Complete View of the Manners,
Customs, Arms, Habits & Co of the Inhabitants of England, 1774, by Joseph
Strutt.
Essex references
7. Maldon
Page 60
“Happening myself to be (in
the year 1773) making some curious researches in Maldon, I was informed, that a
place called Burrough-hills, (from a number of barrows are there remaining) a
large hill had been dug down by the owner of the field wherein it stood; and
that making a deep ditch across one part of it, they came to ashes, brickbats,
potsheards, and the like. Curiosity
naturallly led me to the place, where I carefully examined the above
particulars. When I came there, I found
it to be of oblong form and of great extent; though at present not above five
feet above the common surface of the ground . – The ditch which has been dug in
it, is in general about four feet deep; and all along, in a straight line, from
one end of the hill to the other, (about a foot thick at the bottom of the
ditch) lie these potsheards, and seem (from their present situation) to have
been first regularly spread over the whole surface of the ground, and over them
was thrown the earth, of which the hill was made. Indeed I should observe, that above this row
of bricks, potsheards, &c. is a thick stiff clay for a full one foot (or
rather more) in height, and from thence to the top of the hill an exceedingly
rich mould. I caused some to be dug out,
and found bits of large square bricks, bits of ill-shapen clumsy pots of common
red clay, upwards of one inch thick, which did not seem ever to have been
baked; with pieces of more shapely and handsome vessels, urns, &c. but none
whole. I also found cinders and charcoal
very perfect, together with bits of bone (not human) so very rotten, and
crushed to pieces with the least pressure. I picked out a great quantity of
these things (for several cart loads very found) some most perfect, which I
have preserved still by me. This mount
cannot be a funeral monument, because of the vast quantity of these vessels, as
well as from the narrow compass they lie in, and the strange mixture of such
different materials: the place itself (near the water side) is not unlikely to
require a landmark or limit.
“The other hills near it
(which are barrows) are evidently of a different form, being like an obtuse
cone, and much smaller than the above described, not bearing the least analogy
to it. The late Dr Salmon, a physician,
at Chelmsford, (who was both a learned and ingenious man) supposes the barrows
(for this hill escaped his notice, because it had much more the appearance of a
natural hill, than one raised by art) were funeral sepulchers of the Danes and
Saxons; for he imagined (which is not at all unlikely) that the Danes came up
this river, with intent to ravage the coasts, but were met by the Saxons who
opposed their landing, and so a bloody conflict ensuing, these were left as
standing monuments thereof, erected either on or near the spot where the battle
was decided.”
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