222
NAVESTOCK IN OLDEN DAYS ;
They thought it cherished, increased, and preserved all things, as the learned
Hyde writes upon Ulegh Begh.
"Oct. 20, 1749, at the Alate Temple on Navestock Common.
"Aug. 5, 1761, at the Alate Temple on Navestock Common. 'Tis much
oregrown with fern, and but lately, so that 'tis difficult fully to discern it.
They have dug gravel there lately. Foxglove in bloom there still. Near it,
by the windmill, is another work, for sports, like that in Westmoreland,
called King Arthur's Round Table."
It will be seen from the above that Dr. Stukeley persisted in what
his biographer terms his "fanciful conjecture" for a period ranging
over thirty-six years.
We have to-day identified the site of the so-called "Alate
Temple," having proceeded there by the same route as that made
use of by Stukeley in 1749, viz., by Weald. We found what remains
of it upon and embracing part of the road leading from Ditchleys,
at S. by W., to Princes Gate, N. by E., and still touching very
nearly upon the division dikes of the Hundreds of Chafford and
Ongar. At Stukeley's last recorded visit, in 1761, the spot was still
a wide and open common. It was very shortly afterwards enclosed,
as we gather from Gough's edition of Camden, published in 1789.
This common enclosed, therefore, between 1761 and 1789, 6 is
now, and has been for many years, under cultivation, and, doubt-
less, the only remains of this ancient earthwork still visible form
but a small portion of the Temple which presented itself before the
admiring eyes of Dr. Stukeley.
[See copy of Dr. Stukeley's plan of the "Temple" in the report
of the meeting at Navestock on July 28th, 1894, ante p. 214.—Ed.]
I leave it to you to determine how far the plan drawn by the
learned doctor, and now in your hands, may be recognisable in the
greatly diminished but still surviving site of his Alate Temple.
II. THE EARTHWORK IN FORTIFICATION WOOD.
A second survival of the handiwork of the ancient inhabitants
of Navestock is to be found in Fortification Wood, situated, roughly
speaking, to the south of the road leading from the eastern portion of
Navestock Park to Bois Hall and Dudbrook, and bounded on the
north by Drake's Hill and Slades. This wood is marked on the
Ordnance Survey by the word "camp," and the shape of such camp
is more or less defined on the six inches to a mile issue of such
Survey.
6 Since writing the above, I find the date of its Enclosure Act to have been 1768.