A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



day use, and occurs frequently in graves of both sexes. These remains are 

 now preserved in the Bede House Museum at Melton Mowbray, which also 

 contains four annular brooches and a bronze pin with faceted head and ring 

 from this site. 



In the national collection is a patinated bronze brooch (plate I, fig. 3), 

 which recalls the ' long ' brooch of Scandinavia, but has the head bordered 

 in the same style as a larger specimen from the same site just described, and 

 has a spreading foot that is common among English examples of this period, 

 and may have been derived from a Baltic source. 



More extensive discoveries were made in 1890-1 during the construc- 

 tion of the railway from Saxby to Bourne, in Lincolnshire. The site of what 

 was evidently a mixed cemetery is close to a small pond to the south of the 

 railway line, about 250 yards east of the road that crosses the railway at 

 the new Saxby station. It was visited by Dr. J. C. Cox, who questioned 

 the workmen, and furnished an account, without illustrations or full details 

 of the objects, to the Society of Antiquaries. 37 He exhibited and described 

 the finds of April, 1891, which included six tolerably perfect cinerary urns 

 (plate III), one being of unusually large size, iijin. high. Many others 

 had been broken by the navvies, but the majority of these rough hand-made 

 vessels contained calcined human bones in small pieces closely packed together, 

 and thus agree with a large number found in the Anglian districts of England. 

 Several specimens were decorated with vertical bosses formed by pressure 

 from the inside, and by the impressions of stamps bearing different geometrical 

 designs of simple character ; and all were of coarse dark-coloured paste inter- 

 spersed with particles of white flint and spar. They range between 9 in. and 

 4 in. in height, and the smaller ones are plain and roughly made in bowl-form, 

 like specimens from Rothley Temple. They were in most cases heaped 

 round with large-sized pebbles at Saxby. 



The site was one of many north of the Thames in which burnt and 

 unburnt bodies had been buried side by side ; and was a small plot of ground 

 about 30 yards long, situated a few yards north of the find in 1833 already 

 mentioned. A considerable number of skeletons were exposed, lying within 

 a few feet of the urns and at about the same level 15 to 3 6 in. in a light 

 soil resting on a harder gravel ; the males having knives, daggers, and spear- 

 heads or the remains of shields by their side, and the females, brooches, beads, 

 or other ornaments. Several smaller urns, not of cinerary character, were 

 uncovered near the skeletons, apparently at the head, and the bodies had been 

 placed in the graves with the head at the east end. This position is very 

 unusual, the opposite being the rule, but exceptions occur even in Kent, 

 where the burials are uniformly by way of inhumation. 



The weapons included a fine spear-head of iron and several smaller 

 lance-heads, all but one having the split socket characteristic of the Anglo- 

 Saxon period. One complete shield-boss of iron, 6 in. in diameter, and some 

 fragments of others were found. There were two pierced Roman coins used 

 as pendants, a pair of tweezers, various beads of glass and amber, and a fine series 

 of ' long ' brooches (plate IV), some of which are damaged. Two ornamented 

 fragments belonged to the feet of larger specimens of the same general 

 character. An iron rod 7! in. long with double hook at one end, generally 



" Proc. Soc. Antiq. xiii, 331 ; repeated in Leu. Tram, viii, 74. 



234 



