On the opening and examination of a barrow of the British period at Warkshaugh, North Tyneside / by Geo. Rome Hall.
- Hall, George Rome.
- Date:
- [1865?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the opening and examination of a barrow of the British period at Warkshaugh, North Tyneside / by Geo. Rome Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![have been not less than sixty feet in diameter. Its internal arrangements are of peculiar interest. The southern cist, as we have seen, was connected with the largest urn by a rude kind of flagged path—the use of which it is difficult to conceive. A closer bond of relationship or regard no doubt underlies the cause of its construction. Perhaps husband and wife were thus united even in theii' last home—perhaps father and son, falling in battle together, in contesting the ford of the Tyne below or above the adjoining “Mote Hill” of Wark,^ like Saul and Jonathan on Mount Gilboa, “in death were not divided;” and the survivors perchance deemed that their spirits might in this way hold more intimate communion with each other. But the precise cause of this peculiar connection between cist and urn is confessedly among “the secrets of the grave.” The arrangement of the cists is precisely what past experience would suggest, namely, a central, and, probably, in order, earliest interment, then a second on the east towards the sun-rise, and a third and fourth follow- ing the apparent course of the sun in the heavens, towards the south-east and due south. This arrangement can hardly be dis- associated from the known solar-worship of the ancient Britons, and indeed of every early race of mankind without a revealed religion, which is also exemplified in the circular form of hut- circle and fort alike, ha'^dng their entrances chiefly on the east. Another reason for the absence of the cists on the north and west is, probably, the natural desire common to all men that their mortal remains should lie not in the shade but in the glad sun- shine in which they had loved to bask in their life-time. Our * It is rcmarkaljle, that a narrow tract of land on the Birtlej’ margrin of the Nortli Tyne, opposite to the Mote Hill, has from time immemorial fonned part of the parish of Wark. This long tract of rich alluvial soil constitutes the Warkshaugh farm on which the barrow is situated. The name proves, that as far back as the Saxon period, it was attached to the village of Wark, the ancient capital of the royal franchise of Tyncdale, although wholly separated from it by a wide, and often impassable river. The fact of the Mote Hill (an elevated platfonn of natural rock, perhaps, as tradition asserts, improved by artificial means,) having always commanded the excellent foril beneath, one of the Itest on the Xorth Tyne, may be held to countenance the suggestion of my friend, the Rev. H. Taylor, of Wark Kectory, that in the British period the tribe holding this excellent vantage-ground would be able to extend their bound.aries beyond the river, where no similar ]ilace of defence exists in the fiat haugh before mentioned. Undoubtedly it would be the scene of many fierce cnconii- tors between the hostile septs of aborigines who inhabited the oppo.site banks of the river.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22440069_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
