BRONZE-GILT BROOCH, STONE. 



ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



little bearing on that of the burial. In the sandpit adjoining the mill a 

 skeleton was discovered, provided with spear, knife and shield, while a 

 small pottery vase had been placed at the feet ; but the most important 

 discovery was made in the orchard of the vicarage, which had doubtless 

 formed part of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery. This was a saucer-brooch of 

 unusual size (see fig.), now in 

 the British Museum. The ma- 

 terial is bronze, originally gilt, 

 and in the centre is a cruci- 

 form design, rudely engraved 

 and filled in with bands of 

 straight and curved lines that 

 represent the original animal 

 ornament of early Anglo-Saxon 

 art. 



That this type of brooch 

 was unfamiliar sixty years ago, 

 even to antiquaries of such 

 wide experience as John Yonge 

 Akerman, is curiously illus- 

 trated by his attribution of it 

 to the Byzantine period, 1 

 though he was subsequently 

 convinced of its home manufacture and pagan origin. 8 An error 

 that has been more frequently noticed but is more readily excused 

 was made in 1848, when the antiquities of Stowe House were 

 sold by auction. Two very similar saucer-brooches from Ashendon 

 appeared in the catalogue as the pans of a pair of scales, and scales have 

 indeed been found more than once in Anglo-Saxon graves. In the present 

 case however there is no room for doubt, and at the back of the specimen 

 could be detected linen shreds from the grave clothes of the original owner, 

 while the pair found only five miles distant at Ashendon are known to have 

 been associated with a human skeleton discovered in a stone quarry. 3 In 

 all probability therefore they had not been accidentally lost by the living 

 but interred with the body in the grave ; and as the custom of burying 

 the dead in full dress was discouraged by the Christian Church, and ceased 

 before the eighth century, it is unlikely that the ornaments in question are 

 any later than the seventh. 



Further discoveries have been made in the same neighbourhood. At 

 Eythrop, three miles west of Aylesbury, some iron relics that are easily 

 recognized as part of a warrior's equipment have recently been unearthed, 

 but no further details are forthcoming. A quarter of a mile north of 

 Dinton Church, and on the right of the main road to Thame, there 

 formerly existed a cluster of bell-shaped barrows, which were opened in 



1 Arch. xxx. 546. 



* Remains of Pagan Saxondom (1855), p. 76, illustrated on pi. xxxviii. fig. I. 



Akerman, Pagan Saxondom, pi. xxxviii. fig. 2 ; Journal of Brit. Arch. Assoc. v. 113. 



T97 



