A HISTORY OF SURREY 



As somewhat of a rarity in English graves the angon may be 

 connected with the three franciscas or axeheads, which again are more 

 commonly found in Merovingian graves on the continent. In the 

 British Museum are examples from the Isle of Wight, from Suffolk and 

 London, but all are not of the same pattern. Strictly speaking, the 

 francisca is an iron axehead for throwing, which has the centre of its 

 cutting edge beyond the centre of the socket ; and to this type belongs 

 at least one of the Croydon specimens. Other axeheads of about the 

 same period have blades adapted for use at close quarters, extending 

 below the socket,' or above and below like a halberd. 1 The francisca 

 proper has been assigned to Prankish graves of the fifth and sixth 

 centuries, as it occurs abundantly in Belgium, which the Franks reached 

 at an early date, and very rarely in parts of France which were only 

 conquered by them after a long interval. Graves of the seventh and 

 eighth centuries in which examples have occurred are thought with 

 good reason to be those of chieftains.* 



Among the antiquities preserved at Croydon is the upper part of a 

 bronze bowl or cauldron belonging to a type of which several examples 

 are extant from Anglo-Saxon graves. In the British Museum are three 

 from Long Wittenham, Berks, while one is figured 8 from Linton Heath, 

 Cambs, and another was found with Anglo-Saxon weapons and a bronze 

 vessel of a different pattern at Sawston, in the same county, in 1 8 1 6. 4 

 A specimen of the same type is published s from the neighbourhood of 

 Stade on the Elbe, a district which affords many parallels to our Anglo- 

 Saxon antiquities. The rim generally measures 7 inches across, the 

 body being somewhat wider and the bottom rounded. The lip is 

 horizontal and turned outwards, unlike another common type of bronze 

 bowl which has a thickened rim turned in at an angle. A semi-circular 

 handle of iron is attached to two angular projections from the rim of 

 the vessel, which was hammered out of a circular sheet of metal. 



The bronze tag of a girdle (fig. 7) is of unusual form, but an almost 

 identical specimen is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, 

 from an interment in the Dyke Hills, Oxon, where it was associated with 

 objects that resemble a bronze mount from Croydon (fig. 9), possibly 

 belonging to a bowl. 



Two buckets about 4 inches high, mounted in the usual way with 

 ornamented bronze bands but of less than average size, were also found. 

 Their use is uncertain, but it is generally thought that they were 

 originally filled with food offered to the dead, and a similar belief that 

 refreshment was necessary beyond the grave may account for the presence 

 of the elegant glass drinking cup exhibited with the buckets at Croydon. 



This interesting example of Anglo-Saxon glass (fig. i) is in excellent 

 condition, and may in this respect be compared with another, of conical 



1 Various specimens are figured in Archeeokga, xxxiv. 1 79. 



* Barriere-Flavy, Arts Industrlels de la Gaule, i. 54. 



3 Neville, Saxon Obsequies, pi. 16. 



4 Figured in Arcbaologta, xviii. pi. 25, fig. 4. 



6 J. H. Mtlller, Alterthiimer tier provinz Hannover, pi. xiv. fig. 109. 



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