A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



24 ft. by 4 ft. They appear to have been placed in regular quincunx 

 order, and all were in an upright position about two feet from the surface. 

 Each contained calcined bones, and in one alone were also found a pair 

 of bronze tweezers, a pair of iron shears, and part of a bone comb. l 



Before proceeding to mention certain discoveries of a later period 

 we may conclude from the character and distribution of the antiquities 

 already described that the Rhaetic beds of red marl attracted the earliest 

 Teutonic settlers, who seem to have approached from the Lincolnshire 

 side, and to have followed the Fosse Way and the Trent Valley. The 

 former took them into Leicestershire, where antiquities of the period are 

 somewhat more plentiful but of similar character ; while the latter would 

 draw them across what is now the county border into Derbyshire. In 

 this connexion it should be noticed that early Anglo-Saxon sites in 

 Derbyshire fall into two main groups ; * the larger occupies the centre 

 of the western half of the county between Buxton and Matlock, and is 

 quite isolated from that in the southern angle, where the river valley 



URN FROM NEWARK. 



URN FROM NEWARK. 



was the centre of attraction. The cemeteries of King's Newton, near 

 Melbourne, and of Stapenhill, 3 near Burton, present many resemblances to 

 those in the adjoining county. The former site is only seven miles from 

 Kingston on Soar, and yielded a large number of cinerary urns of the 

 same description as those from Kingston Hall grounds and from Newark, 

 while the Stapenhill cemetery contained five burnt and thirty-one unburnt 

 burials, the latter not strictly orientated. Elsewhere in Derbyshire 

 different types of interment are not found intermingled, and the presence 

 of many Roman objects recalls discoveries at Holme Pierrepont, where 

 both rites may also have been practised. At present there is little to fix 



1 George Milner, Cemetery Burial, pp. 26, 27, figs, reproduced in Journ. Brit. Arch. A HOC. viii, 

 pi. 27. 



' Map in y. C.H. Derbyshire, \, 265 ; cf. pp. 272-5. 



1 Another variety of trefoil-headed brooch was found here : Trans. Burton Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soe. 

 (1889), pi. vii. 



202 



