Ten Years' Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Grave Hills : In the Counties of Derby, Stafford, and York, from 1848 to 1858

The grandson of a wealthy Manchester cotton manufacturer who had bought a Derbyshire estate, Thomas Bateman (1821-61) was able to spend his life in antiquarian pursuits.

He had inherited the library and private museum of his father and grandfather, and published his father's notes on local excavations.

This work, published in 1861, describes his own and others' excavations of barrows in the areas of Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Staffordshire, between 1848 and 1858.

His main colleagues were Samuel Carrington, a Staffordshire schoolmaster, and James Ruddock, a taxidermist from Pickering in North Yorkshire.

A fellow of the Society of Antiquities, and influenced by the excavation methods of Richard Colt Hoare, Bateman was known as 'a distinguished barrow opener'.

His illustrated accounts of recent work are accompanied in an appendix by notes on other discoveries, descriptions of bones and pottery, and information on animal, vegetable and mineral remains found in the barrows.