Fig. 8. — Two Bronze Mounts of Sword- 

 scabbard (?), Suffolk (^) 



A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



like one in the British Museum that was found by Lord Londesborough at 

 Gilton, near Sandwich. The latter can be approximately dated by associated 

 finds, and it is possible that the Tostock buckle also came from a grave that 

 was overlooked. 



In Bury St. Edmunds Museum (Cat. Ill, 6i8, 619) are two oblong 

 plates of bronze that probably belonged to a sword-scabbard (fig. 8). The 

 exact site of their discovery is unknown, but special mention must be made 

 of their elaborate ornamentation. The smaller piece has a doubled band 



twisted on itself and ending in a ser- 

 pentine head and tail, recalling a more 

 intricate specimen on a beaker from 

 Farthing-down, Surrey^""; but closer 

 parallels are published from Italy and 

 Uppland, Sweden, and have been re- 

 ferred on stylistic grounds to the 7th 

 century.'^ Uppland has also produced 

 a plate ornamented in the same style 

 as the larger figure, with ribbon-like 

 bodies of animals covered with trans- 

 verse lines, and long jaws clasping the 

 body at intervals." The home of this kind of interlacing has not yet been 

 determined, but the two plates here illustrated were more probably made in 

 Sweden than in England, and were doubtless brought over by a Scandinavian 

 settler. 



At Moyses Hall is also preserved a series of iron spear and lance-heads, 

 knives and strike-a-light, shield bosses of various patterns, glass beads, both 

 variegated and plain dark blue, and the rim of a bronze bowl, from Fornham 

 St. Martin, all having been deposited in graves with unburnt bodies about 

 I 8 in. from the surface. The discovery was made in 1888—9, ^""^ ^^^ anti- 

 quities presented to Bury by Mr. Walton Burrell."^ A short distance farther 

 down the Lark valley, a cinerary urn, now at Ipswich (pi. iii, fig. 2), was 

 found at Culford, and is peculiar as having a moulding below the lip, though 

 the round and oval protuberances on the shoulder are common at the period. 



Two series of Anglo-Saxon weapons and ornaments from West Stow 

 Heath were exhibited by Mr. Gwilt and the Rev, S. Banks respectively, 

 to the Bury and West Suffolk Archaeological Institute in 1851, and were 

 described by the secretary Mr. Samuel Tymms, who in the following year 

 furnished the Institute with an illustrated report "*" of excavations on the site. 

 In the interval the Rev. E. R. Benyon, the proprietor of the heath, had 

 presented specimens to the Institute, which are now in the museum at 

 Bury St. Edmunds. 



Stow Heath is a large tract of heath-land on the north side of the Lark 

 valley in the parish of West Stow and on the borders of Lackford and 

 Icklingham parishes. It consists of gravel or sand covered with a thin layer 

 of vegetable mould ; and the discoveries were made in removing the soil for 



*"' r.C.H. Surrey, i, 266, fig. 6, 6a ; Proc. Soc. Antiq. (ist ser.), iv, 93 (Sundlake, Ojcon). 



" Salin, Die Allgermamsche Tkierornametitik, figs. 690, 555. 



" Salin, op. cit. fig. 549, also in style II (7th cent.). 



"* Earlier finds at Fornham St, Genevieve are mentioned ; Bury and W. Suff. Proc. vi, 53. 



'"' Proceedings, i, 304, 3 i 5, with eight plates. 



