heads, and horse shoes of ancient form have been found here. It should be mentioned also that just within the outer rampart (Fluck's Close) are several small hollows that may mark out the position of the huts of the occupants, or with a probability to say the least quite as strong, they may be the holes remaining from uprooting the trees which formerly grew there.

Was Wall hills ever a British town or station? It is extremely probable that it was so. The fact that from the highest part of the camp the Herefordshire Beacon is within sight, suggests that it would form an excellent reserve to that truly British fortification-an open signal by day, a beacon-fire by night, or a trusty messenger at all times, would quickly call up men in support of it. The Herefordshire Beacon could never have been occupied for any length of time by a large body of men, in consequence of the want of water supply there, and the difficulty of providing stores. The chief immediate reserve was doubtless the old British entrenched town on Midsummer hill, two miles south of the Beacon camp, but there is no reason why Wall hills should not have been a second reserve. The President has found flints, and fragments of British or Romano-British pottery within its area, which affords strong confirmation of it, but further evidence is not forthcoming, and if a definite verdict must be given, it must be that of the canny Scotch-"Not proven."

There scarcely remains a doubt but that it was a Roman station. The form of the camp itself indicates it, and its position almost proves it. The hill is not lofty or difficult of approach, and cavalry could conveniently occupy it. Its advantageous position is very evident. It could communicate on the north side with the Roman camp at Stretton Grandison, near the site of the Roman town Circutium, on the banks of the river Frome; to the south, it could signal with the Roman camp at Haffield; on the east, with the Herefordshire Beacon, as before stated; whilst on the west it could hold still more direct communication with a Roman villa, whose remains have been found at Putley. No Roman road seems actually to approach it; but there is one from Stretton Grandison (Circutium), by Ashperton, the Trumpet, Little Marcle, Preston, and on by Dymock and Newent to Gloucester. There was also, very probably, a vicinal way, on the eastern side, crossed by the present Hereford road at New Mills, and from this, possibly, one to the camp by the way taken on the present occasion. The Romans, however, were scarcely likely to have made these strong entrenchments, since their only necessity for defensive works was to prevent sudden surprise. It seems most probable, therefore, that its principal occupants were the Saxons, and that to them the great embankments are due. There is no other camp in this district of the county whose position would suit them so well. It bears, moreover, a Saxon name itself, and is surrounded by places with a Saxon nomenclature. From Wall hills, the Saxons might readily destroy the town of Circutium, and guard against any approach on this side of the county.

This camp may also have been the scene of some trifling engagement in the Parliamentary wars, for our President has a cannon ball found within its area, and it is stated in Mr. Webb's valuable work, Memorials of the Civil Wars in Herefordshire-a work that should find its place in every library in the county-that

Mr. John Skip, the owner of the property, had cut out a small round shot from an oak tree in or near the camp. It was probably but a passing skirmish, for there is no record of any real engagement near it, written by a tumulus, nor does any tradition exist to render it probable that any such event has occurred in later times.

The many centuries that have passed since the formation of Wall hills, has blotted out such history as it may have had. The names of the victors and the vanquished, if such there ever were, are alike lost and gone. Our county has enjoyed since then so long a period of peaceful happiness, that the troublous times of the past, when every man had to fight for himself, or was compelled to fight for others, can scarcely now be realized. The region of sober history has passed, and it remains only for the poets to imagine, and refer in fancy to those

The President said they were much indebted to Dr. Bull for his interesting paper, and to Mr. Lines for his excellent plan of the camp. He thought it would be a very good thing for the Club to have plans of all the leading camps lithographed for the Transactions. This work had never yet been done, and as time went on it would become more and more difficult. There is a fine traverse and an elaborate covered way opposite the eastern entrance, which he thought had not been sufficiently noticed in the excellent paper just read. He himself believed the camp was originally a British fortified town; then that it was occupied and largely altered by the Romans; and that afterwards, probably, the Saxons lived there. The Saxons, however, were not great at castrametation, and he doubted if the strength of the works was due to them. He himself had found worked flints, and British or Romano-British pottery within the area of the camp, and this he regarded as very strong proof of its having been a British town.

Captain Morgan, R.E., thought all earthworks had a distinctive meaning, and would be formed with reference to the weapons employed in the attack and defence. He would like to know the raison d'être of the strong escarped bastion on which they stood, and that should form some guide to the people who made it. He did not think the British or the Romans made it, and therefore that they were due to a later period. Masonry might be of any age, but earthworks had a distinctive meaning.

The President thought the bastion, strengthened as it would be by a stockade, would form a strong defence to the narrow covered entrance to the inner camp. Not only would arrows be effectively used, but stones might be hurled on the heads of the attacking foes.

Mr. Wilson, of Malvern, made a few remarks in favour of the Saxon theory; and the Rev. Prebendary Phillott thought there was no evidence whatever to show that the Saxons made their entrenchments.

Mr. J. Tom Burgess, F.S.A., of Worcester, said he had visited the camp on a previous occasion, and was much struck by the intervening ramparts. These intervening ramparts were not uncommon, and were frequently found where they had written records of Saxon occupation. This camp, however, was peculiar from its large size, and it would seem to have had portions added to it, as its occupants increased, so that whilst one portion was occupied by the people, the other might form a cattle pen, or what in India was known as "the compound," and in Ireland as the "Faha," or open court of exercise, and which is there a common feature; and with respect to the origin of the camp, he begged to point out the absence of any direct evidence that the Saxons were given to erect earthworks. They were shipbuilders and carpenters. Their grave mounds were small. The sites of their kingly palaces were undefended by earthworks, and though they undoubtedly used and held the strong military posts which already existed, there was no record that they erected any of these great camps and mounds, and yet they lived in historic times. He knew that in that neighbourhood he should be confronted with the name of Offa, and the dyke which bore his name. He had examined that dyke at various points, and, doubtless, it was a line of demarcation in which Offa took some interest. They must not, however, forget that these dykes were not uncommon, and the very name of some of them seemed to indicate that the Saxons thought these remarkable earthworks had a supernatural origin, as for example, "Wan's dyke," in Wiltshire. This has been thought to be a corruption of "Woden's dyke "; and the northern part of Offa's dyke bore a similar name—whilst the common appellation of "Thorbury," or "Thornbury," to earthworks seemed to indicate a reference to the god Thor. They must remember that Offa was a great king and a power in mid-England for a great many years, and he might possibly, and indeed probably, have repaired the dyke which bore his name, and also have proclaimed it as a line of demarcation under the penalties they were all familiar with, and which he (Mr. Burgess) had embodied in his paper on the subject, read before the British Archæological Association during the Congress at Llangollen. They must not forget that on this side of Oswestry the dyke divided. The eastern fork joined the great camp at Old Oswestry, which he took to be the great oppidum of the Ordovices, just as the Herefordshire Beacon was obviously the great stronghold of the indomitable Silures. The dyke called "Wan's dyke " went through a broken country, full of nooks and dingles, which were far more likely to hold a foe, than to be a protection against enemies. Offa might have found this detrimental, and made the western fork to the Dee, and thus gave his name to the whole. His palace at Sutton Walls was obviously a Roman settlement, and the regulation that the space between the two dykes near Wrexham should be considered as neutral ground, favoured the suggestion he threw out, and accounted for the western fork passing over the site of a Roman settlement or villa, near Wrexham, which a Cambrian archæologist had found out to be the case. That was not the time nor the place to enter into any details of the Saxon invasion and mode of settlement. After the first flush of conquest, they left the towns and the old inhabitants undisturbed, and many of them retained their old Roman municipal privileges, and those towns which were destroyed were regarded as

haunted by the Dea Matres, or other gods, and so preserved from future spoliation. He might mention one fact, that Mercia seemed, judging by the graves, to have been overrun by Angles from the north, who marched along this fosse way. The various battles and struggles along the Welsh marches, recorded in later times, would cause points of vantage, like Wall hills, to be occupied by the defeated, as well as the victorious, troops. He could not resist the conviction that Wall hills was one of the chain of Silurian frontier tribal fortresses, from which the warriors could be summoned to defend the greater and stronger post on the Herefordshire Beacon. It had its outlying signal post on the hill above Ledbury station, and it had its means of retreat to the low-lying marshy land, which was a distinctive feature in old British tribal settlements, and a common one in many savage lands. Dr. Bull, in reply, said he was much obliged to the gentlemen who had criticised his paper. The subject was one upon which many different views might be taken. Mr. Burgess, in stating that the Engles from the north had subjugated Mercia, surely did not mean to call in question the battle of Deorham, when Ceawlin, at the head of the west Saxons, overthrew the Celtic rulers, advanced up the Severn and destroyed Uriconium (Wroxeter). That was the earliest record with any degree of authenticity of Saxon proceedings. The Engles from the north came at a later period. In considering these large mounds and earthworks, which would require so great an amount of labour, he had been led from the study of the Credenhill camp, to regard them as being Saxon for these reasons. The Britons, it was believed, did not make regular entrenchments with vallum and ditch succeeding each other, with covered approaches, and protecting traverses, before the Romans came. The Romans would have no object in undertaking such enormous labour. They had only to protect themselves against the sudden attacks and night surprises of the Silurians. They had their towns to build, and their roads to make, and very slight fortifications were necessary for them. At Credenhill, if as was believed, Creda or Crida, took up his residence there, and destroyed the Roman towns of Magna (Kenchester), Ariconium (Weston, near Ross), Circutium (Stretton Grandison), Black Caerdun (near Risbury, whose Roman name is lost), and Bravinium (Leintwardine), and they were all destroyed by fire in the same way as Uriconium, then he would require to fortify the camp he resided in. The Saxons, and, at this period, the west Saxons, might be conjectured to have fortified all the camps they occupied, besides such as Credenhill, or Wall hills, Ivington, &c. After all, it was conjecture, and these great earthworks might possibly have been constructed at a later period. Offa's work he would not consider now, for the subject would be brought forward at the next meeting of the Club.

The questions of defences by stockades, escarpments, covered ways, spears, slings, and pieces of rock-work, were then generally discussed, the President remarking that the defence of such works as these might be compared to that of the New Zealand "Pahs," in our own times.

THE ARCHITECTURE

OF LEDBURY CHURCH.

By the Rev. JOHN JACKSON, M. A., Rector.

ECCLESIASTICAL architecture must always be regarded with peculiar interest. A thoughtful mind cannot but experience melancholy feeling on beholding the barbarous mutilations and additions to which the Gothic piles of the middle ages have been subjected, which nevertheless still retain a holy and venerable character appearing through the land like monuments reared to bear testimony to the genius and piety of our forefathers. In former times the fabrics set apart for religious purposes were usually built from drawings under the immediate superintendence of the ecclesiastics themselves, who sometimes even worked for the love of Christ's Holy Church, and although no vestige of their plans or their names exist, yet they wrought out for themselves each his own monument ære perennius": the wonder and admiration of succeeding generations. The appearance of an ancient Gothic church is often most magnificent and imposing, and even when of a plain and homely description it is impressive and beautiful. There is a spirit in its time-honoured walls, and a reality about the building that is extremely pleasing; for however rude the materials employed in its erection, there is never any attempt to make them appear other than they really are. The faithful builders, conscious of having exerted themselves to the uttermost, seem to have felt that any false pretensions would be at variance with the holiness of the service to which the building was to be consecrated, and that alone in their estimation would invest it with sufficient majesty. The great charm, however, of all the ancient churches, consists in their possessing a sacred and devotional character, which at once distinguishes them from every other class of buildings, so that, notwithstanding the different styles and variety of their architecture, they have a certain similarity of appearance which marks in a very significant and expressive manner that they are alike dedicated to the same Holy Service. At the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, they were generally despoiled of their sumptuous furniture and costly decorations; but in other respects their appearance was not very materially affected by the alterations that were then made.

They were afterwards subjected to many wanton and disgraceful mutilations during the reign of Charles I., but since that stormy and eventful period the injuries which the buildings have sustained are for the most part the result of shameful neglect or tasteless reparations.

THE CHURCH.

On the south side of the church is a paved narrow way leading therefrom to the main road, which bears the rather uninviting title of "Cabbage Lane," being a corruption of the word "Capuchin," which would indicate that at an early period of English History a body of Capuchin monks were established here. It is placed beyond doubt that a priest was stationed at Ledbury at the time of the