numerous megalithic remains, though all of these were in a ruinous and disordered condition. In fact the area seemed to be a vast tribal cemetery. Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, in 1878, was able, from a study of the monumental relics, to make an imaginary restoration of parallel avenues of stones as they once existed. At the North-Eastern extremity, there was a stone chamber which has unfortunately since been disturbed[134]. Some writers have believed that the hillock on which Addington church is built was artificial, but it is practically certain that it is purely natural; its existence being perhaps due to a protective capping of ironstone which has been proof against denudation. The church of Stanton Drew, near Bristol, is placed within the precincts of a veritable Valhalla of monumental relics. Three stone circles are situated, as it were, within a stone’s throw of the building, the most distant being about one-third of a mile away, and the nearest only 150 yards. But besides these more perfect remains, there is a group close to the churchyard, towards the South-West. This group, called the Cove, consists of two upright blocks, 10¼ feet and 4½ feet respectively in height, and one prostrate stone, 14½ feet in length (Fig. 12). The original character of the monument cannot be decisively known. Mr C. W. Dymond contends that the stones hardly represent a ruined dolmen, because of the unusual height of two of the remaining pillars. Other speculations, hazarded, as it seems to the writer, without a vestige of proof, regard the Cove as a “druidical chair of state,” and, again, as a shelter for sacrificial fire. On the whole, it is safer to consider these monoliths as survivors of a cromlech or stone-ring. The material, which is unhewn, is a siliceous breccia of Triassic age, and was probably brought from Harptree-under-Mendip, about seven miles from the present position. The church, it should be added, retains portions of Norman work[135]. [Illustration: FIG. 12. The Cove, Stanton Drew, Somerset; a group of megaliths situated near the village church.]