It has been well observed that the structure of a house reveals much of
the mode of life adopted by its inhabitants. The representations of the
dwellings of the people of the less cultivated parts of Europe,
contrasted with those of the more cultivated countries, should afford us
the means of comparing their different degrees of civilization. In the
same manner we may measure the growth of improvement in any one country
by an attentive consideration of the structure and arrangement of the
homes of the people at different periods.
The aboriginal Britons are described as dwelling in slight cabins of
reeds and wattles, and in some instances in _caverns of the earth_, many
sets of which, arranged with some degree of symmetry, antiquaries have
recognised; but Cæsar tells us that the maritime tribes had buildings in
the fashion of the Gauls--that is, of wood, of a circular figure, and
thatched. Such towns as they had were clusters of huts erected on a
cleared portion of the forest, which covered the greater part of the
island; and they were invariably surrounded by a rampart, constructed of
felled trees strongly interlaced and wattled, and a deep fosse, which
together formed a fortification. The site of the modern city of London,
with the river Thames in front, the river Fleet on the west, and an
almost inpenetrable forest in the rear, may be taken as a fair specimen
of the locality usually selected for the residence of the British
Chief.[1]
That our ancestors lived in caves is attested by the existence of a
group of these abodes near Penzance, the most remarkable of all ancient
British Caves hitherto discovered in Cornwall, and thus described by Mr.
J. Edwards, to the Royal Institution of that county:--"Half of a mile
W.S.W. of Caër Bran, and four and a half miles W. by S. of Penzance,
there is, in the village of Chapel Euny, a cave, consisting for the most
part of a deep trench, walled with stones, and roofed with huge slabs.
It extends 30 feet from N.N.W. to S.S.E., and then branches eastward,
and probably also to the S. or S.W. So far it accords with the
description of an ordinary British cave. But its floor (as I was
informed by the miner who opened it about three years ago) was well
paved with large granite blocks, beneath which, in the centre, ran a
narrow gutter or bolt, made, I imagine, for admitting the external air
into the innermost part of the building; from whence, after flowing back
through the cave, it escaped by the cave's mouth--a mode of ventilation
practised immemorially by the miners in this neighbourhood, when driving
adits or horizontal galleries under ground.
"Another peculiarity is still more remarkable. Its higher or northern
end consisted of a circular floor, 12 feet in diameter, covered with a
dome of granite, two-thirds of which are still exposed to view; and my
informant had observed a still greater portion of the dome-roofed
chamber. Every successive layer of the stones forming the dome overhangs
considerably the layer immediately beneath it; so that the stones
gradually approach each other as they rise, until the top stones must
originally have completed the dome; not, however, like the key-stones of
an arch, but by resting horizontally on the immediately subjacent
circular layer. The miner found no pottery, or anything else, in the
cave. The height of the present wall of the dome is about 6 feet above
the lowest part I could see; how much lower the original floor might
have been, I could not ascertain.
"Another British cave, not even referred to in any publication, is to be
seen at Chyoster, nearly three miles north of Penzance, the walls of
which, instead of being perpendicular, are constructed on the same
principle as the inmost part of the cave at Chapel Euny; so that the
tops of these walls which support the huge slabs forming the roof, are
much nearer each other than their bases. Each cave formed part of a
British village, that of old Chyoster being decidedly in the best state
of preservation of all the British villages in this neighbourhood."[2]
Both caves are built of uncemented stones unmarked by any tool. The cave
at Chyoster extended originally, as appears from its remains and the
rubbish left by its recent spoilers, fifty feet or more in a straight
line up the sloping side of the hill. It is 6 feet high, 4 feet wide on
the top, and 8 feet wide at the bottom, and is thought to have been
originally a storehouse. It appears to have been built on the natural
surface of the hillside, and then covered over with stones and earth,
and planted with the evergreens which still abound there.
A few years subsequently to the above investigations, in one of those
intellectual excursions by means of which our acquaintance with the
early history of our island is so greatly extended, the following
results were arrived at:--In the autumn of 1865, in an excursion made
jointly by the Royal Institution of Cornwall and the Penzance Natural
History Society, they inspected on the north coast of the county,
Gurnard's Head, a rocky promontory, jutting some distance into the sea,
and bearing very distinct traces of having been fortified by the early
Britons against an enemy attacking from the sea, this being the only
specimen of an ancient British fortification where traces of sea
defences have been found. In all other cases they seem to have been
erected as a protection from an attack by the land side, and to have
been evidently the last retreat of the natives.
Next was visited the Bosphrennis Bee-hive Hut, first brought to light by
the Cambrian Archæological Society: it was seen in clusters or villages
by Cæsar. And, on an eminence near the village of Porthemear, was found
a large inclosed circle, now hidden by briars and thorns, which, on
examination, showed the remains of several circular huts, leaving no
doubt that here a considerable ancient British village had once existed.
Of the homes of the Picts, the most distinguished among the barbarous
tribes inhabiting the woods and marshes of North Britain, there remain
some specimens in the Orkneys: they are rude and miserable dwellings
underground, but they are supposed to be calculated for the requirements
of a more advanced state of society than that of the dwellers in Picts'
houses. A complete drawing of one of the Orkney specimens has been made,
and was exhibited to the British Archæological Association in 1866.
[Illustration: PICTS' HOUSE.]
About the year 1853, there was discovered in Aberdeenshire a Pict's
house, in the parish of Tarland. It is a subterranean vault, nearly
semicircular, and from five to six feet in height; the sides built with
stones, and roofed with large stones, six or seven feet wide, and a kind
of granite. These excavations have been found in various parishes of
Aberdeenshire, as well as in several of the neighbouring counties. In
the parish of Old Deer, some sixty years back, a whole village was met
with; and, about the same time, in a glen at the back of Stirlinghill,
in the parish of Peterhead, one was discovered which contained some
fragments of bones and several flint arrow-heads and battle-axes, in
various stages of manufacture. Such buildings underground as those
described as Picts' houses were not uncommon on the borders of the
Tweed. A number of them, apparently constructed as above, were
discovered in a field in Berwickshire about fifty years ago. They were
supposed to have been made for the detention of prisoners taken in the
frays during the border feuds; and afterwards they were employed to
conceal spirits, smuggled either across the border or from abroad.
Professor Phillips, in his very able volume on Yorkshire, describes the
houses of the Brigantes (highlanders), inhabitants of the hilly country
towards the north of Britain, and extending from the German Ocean to the
Irish Sea. Of these huts there appear to be three varieties, of which we
have only the foundations. The first occurs in north-eastern and
south-eastern Yorkshire; the ground is excavated in a circular shape, so
as to make a pit from six to eight feet, or even sixteen or eighteen
feet in diameter, with a raised border, and three to five feet in depth.
Over this cavity we must suppose the branches of trees placed to form a
conical roof, which, perhaps, might be made weather-proof by wattling, a
covering of rushes, or turf. The opening we may believe to have been
placed on the side removed from the prevalent wind: fire in the centre
of the hut thus constructed, has left traces in many of the houses
examined. The pits in Westerdale are called "ref-holes," _i.e._
roof-holes, for our Saxon word _roof_ has the meaning of the Icelandic
_raf_ and Swedish _ref_. In several places these pits are associated in
such considerable numbers as to give the idea of a village, or even
town. On Danby Moor, the pits are divided in two parallel lines, bounded
externally by banks, and divided internally by an open space like a
street; a stream divides the settlement into two parts; there are no
walls at the end of the streets; in the most westerly part is a circular
walled space, thirty-five feet in diameter.
"A second type of these foundations of huts has been observed south of
the village of Skipwith, near Riccall, south-east of York. These were
oval or circular rings slightly excavated in the heathy surface, on the
drier parts of the common. On digging into this area, marks of fire were
found: they were concluded to be the foundation-lines of huts, mostly
enclosed by single or double mounds or ditches.
"The third form of hut foundation, an incomplete ring of stone walls,
has only yet been observed in Yorkshire, on the summit of Ingleborough.
How strange to find at this commanding height," says Professor Phillips,
"encircled by a thick and strong wall, and within this wall the
unmistakeable foundations of ancient habitations! The Rev. Robert Cooke,
in 1851, concluded Ingleborough to be a great hill-fort of the Britons,
defended by a wall like others known in Wales, and furnished with houses
like the 'Cittian,' of Gwynedd. The area inclosed is about 15 acres, in
which space are nineteen horse-shoe-shaped low foundations, evidently
the foundations of ancient huts, the antecedent of the cottages of
England,--a low wall foundation, a roof formed by inclined rafters, and
covered by boughs, heath, rushes, grass, straw, or sods. The relative
dates, surely, admit of no doubt. The huts and walls of Ingleborough
exhibit principles of construction which remove them from the catalogue
of barbarian works."[3]
The Britons, before the first Roman invasion, slept on skins spread on
the floor of their rude dwellings. Rushes and heath were afterwards
substituted by the Romans for skins; and on the introduction of
agriculture they slept upon straw, which, indeed, was used as a couch in
the royal chambers of England at the close of the 14th century.