ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



side the original embankment. Eight years later the bank was levelled 

 to alter the course of the road, and at least one other grave was exposed. 



It was on this occasion that some interesting relics were discovered, 

 of which only a bare list is given, with the exception of a full-size 

 engraving of a fine square-headed brooch * now in the possession of the 

 Society of Antiquaries. Besides this were found a dish-shaped and a 

 disc-shaped brooch, two rings of bronze, three hooks of iron, perhaps 

 keys, an iron knife and a bone spindle-whorl. The skulls were pro- 

 nounced of the long variety characteristic of the Teutonic peoples, but 

 there is little evidence to determine the particular tribe to which they 

 belonged. Nor is there satisfactory proof that ' the Anglo-Saxon grave- 

 mound of Norton presents no resemblance to the considerable cemetery 

 at Marston St. Lawrence in the same county.' A comparison is made 

 with some graves discovered in 1824, twenty miles further north in the 

 very centre of the Watling Street near Bensford Bridge. The large 

 square-headed brooch certainly points to Anglian influence but the same 

 may also be said of Marston and Newnham. 



In the four localities already mentioned, the dead were with few 

 exceptions buried entire, and the relics from some of the graves point to 

 a connection with a well-defined district to the south-west beyond the 

 present county border. The period of the interments here is very 

 roughly determined by the fact that the bodies were laid in the earth 

 with the head to the south-west ; and we cannot be far wrong in assign- 

 ing them all to the last half of the sixth and the first half of the seventh 

 century. The geography of western Northamptonshire renders it an 

 open question whether these pagan burials may not in some cases belong 

 to a still earlier period, but ecclesiastical history forbids us to put them 

 much later than the introduction of Christianity. With this event the 

 foundation of Medeshamstede, the later Peterborough, almost coincides, 

 and from that active missionary centre the Gospel must soon have spread 

 to the neighbourhood of the Watling Street. In fact many monasteries 

 had been established in the county before the close of the century, and 

 some authorities^ assign the earliest part of Brixworth Church to this 

 period. 



The earlier notices of Anglo-Saxon sites are lamentably deficient 

 in details on which their classification mainly depends ; and little can 

 be said as to the date of burials at Welton, Passenham and Great 

 Addington except that they all probably belong to the pagan period. 

 Welton lies four miles north of Newnham, and two miles north-west of 

 Norton, all three places having the same geological formation and simi- 

 larly situated with regard to the great Roman road. In 1778 there 

 were found two skeletons, with two small bronze brooches of the square- 

 headed pattern, and beads of glass and amber about their necks and 

 wrists. Between the two skeletons was a small urn of pottery, not 

 four inches high, which can never have been intended to hold the ashes 



' Figured in Jnhctologia, vol. xli. pi. xxii. 



- See for tymmfi^ Journal of Jrcha-olo^cal Institute, vol. xxxvii. p. 365 ; The BuilJet; Nov. 3, 1900. 



235 



