59
GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON A SUPPOSED EARTH-
WORK NEAR THE RAILWAY STATION AT
HARLOW, ESSEX.
By T. V. HOLMES, F.G.S., Vice-President.
WITH A REPLY BY I. CHALKLEY GOULD AND FURTHER
OBSERVATIONS BY T. V. HOLMES.
[The following paper was read by Mr. Holmes at the meeting on
the River Lea on June 29th, 1895. As Mr. Holmes traverses the
conclusions arrived at in the original paper in the "Transactions of
the Essex Archaeological Society," we deem it only just to allow our
valued member, Mr. Gould, to reply at the same time, and we have
also appended some further observations by Mr. Holmes, written
after perusal of Mr. Gould's reply.]
AT the beginning of this month (June, 1895), my friend, Mr. T.
Hay Wilson, asked me to go with him to Harlow to see some
new sections in Glacial Drift in that neighbourhood. I did so, and
as we left Harlow Railway Station, he pointed out the supposed
earthwork, and was also good enough to lend me a short paper
thereon, by Mr. I. C. Gould, which had been read before the Essex
Archaeological Society on May 17th, 1894, and since published in
"Trans. Essex Archaeological Society," vol. v. (n.s.), pp. 95-98, with
plate. Mr. Gould, in concluding his paper, remarks: "Having thus
touched upon the various possible dates of the construction of this
earthwork, the question arises, to what are we to attribute it ? I
suggest that we have here a natural oblong hill turned into a fort,
which was in its origin British."
And he then discusses in what ways the "fort" or "earthwork"
may have been modified by races occupying the district at later periods.
Mr. Gould notes that an account of the discovery of Roman
remains at Harlow, together with a brief notice of this earthwork,
may be seen in the "Archaeologia" for 1821, p. 409; also in the
"Gentleman's Magazine" for the same year, part i., p. 66. In the
"Gentleman's Magazine Library," no mention is made of anything
at Harlow in the two volumes devoted to "Archaeology," or in those
treating of Romano-British antiquities. And in "English Topo-
graphy," part iv., though there is a notice headed "Harlow," in the
portion assigned to Essex (p. 118), there is no mention of this
earthwork, though there is some account of the discovery, in 1841,