The Hall of Waltheof/Chapter III

by Sidney Oldall Addy

FLINT implements of various kinds are found in considerable numbers in Bradfield, especially at the springs or sources of the streams on the moors.

There is a stone hatchet recently lent to the Weston Park Museum, Sheffield, by Mr. Thomas Winder, to whom I am indebted for assistance in getting together some materials for this book. It was found three or four feet below the surface of the ground in John street, Sheffield, about fourteen years ago. This hatchet, which is polished all over, is in fine condition, and, with the exception of one slight fracture at the butt-end, is as fresh and perfect as if it had been made yesterday. Its extreme length is eight inches, and it measures seven-and-one-third inches round its largest circumference. As will be seen in the drawing one of its sides is considerably longer than the other. The hatchet is made of a light-coloured hone slate, or of a stone which resembles hone slate. No doubt it was first rudely struck out, and then polished. The edge is clearly cut and sharp, but it is thick, and such a thickness, it is said, would make the hatchet stronger and more useful for working in wood. But I doubt whether such an instrument could bear hard blows without breaking, and this hatchet, which has not the least fracture of any kind upon its edge, does not appear to have been ever used.

There is also another stone hatchet in the Weston Park Museum which was found at Upperthorpe, near Sheffield, and is of smaller size than the one which has just been described. It is of similar shape and colour, and is made of the same kind of stone. This hatchet, too, is polished, but its edge shows some slight signs of having been used. Parallel to the edge on one side of the hatchet and extending down thereto is a broad streak of greenish colouring, the width of the streak being approximately shown in the drawing. There is a corresponding streak of similar colour on the other side of about the same breadth, but on this side it is not quite so regular, and is not, as is the streak shown in the drawing, quite parallel to the edge. That this colouring is not part of the natural stone may be proved by the facl that it is of uniform thickness and can be scratched or chipped off. And that the colour or paste was not—at all events when the hatchet was first made—designedly laid on seems to be shown by the fact that some little holes or fractures near the edge are coloured by the same material, which when magnified has a crystallized appearance in such holes or fractures. Moreover, a close examination reveals the fact that other parts of the surface of the hatchet also bear minute portions of the same substance, which resembles the oxide of bronze or copper. This streak of colour has, or rather had before some experiments were made on the hatchet, a decided appearance of artificial ornamentation, and it is hard to account for the fact that on one side the streak of colour is exactly parallel to the curved edge of the hatchet, except on the supposition that it has been artificially laid on. Nevertheless I can find no instance of a stone implement which has been decorated in this way, and it is much more probable that the colouring at the edge has arisen from contact with bronze or copper. The polishing of this hatchet is most clearly marked at and near the edge, and it diminishes gradually towards the butt-end. Its extreme length is five inches, and it measures six-and-a-half inches round its largest circumference. A memorandum at the museum describes it as "a stone celt found at Upperthorpe two feet below the surface and lent by T. W. Marsden of Terrace villas, Upperthorpe road, in 1875." On making enquiry I find that Mr. Marsden has been dead for some years, but his daughter, Miss Marsden, tells me in a letter that the hatchet was found by her father's workmen when digging the foundation of the house formerly belonging to him in a street now called "Upperthorpe" which runs from the Heavygate road to the old hamlet known as Upperthorpe. This house, which is now unoccupied, is the topmost house on the north side of the street and the nearest to "Howard Hill." Miss Marsden tells me that the exact place of discovery was under the dining room which is nearest to "Howard Hill." She says also that the hatchet was "always of the same colour as that described in my letter," and she informs me that it was found "along with some Roman coins." She also says that the workmen "came across some parts of a Roman wall." Contact with the bronze coins is probably the true explanation of the streak of colour upon the hatchet, notwithstanding its regularity. I have not, however, been able to trace the "Roman coins." There was formerly a big old yew tree near the Heavygate road a little to north-west of the place of discovery, and there is a tradition in the neighbourhood that this tree stood near a Roman road. The Heavygate road is an old highway leading from Walkley to Barber Nook.

Another stone implement has been found at a distance of 580 yards to the north of the place where the hatchet last described was discovered. In 1874 it was described by a writer in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent as a "spear head." The writer says: "In the summer of 1872 when Mr. H. Draper was digging in a garden at the back of 132 Hoole street, Walkley, he found a large stone spear head made of close grain sandstone. It measures six inches in length, with the point broken off. The broken piece would measure about one-and-a-quarter inch, making the total length to be seven-and-a-quarter inches; the breadth at the broadest part is three-and-a-half inches, and the thickness in the middle is five-eighths of an inch, narrowing off to a sharp edge on either side."^[1]

We have seen that the stone hatchet belonging to Mr. Marsden was found within a distance of 200 yards from a place called Barber Nook, and that Mr. Draper's stone implement was found at Walkley at a distance therefrom of barely 600 yards. Now an eminent scholar once expressed the opinion that Walkley was Wealja-leáh, Welshmen's territory.^[2] The opinion seems to have been well founded, and it could be supported by many analogous examples. I would go a step further and say that the adjoining Barber Nook is Welshman's Nook, Barbarian's Nook.^[3] In a subsequent chapter I shall give examples of the word barbar in local names, and I will only allude to it here in connexion with Walkley, with the stone implements, and with the tradition about the Roman road. It will be objected, no doubt, by some local readers that a family called Barber lived at this place in the present century, and is still well remembered. But Barber Nook is as much the old name of a place as Upperthorpe is the old name of a place, and I have failed to find any evidence that the family gave their name to the place. As well might it be said that the ancient earthwork at Kimberworth called Barber Balk which extends for miles takes its name from a person called Barber ! I think we may fairly conclude that these heights were formerly occupied by a race of men who differed in nationality from the newer settlers living in the plains or valleys below. The occupants of the high ground were neither Anglo-Saxons nor Norsemen, and it was these Teutonic settlers who spoke of the older or aboriginal inhabitants as Welsh, and, as I think, as barbars.^[4]

Although stone hammers and axes must originally have been made for use, yet, says Worsaae, they "have had a symbolical signification among many different peoples, dwelling far apart from each other."^[5]

Axes are found figured upon old gravestones built into the walls of our English churches, as for instance upon two gravestones at Ashover Church in Derbyshire, where the axe appears side by side with the cross, both symbols being emblems of heathen belief. These gravestones are figured below. The most remarkable of them (Fig. 2) now forms the top stone of the south window of the belfry, and is divided into two parts by the stone mullion of the window. On the right of this grave-stone is a plain incised sword. The figure on the left, which is exceedingly remarkable, is not the Christian cross, but a double-headed axe resembling the cross. Its shape is exactly like that of the symbolical double-headed axes of gold which Schliernann found in sepulchres at Mycenæ, and it also exactly resembles the symbolical double axes of thin gold plate fixed between the golden horns of cows which he found in the same sepulchres.^[6] Schliernann also found numerous gold crosses there, all of which, it need hardly be said, belong to a period long anterior to the Christian era.^[7]

Figure 1 is another incised slab now forming the sill of one of the chancel windows in Ashover Church. Here also, as will be seen in the drawing, four axes make up a cross resembling a sun-wheel. The length of the central cross is five feet eleven inches, showing that the slab formed part of a tomb. Both the slabs are quite flat, and it seems likely that they once formed either the side stones or the covering stones of graves belonging to a very early period. "Figures of axes," says Worsaae, "are often found carved upon the side stones of the graves of the Stone Age in Western Europe."^[8] "In Brittany," says Mr. Evans, "the figures of stone celts are in several instances engraved on the large stones of chambered tumuli and dolmens."^[9] Here, then, may be seen a clear connection between the celt carved on the chambered tumulus and the axes carved upon the old tombstones at Ashover.

Not only in Europe, says Worsaae, "but in other parts of the world small stone axes have been worn as amulets for luck. The inhabitants of several of the South Sea Islands possess 'ceremonial hatchets' which are used at religious festivals and similar solemn occasions. Some of the oldest representations of the god of thunder or lightning which have been found in Europe and Asia represent him with an axe or hammer in his hand. It is also well known that the stone axes are called 'thunderbolts' over the whole world, on account of the universal superstition that they fall from the sky during thunderstorms. This superstition cannot, however, have been general at the time when man himself made and used these stone axes; but must have been a subsequent idea, which, to judge from the peculiar occurrence of hatchet-shaped objects in the bogs and grave finds, doubtless had its origin in the faft that the axe and the hammer were, in the Stone Age, sacred to the mighty divinity of thunder and lightning, who not only inspired terror, but greatly contributed to the increase of the fertility of the earth. It is, therefore, quite natural to suppose that it was the protection of that god especially which was invoked, and was believed to be secured by wearing hammer or hatchet-formed objects, or by burying them in the ground as propitiatory sacrifices."^[10] In Northern mythology the thunderbolt was represented as a hammer. "It was from a hatchet," says Mr. Evans, "that, according to Plutarch, Jupiter Labrandeus received that title; and M. de Longpérier has pointed out a passage, from which it appears that Bacchus was in one instance, at all events, worshipped under the form of a hatchet, or ireXexis. He has also published a Chaldaean cylinder on which a priest is represented as making an offering to a hatchet placed upright on a throne, and has called attention to the fact that the Egyptian hieroglyph for Nouter, God, is simply the figure of an axe."^[11]

The question then arises whether the stone hatchets just described were made for manual use or for a religious purpose. Mr. Winder says of the hatchet found in John street that "it is beautifully marked with dendritic spots proving that it had not been handled for ages."^[12] So perfect, indeed, is its condition that it has evidently never been used at all. It seems to me to have been buried in the earth as a sacrifice to the god who in ancient belief made the thunder. Possibly the stone hammer or hatchet was laid in the earth to protect the crops against rain and storm, or the house against lightning. As bronze and stone implements are found together in graves it is evident that the making of stone implements was contemporaneous with the making of bronze implements, so that it cannot be asserted that these two stone hatchets belong to a "stone age" which preceded a "bronze age," though doubtless the use of stone long preceded the use of bronze in the making of tools and weapons.^[13]

A plain bronze hatchet was found about ten years ago by a gamekeeper near some stones known as "the Coach and Horses" on Derwent Edge in Bradfield, and it is now in the possession of Mr. John Bedford, of More Hall. The edge is blunt and jagged, as though a long time ago it had borne hard blows. Its extreme length is six-and-a-half inches, and its breadth in the widest part is exactly three inches. The average thickness is about a quarter of an inch. One side of this instrument is quite plain and flat, but on the other side are two round holes which penetrate about half way through the bronze. They do not appear to have been produced either by casting or punching. Judging from their irregularity and their size I should say that they were scraped out by some sharp instrument. What they were intended for can only be guessed. I do not think that they would have been of any service in fastening a handle to the hatchet. Their appearance rather suggests the mysterious round holes so often found on stones, rocks, and in the burial mounds of prehistoric times. The shape of the hatchet makes it probable that it is of great antiquity. "Among celts," says Mr. 'Evans, "the simple form, and that most nearly approaching in character to the stone hatchet, was probably the earliest, though it may have been continued in use after the introduction of the side flanges, the stop-ridge, and even the socket. Some celts of the simplest form found in Ireland are of copper."^[14]

This hatchet is certainly made of bronze, and not of copper. On the moor where it was found part of an ancient quern, which will be hereafter described, has been lately discovered.

A bronze knife-dagger found in a cinerary urn at Crookes has already been described.^[15]

Footnotes

1. Note on "Walkley," by "Electric" in Local Notes and Queries of the Independent, in 1874.
2. Mr. Henry Bradley.
3. The word "nook" is not easy of explanation, and it may mean several things. A nook of land (in Low Latin noca) is said to be "quarter of a yard land."
4. The word will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.
5. Industrial Arts of Denmark, 1882, p. 32.
6. Schliemann's Mycenæ, London, 1878, pp. 218, 252.
7. Ibid. pp. 190 194, etc. The golden cross figured on p. 194 of Schliemann's work, with its ornamentation of spirals on either side, will remind the reader of some of the old crosses fixed in English churchyards, as, for instance, that at Eyam, in Derbyshire.
8. Industrial Arts of Denmark, p. 32.
9. Ancient Stone Implements, 1872, p. 54.
10. Ibid, p. 32.
11. Ancient Stone Implements, 1872, p. 54.
12. I was told at the museum that these spots are probably owing to the presence of iron in the soil.
13. In connexion with this subject it is perhaps worth while mentioning that people in the neighbourhood of Sheffield say that "they've buried t' hatchet" when they have settled a quarrel.
14. Ancient Bronze Implements, 1881, p. 39.
15. p.4.