On this Day in History ... 15 March

Henry Machyn's Diary. 15 Mar 1560. [The xv day preached at court] master (blank) the wyche he mad a nottabull sermon that the quen('s) (age 26) grace gayff hym th[anks] for hys payne, butt sum men wher offendyd.

On 15 Mar 1604 John Acland (age 52) was knighted by King James I of England and Ireland and VI of Scotland (age 37) at the Tower of London [Map].

After 15 Mar 1728. Grave of Anne, wife of Archdeacon Thomas Howson at Lincoln Cathedral [Map].

Section I Tumuli 1788. On the 15th of March, 1788, a farmer, who occupied the land on Middleton Moor, known as the Garratt Piece, having occasion to burn some lime upon that ground, dug for the purpose into a tumulus [Map] [Garratts Piece Barrow [Map]], or lowe, there situate.

He began his work on the outer edge of the barrow, clearing it away as he proceeded, to the level of the natural surface. On reaching the centre, he found, lying immediately under the usual depression of the summit of the barrow, and placed upon the level of the ground, a skeleton, whose extremities were towards the east and west; near the point of the shoulder was a very extraordinary ornament of copper neatly enamelled with various colours, red being the most predominant; it is circular, and has a hook in the form of a serpent's head, probably for suspension. In addition to this, part of another ornament of similar workmanship; part of the iron umbo of a shield and a shallow basin of thin brass, much broken and crushed, were found abont the same place. (For a similar basin see Archæologia, vol. xviii, page 80.) The design visible upon the circular and enamelled ornament is precisely similar to an illuminated capital Q in the Saxon manuscript entitled, 'Textus Sancti Cuthberti,' a production of the seventh century, formerly preserved in the cathedral of Durham, but now in the Cottonian library, (Nero, D. 4.) There is a good engraving of it in Astle's 'Origin of Writing,' plate 14, a. This interesting barrow was reopened by Mr. William Bateman (age 1), on the 19th of June, 1826, but was found to have been entirely rifled on the occasion above described.

Barrows near Arbor Low. On the 15th of March, we re-opened a barrow near the boundary of Middleton Moor, in the direction of Parcelly Hay [Note. Possibly Parsley Hay Barrow [Map]], which was unsuccessfully opened by Mr.W. Bateman on the 28th of July, 1824; nor did our researches lead to a more satisfactory result, as the entire mound seemed to have been turned over by deep ploughing by which the interments, consisting of two skeletons and a deposit of burnt bones, had been so dragged about as to present no characteristic worthy of observation. A neat whetstone was picked up amongst these ruins, and a carefully chipped leaf-shaped arrow-point of flint has since been found by ploughing across the barrow. About fifty yards South-east of the last, is another barrow of very small size, both as to diameter and height; so inconsiderable indeed are its dimensions, that it was quite overlooked in 1824. Fortunately the contents, with the exception of one skeleton that lay near the surface, had been enclosed in a cist, sunk a few inches beneath the level of the soil. As in the companion barrow, the skeleton near the top was dismembered by the plough, so that it afforded nothing worthy of notice - the original interment, however, which lay rather deeper, in a kind of rude cist or enclosure, formed by ten shapeless masses of limestone, amply repaid our labour. The persons thus interred consisted of a female in the prime of life, and a child of about four years of age; the former had been placed on the floor of the grave on her left side, with the knees drawn up; the child was placed above her, and rather behind her shoulders: they were surrounded and covered with innumerable bones of the water-vole, or rat, and near the woman was a cow's tooth, an article uniformly found with the more ancient interments. Round her neck was a necklace of variously shaped beads and other trinkets of jet and bone, curiously ornamented, upon the whole resembling those found at Cow Low [Map] in 1846, (Vestiges p. 92,) but differing from them in many details. The various pieces of this compound ornament are 420 in number, which unusual quantity is accounted for by the fact of 348 of the beads being thin laminae only; 54 are of cylindrical form, and the 18 remaining pieces are conical studs and perforated plates, the latter in some cases ornamented with punctured patterns. Altogether, the necklace is the most elaborate production of the pre-metallic period that I have seen. The skull, in perfect preservation, is beautiful in its proportions, and has been selected to appear in the Crania Britannica, as the type of the ancient British female. The femur measures 15¼ inches. The engraving represents the arrangement of the cist.