ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



southern border of the county. In 1870 Mr. Fitch exhibited to the 

 Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society a small collection of 

 Anglian objects from Thetford apparently associated with urn-burials, 

 but no details of the discovery are recorded.' 



Eight or nine Anglian urns were found in removing some small 

 hillocks in a field to the north of Earsham ^ church, near Bungay ; but 

 all were destroyed except one, which may be that figured in Norfolk 

 Archaology, vol. vi. p. 154. At the west end of the church in an 

 adjacent meadow there used to be three or four large mounds, which 

 apparently yielded no relics when removed ; while on the north side of the 

 churchyard, and partly within it, several Roman urns have been found. 



The site of the Anglian cemetery at Pensthorpe, from which some 

 excellent urns have been recovered, contained a number of mounds 

 distinctly traceable over several fields.' Cultivation has for the most part 

 reduced these nearly to the level of the surrounding land ; but their 

 whole surface had been pierced with holes a few feet deep, in which urns 

 were placed mouth upwards, and then covered over with earth. So 

 numerous are the remains said to have been that the fields were strewed 

 with fragments, and whenever the earth was cleared away for a few feet 

 urns and burnt bones were certain to be exhumed. In one urn full of 

 human bones were found fragments of an iron buckle * ; in another bits 

 of iron and glass, a bone pin, and sixteen roundels * which are not very 

 intelligible, but have been reasonably explained in the paper already re- 

 ferred to on the Castle Acre find, in which they also occurred. A few 

 of the objects in question, unfortunately known as ' pulley-beads' * are 

 preserved with one of the urns in the British Museum, and in their original 

 form were discs of bone or shale, with one side convex and the other 

 flat, the latter having two and sometimes three holes bored near the 

 centre. At the first glance they might easily be taken for buttons, and 

 some antiquaries have been led astray by the well-known buttons of jet 

 which are found so frequently in British barrows of the early Bronze 

 period. But the resemblance is very superficial, for in the prehistoric 

 specimens the holes are drilled through to the other face, or else meet in 

 the centre to form a passage for the thread ; while the later ' buttons ' 

 could never have been fastened on at all. They now vary in size and 

 colour, having been more or less damaged and calcined in the funeral 

 pyre ; but originally they were about seven-tenths of an inch in diameter, 

 with a polished surface that to this day shows traces of the lathe. Now 

 it is obvious from their pottery that the pagan Anglians were not 

 acquainted with the turner's wheel, and the conclusion is that these discs 

 were not home-made. And here the remains of the Roman period in 



1 Norfolk Archeology, vol. vii. p. 373. 



^ This is misprinted as Evesham in the original account, Proceedings, Society of Antiquaries, 

 new series, vol. i. p. 29. 



* Norwich Museum Catalogue (1853), p. 20. 



* Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, vol. iv. p. 292. 



' cf. Jewitt, Grave-Mounds and their Contents, p. 294, fig. 484. 

 8 Journal of Archaoloffcal Institute, vol. xi. p. 295. 



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