BRITAIN BEFORE CÆSAR

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10143, 3 May 1911, Page 2

BRITAIN BEFORE CÆSAR

THE WELWYN FIND

Relics of ancient Britain, a thousand years older than the bloody massacre of the Danes at Welwyn, in Herts, with which local tradition connected them, have been found in the collection of the late Mr George Dering, the "hermit connoisseur," of Lockleys. The objects, which were found in the colossal cutting marie by the late Mr Dering for the new road that was to secure the privacy of his borders, have been examined by Mr Arthur J. Evans, the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, m. S lves the following account in the Times ":—

They belong to kings who reigned before Cymbeline, and together shed a flood of light on the civilisation and luxury that surrounded the British Court iu this part of our island during the period that preceded the Roman Conquest.

It is certainly a strange turn of " the vvhirligig of time" that has brought these relics to their present restingplace. A park-drive, hardly cleared of the fallen boughs of successive winters that lie rotting on either side, leads to Lock leys, amiast tangled brakes and thickening brushwood. The "amiable Ucbold of the spot was no longer there, but the fine old manor-house with its shuttered windows and darken*ed hall had something of the air of an enchanted castle. And to-day it falls to the archaeologist to play the part of the Fairy Prince. The diningroom _ shutters are removed and the morning sunshine falls on a medley of objects— indeed, in a very fragmentary condition, but which reoonstitute themselves to the expert eye and bring to life the long-buried past of ancient 'Britain.

That the discovery connects itself with a place of interment is shown at once by a series of cinerary urns, some still containing the burnt bones. These urns are themselves sufficient to assign an approximate date to the burials. Their pedestalled bases, their elegant contour—never approached in Roman Britain—and the occasional "cordons" round their necks and sides at once group them with the urns found in the Kentish cemetery of Aylesford explored by me many years back. These, as I then showed, are a late British class of the first cientury before our era. In the deposit are a series of objects, including two ewers of bronze with a very golden tone, the base and handle of a larger vessel of the same metal, and a capacious bronze pan with a handle 14in l° n g terminating in a duck's head, all of which are of a preRoman class, best described as ItaloGreek, and hailing probably from a Campanian workshop. Belonging to the same class, but of still greater elegance, are two silver cups provided with pedestals and graceful double handles, and artistically adorned with foliated and guilloche designs round their base and margin. Witnessing the high technical and decorative skill to which the Celtic artificer himself had attained are remains of a characteristic plated tankard, of which most of the wooden staves are preserved, together. with a bronze handle with a scroll-work design in bold relief. Of indigenous work were also three male heads of bronze, beardless, but with pronounced moustaches, according to. the characteristic fashion immortalised by tha Pergamene sculptor in "The Dying Gaul." These seem to have been the attachments of plated buckets such as the famous examples of Marlborough and Aylesford, and it is not improbable that as in the latter case the ashes of the most important personage here interred were contained in a receptacle of this kind. The style is absolutely contemporary with that of the Aylesford Bucket—they are both native works of the first century before our era.

It remains to mention what is certainly one of the most remarkable features of the whole find. This is the occurrence in both deposits of a series of clay amphoras of a characteristic classical type, averaging in height about three and a half feet. The capacious cradle formed by the iron grate of tho first deposit had been used to prop up three of these, and two were loaning against it. It is evident that these wine jars and their oontents must have made their way, like the elegant metal vases with which they Avere associated, by sea and land, from the Mediterranean shores. That they were transported across Gaul by the early caravan and river routes from Massalia to the British Channel will seem most probable. But the wine may well have reached the mouth of the Rhone in Greek bottoms from one or other of the iEgean homes of Bacchus. That Chian wine—let us say—should have been quaffed wholesale at ancient British wakes in days before the Roman Conquest will certainly bo news to many. Tho honours ivere shown to the dead warrant the supposition that we have to do with personages of exalted, not to say of princely, rank. And this conclusion is the more interesting when it is remembered; that Welwvn itself, where the remains were discovered, lies within a few miles of Verulam, the capital during this period of the dominant British tribe, tho Catyeuchlani. Cunobelinus (Cymbeline), it is true, transferred his seat to Colchester; but in the days of his father, Tasciovanus, and, no doubt, of his predecessor Cassivellaunus, the principal antagonist of Ctßsar, Verulam took . precedence of London and of every other city of Soutli-Eastevn Britain. Judging by tho analogy of the Aylesford finds, the Welwvn relics date from the last period of the uninscribed coinage of Ancient Britain, and may well belong to the reign and possibly be associated with the immediate kin of Cassivellaunus.