Julaber's Grave from Chilham, a drawing from the vantage point of the Woolpack Inn. This and other drawings were converted into engravings by Elisha Kirkall and featured in Stukeley's publications. An excavation of the barrow was carried out by Lord Weymouth and Heneage Finch—later the 5th Earl of Winchelsea—in 1702 at the instigation of Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth, both of whom had antiquarian interests. Finch dug a shaft 1.5 metres (5 feet) in diameter through the middle of the mound and then expanded it into a 4.8 metre (16 foot) trench along the barrow's length. He found a few bones he regarded as non-human and described a chalk cap covering core of dark earth within the barrow. In a letter Finch wrote to John Battely, the Archdeacon of Canterbury, shortly after the excavation, he noted that: "that it has been a burial-place is manifest, but of what people or time I find no marks." It was later noted that this was one of the earliest organised "barrow openings" to take place in England. Later excavation in the 1930s found surface-evidence of a cross-trench in the heart of a barrow; this may be evidence for another, un-documented excavation that had taken place, perhaps conducted by a member of the Wildman family who owned the Chilham Castle estate between 1792 and 1861. In the early nineteenth century, the site's owner set up a fence around the barrow to prevent trespassers walking onto it; this was gone by the mid-1930s. It was during the digging of a post hole for the fence that the hoard of Roman coins was discovered. Although the site had long been recognised as a tumulus, it was only in 1868 that it was first recognised as a long barrow, by the archaeologist John Thurnam. In 1880, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie recorded the site among a list of Kentish earthworks, referring to it as "Julaber's Grave". It was then examined and recorded by the archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford in his 1924 Ordnance Survey, Professional Papers. Jessup's excavation In July 1936, an excavation of the barrow was carried out under the directorship of the archaeologist Ronald Jessup. The excavation was both instigated and funded by the landowner who owned the barrow, Sir Edmund Davis, after the publication of Dr. R. Austin Freeman's novel, The Penrose Mystery (London: Hodder & Stouton, 1936) in which it plays a central role.