on one than the other; possibly this was the outer side.
A somewhat similar, but rather broader, axe-head of basalt, 514 inches long, was found by the late Mr. T. Bateman in a barrow called Carder Low,[10] near Hartington, in company with a small bronze dagger, and near the elbow of a contracted skeleton.
- ↑ Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xxv. p. 272.
- ↑ Pr. Lanc. and Ch. Arch. Soc., vol. xi. p.172.
- ↑ "Essai sur les Dolmens," pl. iv. 1.
- ↑ P. S. A. S., vol. viii. p. 264.
- ↑ P. S. A. S., vol. xxiii. p. 208.
- ↑ Wilde, "Cat. Mus. R. I. A.," p. 79.
- ↑ "Alt. u. H. V.," vol. i. Heft i. Taf. i. 18.
- ↑ Matériaux, vol. i. p. 462.
- ↑ "Brit. Barrows," p. 158.
- ↑ "Vest. Ant. Derb.," p. 63. Cat., p 6, No. 49
