A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



the complete specimen to one found at Castor near Peterborough with 

 purely Roman remains cannot be verified ; while the other, which is 

 broken at the bow, is almost identical with one found at Woodstone, 

 Hunts, near Peterborough.' Bosses of shields and spearheads also occur 

 at Newnham, and a circular bronze brooch with hollow centre. The 

 space dug over in this case measured about fifty-three yards by forty-six; 

 and the bodies were distributed in about the same proportion to the 

 ground as at Marston Hill, while the skeletons with weapons were again 

 less numerous than those without, which seem to have been the remains 

 of women and children. The site was excavated in 1829 and two 

 saucer-shaped brooches suggesting contact with Wessex are to be seen in 

 the Northampton Museum. 



To the same group of Saxon sites in the county, though possibly of 

 a somewhat later date, belong two others, at Badby and Norton, the 

 former nearly a mile and a half to the south-west, and the latter about 

 four miles north of Newnham. 



About the year 1836, four brooches were discovered at Badby 

 where there appears to have been a cemetery of the Saxon period.' 

 Diggings for stone had been carried on for a number of years on a farm 

 in the parish, and from time to time many skeletons had been disin- 

 terred, disposed north and south, with spears, swords, shield-bosses, 

 knives, beads and other articles in close proximity. An unusual quantity 

 of relics were met with about 1834, but nearly all were dispersed as 

 well as another find two years later of the same description. When- 

 ever fresh soil was opened at the stone-pit, bones and entire skeletons 

 were met with, at about eighteen inches below the surface. The square- 

 headed brooch is clearly of the same type as one from Norton, though 

 shorter by an inch, while the three others figured belong to ordinary 

 Anglian varieties. 



Some objects found in the parish of Norton, near Daventry, were 

 presented to the Society of Antiquaries of London in the year 1863. It 

 is unfortunate that no contemporary account of the discovery exists, but 

 the information ' supplied by Dr. Thurnam and others four years later is 

 precise enough to fix the character of the interments. A plan was also 

 prepared to indicate the position of the oblong mound from which 

 five or six skeletons were exhumed. This mound seems to have been 

 about forty or fifty yards long, two or three yards wide and about a yard 

 high, lying along the hedge to the east of the Watling Street. The 

 graves discovered in 1855 or 1856 were in a single line and contained 

 besides the skeletons which it is believed lay with the heads to the south, 

 some formless pieces of metal and one rude bead of amber. The level at 

 which the bodies had been deposited was about six feet below the crown 

 of the Roman road, and about twenty-five feet from its centre, just out- 



' Figured in Proceedings, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1887-88, p. 264. 

 2 Journal of British Archaohgtcal Association, vol. i. p. 61 ; Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, ist 

 ser. vol. i. p. 74. 



' Archaologia, vol. xli. p. 479. 



234 



