[237]Thorpe’s Preface to _The Chronicle_, vol. i., p. viii., foot-note 1. See, however, Lappenberg’s _History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings_; translated by Thorpe, Literary Introduction, p. xxxix.; and the Preface to _Monumenta Historica Britannica_, p. 75, where, as Mr. Thorpe notices, the examples quoted, in favour of the Mercian origin of the manuscript, are certainly, in several instances, wrong. [238]I may as well add that a little way from where the Bound Oak formerly stood, near Dibden, and between it and Sandy Hill, lies a small mound, thirty yards in circumference, and three feet high in the centre, surrounded by an irregular moat, from which the earth had been taken. This I opened in 1862, driving a broad trench from the east to the centre, and another from the south to the centre, which, as also the west side, we entirely excavated; digging below the natural soil to the depth of four feet. Nothing, however, was found, though I have no doubt charcoal was somewhere present. Beyond this, in Dibden Bottom, rises a large mound, from twenty to thirty feet high, apparently of a sepulchral character, known as Barney Barns Hill. Proceeding, close to Butt’s Ash End Lane, and near the Roman, or rather British, road to Leap (see chap v., p. 56), stand two barrows, the northernmost one hundred and the southernmost eighty yards in circumference. Farther away, in Holbury Purlieu, are three more, each with a circle of about seventy yards. To the west of these, in the Forest, as shown in the illustration at page 213, rise four more, the three farthest forming a triangle. Beyond these, again, about three-quarters of a mile distant, near Stoneyford Pond, lie four others, respectively ninety, one hundred, and seventy yards in circumference. To the north rise three more, known as the Nodes, the westernmost about one hundred yards in circumference; the other two, which are ovaler and form twin barrows, being one hundred and fifty and one hundred yards. Two more stand on the side of the Beaulieu road to Fawley. All these, with others on Lymington Common and near Ashurst Lodge, and on the East Fritham Plain, still remain to be explored. For the barrows opened by the Rev. J. Pemberton Bartlett, on Langley Heath, see farther on, page 211. [239]_South-Western Parts of Hampshire_, vol. i. pp. 69-79. [240]Warner probably meant an overhanging brim, such as is common to most of the early Keltic cinerary urns, or, perhaps, one like that of the left-hand urn in the illustration at p. 196, which is more contracted than the others. He unfortunately gives us no dimensions.