ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



cated has still to be decided, but the preceding pages show that cremation 

 was not the invariable practice here during the fifth and sixth centuries. 

 An important discovery of cremated burials at Kingston on Soar in 

 1844 was communicated to the British Archaeological Association 1 by the 

 Rev. J. S. Henslow, at that time Professor of Botany in the University of 

 Cambridge. In the light of subsequent investigations it is no longer 

 permissible to attribute these cinerary urns to the aboriginal Britons ; they 

 are undoubtedly of Anglian origin, of a dark-coloured clay mixed with 

 fragments of felspar, and wrought by hand without the use of the lathe, 

 while the firing was very imperfect. Many were ornamented with lines 

 in various patterns, and some have in addition stamped devices probably 

 executed by means of a stick or bone. They were found deposited on the 

 slope and near the summit of a gentle eminence, about a quarter of a 

 mile to the east of Kingston Church, and over a space of about half an 

 acre. Workmen employed in trenching the ground for the shrubbery in 

 the grounds of Kingston Hall, then in course of erection for the Rt. Hon. 

 Edward Strutt (formerly M.P. for Derby, and afterwards Lord Belper), had 

 turned up and completely destroyed about two hundred of them before it 

 occurred to anyone that they were worthy of preservation. The owner 

 subsequently had the soil removed from the remainder of the space occu- 

 pied by the interments, and thus made it apparent that they had been 

 arranged in lines or trenches either singly or in groups, several deposits 

 being from four to six feet apart. As the field had been under the plough 

 about sixty years previously, it is not surprising that there was no surface 

 indication of the burials, or that all the urns had been more or less 

 mutilated. About thirty of the deposits were carefully removed, and the 

 fragments recovered were generally sufficient to indicate the size, shape, 

 and decoration of the urns. It seemed probable that the mouth of each 

 had been covered with a slab of sandstone, and it may thus be inferred 

 that all had been buried in an upright position. With the exception of 

 a small vase, which was empty, all contained human bones thoroughly 

 calcined. In a few were also found glass beads fused in the funeral pyre, 

 and in one some fragments of a bronze brooch, which is not described in 

 detail ; but no weapons or coins were found in or near the cemetery. " 

 The specimens figured in the original account furnish examples of most 

 of the forms and decorative patterns known in this class of pottery, and 

 vary in height from lof to 6 in., the exception mentioned above 

 being a cup 3 in. high. 



It was by the side of the Fosse Way that a number of cinerary urns 

 were found near Mill Gate at Newark in i836. a During excavations for 

 the foundation of a house at the south-west end of the town, fifteen or 

 sixteen specimens (see fig.) were recovered in fairly good condition, but 

 three or four times as many were destroyed in digging. Subsequently a 

 saw-pit was sunk, and about twenty more urns were found in an area of 



1 Journ. vol. ii, p. 60 (where the site is wrongly stated to be in Derb.), vol. viii, p. 189 ; Arch. 

 Journ. iii, 158 ; and Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua, ii, 228, with plate of urns ; Jewitt's Reliquary, 

 vol. ix (1868-9), p. 6, and pi. ii. 



' Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua, ii, 231 ; Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. iii, 194. 



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