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Tumulus.

At one time it was presumed that, like the mound in the field to the right of the path to Highgate, which Lord Mansfield caused to be enclosed and planted with Scotch firs, it was a tumulus. In support of this idea there is a tradition of Saxon times still extant of this neighbourhood. Was it not about the skirts of Highgate that Alfred encamped with his troops to protect the citizens of London, whilst they gathered in the harvest from the surrounding fields, from Hastings of the Ivory Horn, who lay with his Danish army beside the Lea, ready to pillage them of their summer fruits? And might not some great battle have been fought, and have resulted in the raising of this mound? Alas for romance! When a few summers ago a child at play in its neighbourhood unearthed the hidden treasure of some threatened home, buried for safety’s sake in troublous times, or the booty of some thief, whose after-career interfered with his return for it, a search into the interior of the mound, under the direction of the County Council, dispelled the theories of the antiquaries and the dreams of romancists.[1]