2-791-405 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Barrows in Greenwich Park, 1844. Ancient earthworks in London: 'There the Britons, in the fifth century, opened a vast burial field. There they interred their illustrious dead, and marked these venerated sites by those most durable of all memorials, plain circles of raised earth - rude symbols o( their untutored hope in an endless and happy existence. These proud memorials of our brave, our social, our religious ancestors, have dwelt to the present time in undisturbed security. No hand, through ages of violence and misrule, dared touch them...Ten days ago, while a public meeting...was being held for the purpose of taking the sense of the public on the threatened trespass and desecration, a set of...wretches were let loose on the barrows, and in a few short hours, three fourths of them were actually - and IN SPITE - cleanly and smoothly shaven from the face of the ancient sward'. From "Illustrated London News", 1844, Vol I.