Rooke was intrigued by the many remains and landscape features he ascribed to the ancient Britons, and alongside his published papers he generated around 240 images. The majority of Rooke's papers on British remains were published in Archaeologia, whilst only three (of more than thirty-two) articles published in other journals dealt with this subject matter. A number of Rooke's images of remnants of ancient Britain provided visual material for articles written by other antiquaries. The articles for the journal of the Society of Antiquaries and those which Rooke contributed to The Gentleman's Magazine and the Antiquarian Repertory differ in length, detail and illustrative approach. This may reflect the more scholarly orientation of Archaeologia, and the more general interest catered for by the other magazines, whose readership might like to be given information, but not in as much detail as the antiquaries. The Gentleman's Magazine especially was a miscellany of information, presented in short articles. Rooke's copiously illustrated accounts for Archaeologia would be seriously out of place in this context, but provide a rich source of knowledge for the interested Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In his drawings of Arbor Low for Pegge, Rooke included a plan of the site, a profile of the ditch and vallum, a section of the tumulus and a perspective view of the temple from the north-west. A plan and perspective view was not an unusual combination, but at the time a section and a profile are not to be found in other articles of a similar nature in Archaeologia. That Rooke thought a plan, perspective view, section and profile to be necessary to a full elucidation of the site is an interesting starting point for an investigation of his approach to the study, excavation and recording of ancient sites.

NATIVE BRITONS AND THE DRUIDS

Rooke was not the first to study the ancient Britons in any detail; unusual rock formations and circles of standing stones had gripped the imaginations of antiquarians over the years, and a broad range of opinions were offered as to their interpretation. These ranged from the reasonable to the outrageous, some justifiable and others entirely imaginary.