depth. Those at the sides of the place are smaller than the more central ones. Some are double pits, being connected by a short trench, and, in places, the trench seems quite continuous. The wood in which they are was planted about fifty years ago, and at that time they were partially filled up by throwing the earth from the top into the pits; and the accumulation of debris is about eighteen inches in depth. It is very clear from their careful construction, paving, and fireplaces, that they were intended for permanent habitation, and not merely for the temporary shelter of an army on the march. The place is, in fact, a British town-a fortified settlement of the Iceni; probably of a date anterior to the arrival of the Romans. We know from Cæsar that the ancient Britons

lived in such a manner, and very similar habitations are used to this day in uncivilized countries, and even, I believe, in some of the islands on the coast of Ireland. Besides the examples I have mentioned at Weybourne, which number about 1000, Mr. Harrod mentions as many as 2000 more at Aylmerton Heath, called the "Shrieking Pits," from a superstition of voices heard there; others called "hills and holes," at Beeston, Edgefield, Marsham, Mousehold Heath, and Eaton, all in Norfolk. There are many other examples in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Wiltshire, the latter described by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, in his "Ancient Wiltshire." In none of these, as far as I can learn, have any implements ever been found, although excavations for the purpose have been carefully made.3

In Feb. 1852 I obtained permission to examine some of the pits in "Grimes Graves;"-a trench was dug through several of them, and in each case, about three feet below the lowest point at the bottom, we came upon a small oval wall of flints, evidently a fire-place, containing numerous bones of

3 A flint, apparently worked for a celt, was picked up in the wood of Grimes Graves by Mr. Prigg, of Bury, on the day of the visit of the Suffolk Archæological Society from Thetford, Sept. 28th, 1866.

oxen, but no implements. By the kind permission of Mr. Angerstein, excavations have again been made this week for our inspection-day, and with the same result, although in the pits now opened the fire-places are not so distinctly preserved.

Many interesting questions arise as we try to re-people the scene before us with its original inhabitants. How was it possible for them to protect themselves from the weather? How were so wide pits roofed across? Had they regular mud-built domes? or were the poles or wattles set some way down the pit, so as nearly to be hidden from sight from the outside?

Why are so many of the larger pits in the centre, and the smaller ones at the sides? Did they dig fresh ones as the numbers of the inhabitants increased, or were they so made that, if driven to the centre by attacks of enemies, there might be room for all?

Why is there no bank apparently on the western side? Had the people possession of the country on that side, and sought only to protect themselves on the north and east?

Whence did they get water for daily use? There is a spring in the large gravel-pit on the east side, which is now never dry, and this may have been formerly much more copious. There also appears to be a way along the bank down to the river, about a mile off. Are the mounds near the spring original, and did they serve to protect it?

Where did they bury their dead? An extensive cemetery ought to be discoverable near at hand. I am told since I have been here, that on the Suffolk side of the river, opposite this place, skeletons are found in great numbers. Is that likely to have been the cemetery?

Where did they throw away their refuse? For only a few bones of animals are found in the pits.

What was the purpose of the mound at the eastern side? Was it a look-out or "speculatorium"?

Once more, what is the meaning of the name, "Grimes Graves?" This point I must endeavour to give an answer to. The Saxons must have found these works here, and called them "Grimes Graves." "Graves" of course means pits or trenches; we only use the word now to mean a pit for burial, but it is properly a place dug out, and we retain the old meaning in the word "engrave," &c. In the Promptorium Parvulorum we have "Gravyn, or grubbyn yn pe erthe, fodio." I find also that Camden, or rather his editor Gibson, calls the ditches of an earthwork (Vandlebury, Gogmagog Hills) by the term "graffs," as a word then in use, as a word then in use, "graffs between the rampires." We all remember a verse in the Prayer-Book translation of the Psalms," they have graven and digged up a pit;" and the Geneva Bible has another text, "he that graveth an habitation for himself in a rock." "Greaves," as pits, occurs once in Layamon (Gent. Mag., July, 1866, p. 73). Graves, therefore, means the pits, or the "diggings."

The word "Grim," or "Grimes," is much less certain in its interpretation. It occurs very frequently in connection with earthworks, and is found denoting them in Saxon charters. A "Grimsdyke," or "Grimsditch," runs from Great Berkhampstead, Herts, to Bradenham, Bucks; there is another large one in Wiltshire, south of Salisbury; another in the parish of Saffron Walden, Essex; another near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire; another near Ewelme, in the same county,—I do not mean merely a dyke, but one called Grimsdyke. The Roman wall between the Firths of Forth and Clyde has the name of "Græmes dyke." In the present case the pits are called Grimes Graves, and the Hundred Grimeshoe; but I am not aware that the Dyke, or Devil's Ditch, which runs along the western boundary of the parish by Wilton is ever' termed Grimsdyke. Blomefield, whose opinion on such a point we shall not be bound to follow, says the name has its origin in Grime, whom he supposes to have been a person, a "leader or general, probably of the Danes in