A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



the skeletons lay with their feet at the east end of the grave, obviously 

 Christian interments in the cemetery of Hartlepool nunnery were north and 

 south. The presence of weapons and grave furniture in the former case 

 seeming to imply that the east-and-west burials at Darlington were not those 

 of Christian converts. Orientation may eventually prove of importance in 

 determining the date and character of Anglo-Saxon burials. 



A curious coincidence should be mentioned in connection with a barrow 

 (grave-mound) at Cambois, Northumberland. With a burial were found an 

 enamelled bronze brooch and part of a bone comb/ which can be approxi- 

 mately dated. Many combs of this kind, with a stout handle tapering to the 

 head of the comb, and one row of teeth, are to be seen in the York Museum, 

 and can be assigned with little hesitation to the Danish period. Apart from 

 this association it would be difficult to place the brooch, which has a flat 

 circular centre enclosing a bird, apparently with a branch in its beak, the 

 ground being filled with blue, green,^ and white enamel of the champleve k.mA. 

 Round the centre, but on a lower level, is a band of embossed work, probably 

 meant for running-scrolls. Another, modelled perhaps from the same original, 

 but further from the prototype, and somewhat debased and smaller was pro- 

 bably found on the site of Hyde Abbey, near Winchester, well-known as the 

 burial place of Alfred. The enamel colours are somewhat indistinct, but the 

 design is the same, and the diameter is about i| inches.^ That these two 

 enamelled brooches were of Danish manufacture is not probable, and they 

 may be English work, or have come from Gaul or the Rhine district, where 

 the bird was in use as a Christian symbol. 



The only hoard of coins of this period which has been discovered in 

 the county was a small one of about a dozen pieces, found while digging 

 a grave in the burial ground attached to the chapel at Heworth, near Gates- 

 head, about the year 1822. They were contained in a curiously shaped 

 vessel of coarse earthenware, poorly glazed, 2\ inches high and 2J inches in 

 diameter in its widest part. The mouth measures if inches by i inch 

 inside, and is formed into a rudely formed lip. Opposite to the lip a broken 

 patch seems to indicate that the vessel was originally supplied with a handle 

 in the form of a hook. It may be generally described as somewhat resem- 

 bling a small cream jug. In two places blackened patches show that it had 

 been in contact with fire. The coins are of bronze, of the type known as 

 stycas, and are all of the reign of Ecgfrith (670-685). On the obverse they 

 bear the letters, -f- ecgfrid rex, and on the reverse the single word lvx ; inter- 

 spersed with these three letters are a number of radiating lines which may 

 represent the rays of the sun. The Rev. John Hodgson,* in exhibiting one 

 of the coins at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon- 

 Tyne, conjectured that the motto lvx was either complimentary to the 

 character of Ecgfrith, or as an allusion to the flourishing state of Christianity 

 during his reign. 



Mr. LongstafFe mentions four silver pennies of Alfred's time, found at 

 Gainford about 1865.* They were then in the possession of the Rev. J. 

 Edleston, and were discovered together outside the north-west angle of the 

 chancel of Gainford church. 



' Both arc in the British Museum. ' y. C. II. IJaiifi, i. 397. 



* jfrci. jETiana, i. 124, pi. vi. ♦ Ibid. vi. 233-4. 



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