ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



vessel, and fragments of skull seemed remarkably thin and delicate for 

 an adult. Only two teeth were found and these were very small, and in 

 many instances a tiny land-shell had found its way among the bones. 

 Nothing of any intrinsic value had been deposited with the ashes, but 

 several small articles, all of personal or domestic use, were recovered 

 from the urns, comprising two bronze knives with tangs for the handle ; 

 four pairs of small iron shears ; two needles and four pairs of bronze 

 tweezers ; two fragments of glass vessels, one stamped with the letter R ; 

 many bone discs ^ with shallow holes, not buttons but perhaps draughts- 

 men ; a coarse clay net-weight ^ ; beads of glass and pieces of bone 

 combs. The find is recorded in Norfolk Archceology, vol. xii. 



Nothing can be said with certainty about several isolated discoveries 

 in the county, briefly and perhaps inaccurately reported many years ago. 

 Thus at Narborough about 1 600 Blomefield relates that ' several human 

 bones and pieces of armour were dug up at the foot of a lofty artificial 

 hill,' ^ which may have been an Anglian grave-mound ; and indeed 

 Gough calls a number of little hills along the coast by North Creake 

 the burying-places of Danes and Saxons.* Again, the ' Roman ' urns dug 

 up at Lynford ^ in 1720, and the small urn with bones and ashes found 

 on a pavement of flint stones fifteen years later at the same place, suggest 

 an Anglian burial on such a floor as that already mentioned at Castle 

 Acre. There is, however, no doubt as to the Anglian character of the 

 finds next to be recorded. 



' In a field of Old Walsingham, not many moneths past, were digged 

 up between fourty and fifty Vrnes, deposited in a dry and sandy soile, 

 not a yard deep, not farre from one another : not all strictly of one 

 figure, but most answering these described : some containing two pounds 

 of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jawes, thigh-bones, and teeth, 

 with fresh impressions of their combustion. Besides the extraneous 

 substances, like peeces of small boxes, or combes handsomely wrought, 

 handles of small brasse instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some 

 kinde of opale.' * In Sir John Evans' edition of Sir Thomas Browne's 

 classic is a note to demonstrate the Anglian character of these objects 

 which are not of rare occurrence, such as thread-boxes, crystal beads or 

 spheres and bronze tweezers. In the British Museum are two urns 

 from the Townley collection which may possibly have come under the 

 eye of the author of the Hydriotaphia. 



About half a mile from Elmham, on rising ground west of the 

 Beteley road, many urns (as fig. 1 5) of coarse earth have been found at 

 a spot called Broom-close.' The situation is dry, with a sandy or gravelly 

 soil, and the river flows in the valley at no great distance. The ware was 

 rough and uneven but generally well-burnt, some pieces having indented 



1 Specimens from Pensthorpe are noticed below (p. 335). 



« Another from Brooke, now in the British Museum, is noticed later. 



^ History, vol. vi. p. 148. * Additions to Camden, vol. ii. p. 114. 



^ Blomefield, History, vol. ii. p. 263. 



* Hydriotaphia, Urne Buriall, chap. ii. (1658). 



1 Blomefield, History, vol. ix. p. 49 1 . 



