Jack's Castle

Stourton, November 14, 1807.

MY DEAR CHARLES,

Here we still are, notwithstanding the unpleasantness of the season, fascinated by the superior charms of this lovely place, where the absence of summer is so happily supplied by groves of evergreens, that winter cannot be felt.

Yesterday we partook of a treat, such as I had never been a guest at before. Hearing that it was in contemplation to open an immense tumulus with the popular name of Jack's Castle, in the vicinity of that memorable spot where Alfred's Tower rises, which had been always considered to have been a beacon, and probably might have been made use of for that purpose several hundred years after its first erection; I signified to the landlord, that if he thought there would be no impropriety in it, I should be happy to be present at this ceremony. He said he was well assured that nothing could be more gratifying to Sir Richard Hoare than the presence of any gentleman actuated by such curiosity; adding, that he would, with our permission, as it were from himself, get our wishes made known. This produced a most polite invitation from the Baronet, and we hastened to obey the summons.

The men employed to open those primitive sepulchres, and who by almost, constant experience are deeply skilled in the operation, had been sent early in the morning to prepare the work, which by twelve o'clock, when the company assembled, was in such a state of forwardness as to render every stroke of the pick-axe, and every motion of the shovel, highly critical and interesting, charcoal being perceived, the never failing criterion of its having been sepulchral. On this symptom the gentleman who presided at this business, and under whose eye the solemn process was graduated, descended into the opening that had been made, and by some minute, and to us mystic observations, feeling as it were the pulse of the barrow, was justified in pronouncing that "the consummation devoutly to be wished" was at hand; for no sooner had he pronounced this, than the cyst or factitious cavity, in which, instead of an urn, the ashes of the dead were deposited, was discovered, among which was found a stone hatchet, with a red blotch over part of it, as if it had been stained with blood, grown after a lapse of ages to look like red paint, time not having the power to efface it: this little weapon was highly finished. There was likewise a piece of a spear's head, of brass or mixed metal, the produce of countries more civilized, the effect of barter, for it hardly can be supposed that a people who had the means of fabricating such a weapon of metal would submit to the slow and tiresome process of resorting to stone and flint.