Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/223

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PROTECTIVE WORKS
215

long, from which another chamber, at present about 13 feet long, branches off, but whose full dimensions have not been ascertained. The convergent walls are of unhewn stones and covered with large granite slabs.

Another and still more interesting specimen is at Chapel Euny, parish of Sancreed, about 41/2 miles from Penzance. Its main features consist of a gallery 60 feet long, 6 feet wide and from 6 to 7 feet high. At one end it gives access to the surface by a small trapdoor closed by a stone, with holes in the side, apparently for barring it, and at the other there is a low passage, 10 feet long, which leads to a beehive chamber, 16 feet in diameter. The floors of the gallery and chamber were paved with flagstones and provided with drains beneath the pavement. During the excavation of these underground structures evidence of tin-smelting, and various relics were found, among the latter being whetstones, hammer-stones, fragments of different kinds of pottery, an iron spear-head, a "pot-hook," and a piece of red Samian ware. On the surface in the close vicinity of these chambers there are the remains of a British hut-village—thus showing, like other examples in this district as well as elsewhere, that there was a relationship between the surface and underground dwellings.

The Cornish and Irish souterrains do not manifest so strongly the single, and sometimes double, curvatures which are so char