A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



the leaders, if not the hosts, of Teutonic blood who made the Thames 

 their highway to the interior, and buried some of their greatest in ground 

 they had won in its vicinity at Faversham, at Broomfield, and at 

 Taplow. 



In the British Museum are a sword and shield-boss from a warrior's 

 grave in Windmill Field, Hitcham, near Taplow ; and at Newport Pag- 

 nel, in the northern angle of the county, about midway between the 

 county towns of Buckingham and Bedford, there seems to have been 

 a West Saxon settlement, which was no doubt in touch with both those 

 centres during the early period. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery at the east 

 end of the town has not been systematically examined, but has yielded 

 interesting relics from time to time. 1 The first discoveries were made 

 early in 1900 while gravel was being dug in a field on the Tickford 

 Park Estate, and remains of unburnt burials were brought to light. 

 By the side of male skeletons, placed on the gravel about 3 feet from 

 the surface, three iron swords of the usual double-edged type were dis- 

 covered, while an iron spearhead was generally found beside the skull. 

 In what must have been the grave of a man was found a cup of amber 

 glass, while in that of a woman was found a larger number of articles. 

 At the head had been placed a small bucket, the bronze hoops of 

 which had been forced on to the skull and were mistaken for part of 

 a head-dress ; besides this was a bronze hair-pin, and a small iron knife, 

 such as is found in nearly all unburnt burials of this period, lay across the 

 breast. The arms had been encircled by strings of variously coloured 

 beads of glass, as was the case at Kempston only 10 miles distant to 

 the east, in the neighbouring county of Bedford ; while the bronze 

 brooches met with all seem to have belonged to a very common type, 

 with a flat circular face ornamented by incised rings in a very simple 

 style. Pieces of charred wood and bones of the ox, horse, or sheep 

 were considered with some reason to have been the remains of the 

 funeral feast at the grave-side ; and a remarkable feature in at least 

 one part of the cemetery was the arrangement of the graves in two 

 concentric circles, with the feet all pointing to the centre, where 

 some person of importance is supposed to have been interred. A 

 similar grouping of the graves has been observed at Cuddesdon, Ox- 

 fordshire ; at Shoeburyness, Essex ; and at Vendhuile, a Prankish site 

 in the department of Aisne, France. 



Once a footing was gained in this desirable region, the West Saxon 

 never retired till driven southward of the river for half a century or more 

 by his Anglian rivals, who, presumably, came down from the Trent 

 valley. It is possible that from the accession of Penda in 626 the 

 Anglians of Mercia gradually penetrated into Buckinghamshire, per- 

 haps along the Watling Street through what is now Northampton- 

 shire ; and it is generally supposed that Archbishop Theodore, who 

 reorganized the English Church, turned Dorchester-on-Thames into a 



1 A brief description was furnished to the Bucks Standard of 24. February 1900, by Mr. Alfred 

 Bull.irJ. See also the Antiquary, April 1900, p. 97. 



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