ABSTRACT
From the sixteenth century onwards scholars in the British Isles sought to discover the origins of their nations by exploring the visible monuments, while at the same time delving into those Classical and medieval texts that had survived. Their interests were all-embracing, ranging from the romantic relics of the recently defunct Gothic world to the mysterious megaliths that belonged to the remotest imaginable past. By the eighteenth century it was a mark of an educated man of taste and leisure, whether country parson or studious squire, to indulge in a little mild antiquarianism. While those who could afford it made the Grand Tour to examine the ruins of Classical antiquity, others just as eagerly explored the mansions, churches, castles, abbeys, Roman ruins and megaliths of the English countryside (1).
