A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



Fairford and Wittenham, brooches of this type are only known to occur 

 in unburnt burials, and are almost exclusively confined to an area in 

 which cremation was not the ordinary practice. A stray specimen has 

 indeed been found at Sleaford, Lines., 1 the only one from 242 burials, 

 six of which were by way of cremation. With this exception, Marton, 

 just south of Dunsmore Heath, and Norton, in the neighbouring county 

 of Northants, seem to mark the northern limit 2 of these brooches, 

 which from their occurrence chiefly in the Thames basin may be looked 

 on as peculiarly West Saxon ; and the discovery of a specimen with a 

 cinerary urn typifies aptly enough the intermingling of different tribes 

 on what in all probability was for some time the borderland between 

 them. 



A brooch five inches long of pronounced Anglian type terminating 

 in conventional horse's head was found 3 with an iron spearhead and other 

 objects on the site of a supposed Roman station on the Fosse road at 

 Princethorpe on the north bank of the Leam. No further details were 

 supplied by Mr. Bloxam, but an ornamented fragment of Roman 

 pottery is figured on the same plate, together with what appears to have 



been the butt of a spear ; these may 

 .',-'" """""r> possibly have been associated with the 



A-;-'.'.'. ".'I.'-'--;?- brooch and spearhead in a burial of 



-'.*"">--.".*_""*" "T_---7"."V * 



the Anglo-Saxon period. Though 

 common enough in the eastern coun- 

 ties, this class of brooch is not other- 

 wise represented in Warwickshire, and 

 may be regarded in connection with 

 the few instances of cremation in this 

 county as indicating the presence of 

 a certain number of settlers or tempo- 

 rary occupants of the Leam valley who 

 were more closely related to the 

 Anglians of the north and east than 

 to the inhabitants of mid-England. 

 On the same highway six miles to the north, traces of the Anglian site 

 of cremation have also been found at Brinklow, 4 and the urn here figured 

 is from the glebe land there. 



Ten miles to the south at Bascote, and about three miles from 

 the Fosse Way, Saxon spearheads, a javelin or two and a knife have been 

 found in quarrying for limestone, but no further particulars have been 

 recorded. 6 Westward beyond the Roman road, the site of the supposed 

 Saxon cemetery at OfFchurch flanks the direct road to Long Itchington, 

 south of the church ; and graves have been found as at Longbridge in 



1 Archtfohgia, vol. 50, p. 388. 



1 Two brooches, said to be of saucer shape (Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, p. 484), were found at 

 Driffield, E. R. Yorks, but according to one account (Collectanea Antique, ii. 166) were originally filled 

 with enamel and belong to another category. 



8 Roach Smith's Collectanea Antiqua, i. pi. xix. p. 37. * Bloxam, Monumenta Sefulchralia, p. 59. 



6 Journal of British Arch<tolo&cal Association, xxxii. 465. 



256 



CINERARY URN, ERINKLOVV. 



