By the Rev. E. H. Godclard. 391 



is known as the " Late Celtic Period." It was during this period, 

 too, tlmt the art of enamelling and the use of the potter's 

 wheel probably first became known in Britain. During the 

 last part of this period, cir. 50 B.C., a type of art was evolved in 

 Southern Britain, the remains of which have come down to us in 

 the shape of bronze work and enamelling, which in the extraordi- 

 nary beauty of its designs and ornamentation was absolutely un- 

 influenced by Eoman feeling, and was from an artistic point of 

 view vastly superior to the Eoman provincial art which superseded 

 it. Let anyone who doubts this look at the magnificent enamelled 

 bronze shield from the Thames at Battersea, now in the British 

 Museum, and illustrated on the frontispiece of the G^iide to the 

 Early Iron Age. This " Late Celtic " art, when it ceased in Eoman 

 Britain, survived and passed on into the later Christian Celtic art 

 of Ireland and of Scotland. 



Of course we have nothing comparable with this shield to show 

 in Wiltshire, and we cannot boast of large and important finds of 

 objects of this period such as have been found in Yorkshire, on 

 the Polden Hills in Somerset, at Aylesford, at Hunsbury, or at 

 Glastonbury. 



The most important object found in Wiltshire, is, of course, at 

 the same time the best known, "The Marlborough Bucket," 

 found at St. Margaret's Mead, Marlborough, in 1807, and since 

 1878, in a restored condition, in our Museum at Devizes, 

 measuring 21 x 24 inches, and having three broad bands of thin 

 bronze, with repousse figures of animals and human heads. It was 

 illustrated by Hoare,^ and a better figure of it is given in Guide to 

 the Early Iron Aye, p. 28, but there is room still for more detailed 

 illustration than it has yet received. A bucket evidently of the 

 same period was found with other objects at Aylesford, Kent, in 



' Hoare, Ancient Wilts, II., 34, gives two views of this vessel made from 

 drawings taken when it was first found, and before it fell to pieces on exposure 

 to the air. These engravings are reproduced on a reduced scale in Wilts Arch. 

 Mag., xxiii., 222, where further details as to its discovery are given, and' 

 again in the Catalogxie of the Stourhaed Collection (1896), p. 88. In "Wright's 

 The Gelt, The Roman, and The Saxon, it is (p. 428) erroneously stated to be 

 of Anglo-Saxon date. 



