ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



resembled that on urns excavated in Cambridgeshire by the Hon. R. C. 

 Neville and represented in Saxon Obsequies, pU. 24-33. -^ specimen 

 (fig. 15) from Elmham formerly in the collection of Sir Hans Sloane 

 exactly corresponds to the above description and is now in the British 

 Museum. 



About twelve miles to the south at Shropham, near the course of 

 the old highway that ran through Thetford to Norwich, several good 

 cinerary urns (figs. 8, 16) have been found, and are now preserved in 

 the national collection, though no details of the discovery are available. 

 About midway between Shropham and East Dereham is Great Carbrook, 

 where about 1 844 in a grave-mound on the ' Battlefield ' was found a 

 brooch with the ' spectacle ' ornament as at Sporle ; and in another a 

 number of beads of amber and glass-paste.* A millefiori bead^ probably 

 found on the same site has been pronounced of this period, and is no 

 doubt one of the kind found in various parts of Europe, but not yet 

 referred to any definite manufacturing centre. The extent of commercial 

 operations is illustrated in an interesting way by the discovery of a mille- 

 fiori disc * with other objects in a Viking's grave at Tromso in north 

 Norway, well within the arctic circle. 



At Hargham an urn-field is recorded* which may well be of the 

 same date as those just mentioned from the neighbouring village of 

 Shropham. The find occurred on the estate of Sir Thos. Beevor, and 

 consisted of twenty or thirty damaged vessels filled with calcined bones, 

 but no remains of implements. 



More to the east traces of early Anglian occupation are less apparent. 

 Between the coast and a line drawn from North Walsham to Loddon 

 and thence to Lowestoft the elevation of the land rarely exceeds 50 feet 

 above the sea. The forts of Caister-by-Yarmouth and Burgh Castle 

 were meant by the Romans to guard the easy inlets to this district 

 afforded by the Bure, the Yare and the Waveney, which meet and join 

 the sea at Yarmouth ; but it is unlikely that such swampy tracts, exposed 

 to pillage from the sea, would attract Teutonic settlers in any numbers. 

 At Smallburgh in 1856 some beads of coloured glass and amber, such as 

 are usual in Anglo-Saxon graves, were found with fragments of a vase, 

 perhaps a cinerary urn, in levelling a mound in the Burnt Field,* but 

 this is slender evidence of occupation. 



In the neighbourhood of Norwich, where the ground begins to 

 rise, more frequent signs of Anglian settlements may be looked for. At 

 Drayton, about four miles further up the Wensum, fragments of sepul- 

 chral pottery have often been found, and in one urn part of an iron 

 dagger had been placed while another had a rudely-formed lid.* The 



' Figured by Dawson Turner, British Museum, Add. MS. 23,054, fols. 7, 9. 



2 'Journal of Archieological Institute, vol. ix. p. 116. 



^ In British Museum. * Norfolk Archaologj, vol. vi. p. 380. 



^ British Museum, Add. MS. 23,060, fol. 118, where a coloured drawing is given by Dawson 

 Turner. 



^ Three urns out of forty are drawn by Dawson Turner in Add. MS. 23,054, fols. 224-6. 

 Norfolk Archaology, vol. iii. p. 416. 



333 



