Volume 1

The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme.

Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gentleman's magazine library : being a classified collection of the chief contents of The gentleman's magazine from 1731 to 1868. Romano-British remains / edited by George Laurence Gomme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the perfect figure of a face within a circle, very like the rest, with the difference only of being larger, and of a richer construction ; the face is ornamented with a sort of irregular ruff or crest round the whole forehead as far as the ears. Yours, etc. John Bellamy. Hod Hill. [1840, Part /., pp. 635,636.] Much speculation having been excited among the curious in anti- quarian researches in these parts with regard to some circular perforated stones with flat sides which were dug up in the course of last summer between the front of a Roman camp and the outer agger of some British works on Hod Hill in this parish, and participating myself in the curiosity so generally felt as to their age and use, permit me to draw the attention of your contributors on such subjects to the stones in question, and to solicit their elucidation of the purpose for which they were employed, and which at present remains but problematical with all who have examined them, and many of whom are not devoid of sagacity and learning. The material of which these stones consist is a fine sandstone, and certainly far too soft and friable in its nature for grinding corn, or for sharpening implements of agriculture, or any other articles of cutlery. Their diameters vary from 15^ to 9 inches; their circum- ference from 4|- to 3 feet, their depth from 5^ inches to 3 inches. Each is perforated with a circular hole, the diameter of which in the largest stone is 4^ inches at the top, and 3^ inches at the bottom ; in the smallest 4 inches at the top, and 3 at the bottom. These holes, be it remarked, are circular, and gradually diminishing in diameter from one side of the stones to the other ; and this fact, in my humble opinion, at once proves the impossibility of their having been used for the purposes of grinding or sharpening, independently of the consideration of the nature of their material. It may, perhaps, be superfluous to say that of the various conjec- tures concerning their use, some are, not to say as absurd, yet as amusing as the opinion prevalent in our villages, and which therefore I have presumed to call the village hypothesis, with respect to the purpose for which the tumuli, or mounds, on our downs w'ere con- structed, to cover those who were murdered by tramps; but one conjecture, and which it is but due to the worthy individual to state first occurred to a highly respectable and well-informed yeoman in the neighbourhood, appears to me so well grounded and sagacious that I cannot help submitting it, through your columns, to the consideration of the antiquarian world. The gentleman alluded to is of opinion that the stones in question wrere used by the Roman officers for the purpose of keeping steady their a?nphorcc or jars of wine. These jars we know tapered from their shoulders,
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