Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/186

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A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE fascinating, as is also his comparison of the ornament on a bronze bucket with that on some GauUsh coins. Another discovery of great import was that of the marsh village found near Glastonbury by Mr. A. Bulleid in 1892. This proves to be the remains of habitations belonging to the Late Celtic period ; they were built upon layers of brushwood and timber, held in position by numbers of small piles, until they were raised clear of the water. Prof Boyd Dawkins in his address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association when it was held at Nottingham in 1893, after giving a brief resume of the articles found in this marsh village, concluded his address as follows : ' We may therefore fix with tolerable certainty the age of these lake dwellers as being just before the time that the Roman influence was felt directly in the west of England and certainly before the Roman conquest. The discovery is most important ; when fully worked out it will probably throw a flood of light on the history of pre-Roman Britain.' The results of the ex- cavations which have been carefully conducted by Mr. Bulleid are not yet published. Not the least important addition to our gradually extending know- ledge of this period is the fine series of articles which Northamptonshire has yielded from the excavations of Hunsbury Camp during the years 1882 to 1884, for it is to the same Late Celtic period or Prehistoric Iron age that the whole collection of remains found in the camp belongs. This earthwork locally known as Danes' Camp is situated towards the end, and on the highest part of a broad ridge of elevated ground about two miles south-west of Northampton. It occupies a strong position, commanding on the north-eastern side the valley of the Nene and the rising ground on the northern side of the river as far as Earl's Barton and Ecton. From that side of the camp which faces north and on the north-western side extensive views are obtained over the country towards Duston, Berrywood, Upton, Weedon, Blisworth, and as far as Roade in the southerly direction. By the side of the camp is an ancient trackway, which for about half a mile on either side is grass grown, and forms the boundary between the parish of Hardingstone, in which the camp is situated, and the parish of Wootton. This camp has been known to successive generations of antiquaries since the days of Morton, who gave a short description of it in his work on the Natural History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, published in 171 2. Morton considered it to be a summer camp of the Danes, though he gives no very sound reason for his opinion ; as he tells us in his quaint style : ' I attribute it to the Danes, the rather because I see not to whom else it should belong.' Morton apparently gave more credit to the Danes than the present school of archaeologists does, for he attributed Rainsborough Camp also to them as well as Borough Hill near Daventry. In bygone days both the Devil and the Danes had a great many more things attributed to them than they could justly claim. Near Driffield in Yorkshire, at 146