A description of two ancient horse-shoes, found near Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire / [Anon].

  • Bracy Clark
Date:
1837]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A description of two ancient horse-shoes, found near Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    A DESCRIPTION of two ancient HORSE-SHOES, found near SILBURY HILL, in WILTSHIRE. As there appears to be some rather remarkable circumstances, disclosed by these very ancient shoes, which attended the early state of the art of shoeing the horse, so we have considered them well worthy of being figured and described, since we find no record or description of such practices in any work left us on this interesting subject. They were sent to me from Wiltshire, by my respected friend W. Bartlett, Esq. Surgeon, of Great Bedwyn, in this county, who received them from the person who found them; the one being picked up by the proprietor of the meadow in which Silbury hill is situated, and the other by the occupant of a neighbouring farm not far distant from it. My worthy friend, in his letter accompanying them, says, “ one of these shoes was found by the levelling of a bank, in Silbury-hill Mead, for the purpose of watering it,” this was the shoe No. 2. “ The soil removed on this occasion was principally chalk, to the depth of a foot or two no mention is made of any part of the horse, or of his bones being found along with it, but the skeleton of a man was found at some little distance from this place. Now this Silbury hill is a well-known mound, seen on the road from London to Bath, on the right hand of the road, a few miles from Marlborough, and is supposed of great antiquity, and of British or of Roman origin ; it represents in its figure the regular frustum of a cone, whose elevation is about one hundred and seventy-five feet, and whose diameter at its base, is found to be about five hundred feet, and out of which hill have been dug, at various times, ancient relics. The other shoe, No. 1, he says, “was found upon the down on the opposite side of the road, at the distance of nearly half a mile from the former mead, under a heap of flints. These flints, it is probable, were taken at some former period from the above spot, and were deposited upon the down probably for the mending of the roads or paths; for, from the perfect accordance and similarity of both these shoes, in their peculiar make and fashion, and other circumstances, there can be no reasonable doubt, we think, of their having been constructed at the same period, and in all probability were belonging to the same animal, the one being a hind and the other a fore shoe, and of nearly the same size, as also with perfectly similar nails : being regarded, perhaps, by the laborers, who removed the flints, as mere old iron, they were passed unnoticed by them, as they sometimes find, in these localities, Roman and other coins of some value.” This seems to be all that my worthy friend has reported of them, and we shall now proceed to make a few remarks upon the articles themselves. They are by far the oldest shoes I have ever seen; neither is there, that I know of, any older shoe on record in present existence; at least the only one recorded as more ancient is the shoe said to have been found in the coffin of Childeric, king of the French, who was buried at Tournay in Flanders, and the opening of whose tomb more than a century ago, was described by Chifletius; and which shoe is again copied in Montfaucon’s Antiquities, tom. 1, p. 16, t. 6; but on turning to it, for it is stated to have fallen to pieces on being handled, the shoe there represented, differs in nothing from a modern French shoe of the last age, that I forbear to notice it, otherwise it was my intention to have introduced it here by the side of these. We think it something more than presumable, that the animal must have been buried with his shoes left on, since the nails in both shoes are present, and with the clenches quite perfect, and in
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