Maiden Bovver. A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE feet wide. On a portion of the northern circuit the rampart has disappeared. There were five entrances, on the north-west, north, north-east, south-west and south-east, from the last of which two ancient trackways led to a long tumulus on ground where Dunstable now stands, and to the barrows on the downs, known as 'Five Knolls.' The po- lar diameter is 775 feet across, and the transverse 750. Mr. Worthington G. Smith kindly allows the reproduction of his plan from the book already mentioned, to which I am indebted for the details given above. He states that ' the in- terior of the camp, and the fields outside, are (or have been) full of neo- lithic implements, celts, scrapers, arrow-heads, hammer-stone fabricators and borers. Bronze tools, and a hoard of gold coins have been found, but I have not been able to trace them.' ' From the number of hut-circles, tumuli, and pre-historic remains which abound in the immediate neighbourhood, it is evident that these chalk downs must have been the home of man from a very early age. The prevalence of this name, Maiden Castle, or Maiden Bower or Burh, is a curious fact which should here be noted, as applied to pre- historic, or at any rate very early encampments. It does not follow that the name is pre-Roman, for out of thirty-two examples which have been listed and mapped, 2 from Aberdeen in the north to Dorchester in the south, it appears only in the country where the Anglo-Saxon speech pre- vailed, or in the border lands influenced by it. In purely Gadhelic or Cymbric lands where there are many similar strongholds, such as Corn- wall, Wales, Ireland or Gaelic Scotland, it does not appear. This is how- ever not the place to enter into the vexed question of its significance. (3) Quint's Hill, or Quince Hill, Old Warden. — This is a mere fragment of a once redoubtable fortification. It stands on high ground to the north of the church. The site is so thickly covered with wood and undergrowth as to make it difficult even to examine it. There appear to be double ramparts and ditches of large proportions, which curve round towards the park, where the ground rapidly slopes away 1 Man, the Primeval Savage, 318, 321. J Antiquary, xxxviii. (1902), 256, and ensuing correspondence. 270
