Note (return) — THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

This road from the Avon, which it passes at Dove Bridge, to the Anker, near Atherstone, forms the boundary between the counties of Leicester and Warwick. In the month of June, 1824, numerous skulls and bones were discovered in a line from the intersection of the road that leads from Rugby to Lutterworth, with the Watling Street to Benones or Bensford Bridge, the distance not being more than half a mile. These bones were lying about two feet below the surface of the ground. Many fragments of shields, spear heads, knives, and a sword,3 placed by the side of a skeleton, and at one end touching a funereal urn,4 and likewise several drinking cups, or small vessels, apparently formed of half-baked clay, with clasps both of silver and brass, were found within the abovementioned distance. On the contrary side of the road were discovered beads, glass, and amber, but neither urns, spear-heads, or fragments of shields; these relics, therefore, probably belonged to the Britons, who fell encountering the Romans, to prevent their forming a road through the Forest of Arden. There can be little doubt of a battle having been here fought, from the bones, urns, and tumuli discovered here and in the adjacent neighbourhood. "In this parish (Church Over,") says Dugdale, "upon the old Roman Way, called Watling Strete, is to be seen a very great tumulus, which is of that magnitude, that it puts travellers beside the usual road," and a Letter from Elias Ashmole to Sir Wm. Dugdale,5 states, "that about a mile from hence (that is from Holywell Abbey, now the site of Caves Inn,) there is a tumulus raised in the very middle of the high way, which methought was worth observing." This tumulus, in an ancient deed, is called the Pilgrim's Low. It was removed in making the turnpike-road from Banbury to Lutterworth, about the year 1770. In the plantations of Abraham Grimes, Esq., within half a mile of the site of the former, is another tumulus of smaller dimensions, adjoining the road which leads from Rugby to Lutterworth.