"The same custom prevailed in other portions of the Celtic church. In Scotland, St. Ninian's church amongst the southern Picts at the end of the 4th, or beginning of the 5th century, obtained its name of 'Candida Casa' from the very unusual circumstance that it was built of stone, the use of which for building purposes was not customary at that date.23

"St. Adamnan implies that the first buildings at Iona, including the church, were of wood.

"Early in the 8th century, Nectan, king of the Picts, sent into England for builders in stone, after that Benedict Biscop had introduced there the Roman custom of employing this more durable material.

"In the Northumbrian church, Finan, who had been a monk at Iona, and who succeeded Aidan as bishop of Lindisfarne, A.D. 651, 'built a church fit for an episcopal see, not of stone, but altogether of sawn wood, covered with reeds, after the Scotic fashion.'

"In England, the buildings at Glastonbury, as they existed in the British church, before the Anglo-Saxon refoundation of that monastery in the 7th century, were, according to tradition, of wood.

"In Wales, when St. Kentigern founded his monastery of St. Asaph, in the 6th century, he built the church of dressed wood, ' after the manner of the Britons, since they were not yet either accustomed or able to build with stone.' St. Gwynllyw, at the close of the same century, is recorded to have built a cemetery chapel of wood.24

"On the continent, when the great Celtic missionary St. Columbanus received from the King of the Lombards a site for his church and monastery at Bobbio, A.D. 615, he was said to have been supernaturally assisted in procuring the wood for that purpose.

"It must not be inferred that the use of wooden buildings was confined to the Celtic race. Such work was known in France as 'opus Gallicum,' in contradistinction to stone work, 'opus Romanense.' It is described in Italia Monumenta Historia

23" Eo quod ibi ecclesiam de lapide, insolito Brittonibus more fecerit."-Bede, H. E., III., 4.

24 It is supposed to be the church at Newport, Monmouthshire, situated in the hundred of Gwentloog, and dedicated to him under the name of St. Wodios.

Patriæ,' vol. I, Edict. Reg. Langobard. App. XI, p. 245. In Anglo-Saxon times, King Edwin (616-633), built a wooden church at Tynemouth; there was a 'monasteriolum ligneum' in the same town, rebuilt by St. Oswald in stone. The wooden cathedral at Chester-le-Street remained till A.D. 1042. The first church of St. Peter at York, A.D. 627, was 'de ligno.' There is a wooden church of the 11th century, at Little Greensted near Ongar, Essex, now."

E.

St. Edmund, who is said to have been born at Nürnberg in 841, became king of East Anglia in 855, and, after a crushing defeat by the Danes at Thetford in 870, was captured by them in a wood at Eglesdene (now Hoxne), tied to a tree, and slain with arrows. His body is said to have lain buried there for thirtythree years in an obscure wooden chapel, and then to have been removed to Bedrichesworth (St. Edmund's-Bury) where a large wooden church was constructed for its reception. During the ravages of the Danes in 1010,25 St. Edmund's bones were removed to London to avoid falling into their hands. There they remained three years, and, when they were being re-conveyed to Bury St. Edmund's, they were deposited on their way, in a "wooden chapel," which there seems good ground for identifying with the nave of the little church at Greensted, Chipping Ongar, Essex. "The building is formed of split trunks of oak trees, the top part being cut to a thin edge, which was let into a deep groove in the plate, and pinned. The bottoms of these upright timbers were morticed into the sill. Their sides were grooved, and tongues of oak let in between them, so as to make the whole firm and weather tight. Upon the face of the timber inside the church were a great number of triangular cuts, having a rough bur on one side, such as would be produced by the angle of an adze. These cuts are the key for the plaster with which the interior of the church was covered. There are twenty-four timbers on the south side, and twenty-five on the north. The nave is 29 feet, 9 inches long, 14 feet wide, and 5 feet 6 inches high to the top of the plate. The west end, part of which remains, was carried

25"And the Danes held sway over the East Angles, and for three months harried and burned, ay, even into the wild fens they went, and there slew men and cattle, and burned throughout the fens; and Thetford they burned, and Cambridge."-Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Thorpe's translation, M.X., p. 116.

up in the middle as high as the ridge of the roof, and consisted of two layers of planks fastened together with tree-nails. It is probable that the outside of the church was covered with plaster, or rough-cast. The external covering would carry us through a portion of the long period of existence of this church, and it must be remembered that its mode of construction completely prevented any repair by replacing one of the timbers. Every part is of the same age. To replace a side timber the roof plate must have been lifted; each tree being framed into the sill as well as into the plate. This is the strongest proof of its great antiquity, for it is not likely that any rebuilding would have been executed, after the 11th or 12th centuries, with such materials in the manner found here.” In 1848, the bottoms of the timbers having become unsound, they were taken down, the decayed and worm-eaten ends cut off, and then the whole carefully replaced. These extracts are from a little illustrated book by the Rev. P. W. Ray, Rector of Greensted, entitled The History of Greensted Church near Ongar, Essex.-Slocombe, Chipping Ongar, 1869.

F.

In connection with the subject of wooden churches, I may, perhaps, be allowed to call attention to one erected in a region abounding in forests of enormous extent, and furnishing timber of gigantic size. Douglas Pines, 200 to 250 feet in height and 6 to 10 feet in diameter, and "cedars" of scarcely inferior proportions, are abundant throughout thousands of square miles of forest in Washington Territory, U.S.A., and at the "town" of Old Tacoma there is a curious illustration of the connection between structure and material. The church, a small, barn-like erection, appears from a little distance to have gone into strange partnership with an Irish round tower or Ravenna campanile, standing, like them, detached from the building, but, on a nearer approach, it is seen that the practical and economical architect has merely cut down a fine old pine, some 6 or 7 feet thick, to within about 40 feet of the ground, and crowned the stump with a sort of pepper-castor structure, in which the bell is suspended. The inhabitants boast that theirs is "the oldest church tower on the American continent," and, as the age of the tree is probably upwards of 400 years, the claim is not altogether unfounded.

Recent Excavations at at Silbury Hill.

BY ALFRED C. PASS.

(Read December 15th, 1886.)

SILBURY HILL is said to be the greatest artificial mound in Europe; it is 125 feet high, and covers about five acres of ground; the summit is flat and is 103 feet diameter.

Various conjectures have been formed as to its original purpose; one of these is, that it was a sepulchral monument, and another, that it was erected for religious worship in connection with the so-called Druidic temple at Avebury, which is exactly one mile distant from it.

The question of the date of its erection has also been much discussed.

In the belief that this great mound had been raised as a tumulus, it has on two occasions been opened. In the year 1777, the Duke of Northumberland, and Colonel Drax, brought miners from Cornwall, and sunk a shaft from the summit to the base of the hill. In 1849, the Archæological Institute caused a tunnel to be made from the south side to the centre of the hill, when the original nucleus or starting-point was found, consisting of concentric layers of material. In neither of these examinations was any trace of sepulture discovered, but merely a few fragments of stags' horns, probably the tools used by the builders when excavating the chalk rock, of which this mound is chiefly composed.

From these two examinations it may reasonably be inferred that the mound is not sepulchral; for if so, we should naturally expect to find, in the primary centre of the hill, the body of the great dead, for whose honour it was raised.

In describing the tunnel of 1849, the Dean of Hereford, in his Diary of a Dean, says: "Nothing could be more evident than the existence of the primary heaping of the mound, through the centre of which, or very nearly so, the elevated tunnel was cut.

At the floor of this was traceable the line of the original turf of the natural hill, and it was clear to demonstration that this had not been cut through. No cist, therefore, had been found below that line in any part yet examined. . . . One thing is manifest, that the examiners of 1777 did not hit the actual centre of the tumulus, whilst we have excavated its very core."

Now, had this mound been erected as a monument, we should expect to find it placed on an elevated situation where it could be seen from afar, but, on the contrary, it is placed on very low ground, at the very bottom of a gently-rising down; and this fact has been referred to by Duke, who, in his Druidic Temples, says: "This peculiar spot is a hollow nearly surrounded on all sides with moderately rising ground;" and also by the Rev. A. C. Smith, who, in his Silbury, says: "Standing as it does on comparatively low ground, and surrounded with undulating downs, which tower above it, very limited indeed is the view from the summit."

Had it been raised on the summit of one of these "undulating downs" it would have been visible for many miles around. The barrows in this neighbourhood are placed on the hill tops, and are remarkably prominent objects in the landscape.

On looking down from the summit of Silbury Hill to the meadow below, a well-defined line is seen, which plainly marks out the area whence was obtained the chalk used for making the hill; the land within this line is under the level of the adjacent ground, and in summer the grass grows here of a brighter green, owing to the greater amount of moisture in the soil.

It will be seen that this boundary line extends in the form of a circle, nearly surrounding the base of Silbury Hill, at a distance of 100 feet on the north and east; but to the west it includes a larger area. On the south is a deep trench separating the mound from the adjacent high ground, and across this part a narrow causeway or ridge of chalk rock was allowed to remain when the rest was removed, and this appears to have been the only approach to the mound. Even between this causeway and the hill there is still a great gap of some depth. There may possibly have been two approaches on this side.

A special survey of Silbury Hill has been made for me by Messrs. Ashmead, and the accompanying plans were prepared by them. The southern boundary of the meadow is a steep escarp