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We will now revert more especially to Edlington. We have mentioned Gilbert de Gaunt as among the first owners, but this applies, more strictly to the hamlet Poolham. Edlington proper, is evidently a place of great antiquity, the name is derived from “Eiddeleg,” a deity in the Bardic Mythology (Dr. Oliver’s “Religious Houses on the Witham”); the whole name meaning the town of Eiddeleg. In connection with this, we may mention that, until about three years ago, when it was destroyed by dynamite, there existed an enormous boulder, standing on a rising ground, about sixty yards from the present highway, on the farm of Mr. Robert Searby, which weighed about 10 tons, its height being about 10ft., width 4ft. 6in., and its thickness about 3ft. This would be just the Druidic altar, at which the Bardic mysteries, in the British period, might be celebrated. In 1819, while digging a field in Edlington, some men found several heaps of ox bones, and with each heap an urn of baked clay. Unfortunately none of these urns were preserved, so that we are unable to say whether they were of Roman make, or of earlier date. They imply heathen sacrifice of some kind, and were close to a Roman road; still the existence, already mentioned, of an earlier Bardic worship, would favour for them, an earlier origin.

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