A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



and a few other trinkets, and another was found with two brooches, 

 originally with applied plates, 2^ inches in diameter, on the breast. 

 Two circular gilt brooches of unusual form should here be mentioned : 

 from an almost flat disc, which is lightly engraved, rises a vertical 

 border, and a yellow glass paste fills a perforation in the centre. Two 

 or three gilt square-headed brooches of medium size were also found, 

 and three quoit-shaped specimens which are occasionally found in various 

 districts. Of four glass vessels two were of conical form, one of dark 

 brown colour had the peculiar hollow lobes generally confined to Kentish 

 graves, and the fourth was a very delicate bowl almost colourless. 

 Several perforated Roman coins for use as pendants were recovered as 

 well as the stem of a characteristic Roman spoon ; and a remarkable 

 survival from Roman times is seen in a pair of circular brooches with 

 bosses in the centre, one of them consisting of a glass intaglio (fig. n) 

 representing a raven with its head turned back. In another part of the 

 railway cutting a cinerary urn is said to have been found. The vessel 

 was broken in pieces by the workmen, and a precise description is there- 

 fore impossible ; but there is no doubt as to the Anglo-Saxon character 

 of a woman's grave in the same locality, which had been cut east and 

 west and contained a number of coloured glass beads as well as a brooch 

 of the saucer type, 1 such as that illustrated from Shefford (fig. 8). 



This is sufficient evidence that the Lambourn valley was occupied 

 in early Anglo-Saxon times, and the ' Seven Barrows ' that once stood 

 on the downs above, though richest in prehistoric relics, also contained 

 many secondary interments that proved to be of Anglo-Saxon origin. 



A heavy bronze brooch (see fig.) like 

 one already mentioned from Reading 

 was found in one of these burials and 

 presented to the British Museum by 

 Canon Green well, who with the assist- 

 ance of Mr. Walter Money undertook 

 the exploration of the site in 1879. But 

 most of the remains discovered in the 

 county are from the neighbourhood of 

 the Thames. An interesting series of 

 Anglo-Saxon remains found near Read- 

 ing is now in the municipal museum,* 

 and the discovery was described by the 

 late Dr. Joseph Stevens in i893 3 Two years previously a number of 

 interments were exposed in a ballast-pit during the widening of the 

 Great Western Railway, the site being little more than 200 yards south of 

 the Thames and 50 feet above the river-level. A space of over 400 square 

 yards between the railway bridge at the Rennet's mouth and the brick 



1 Journ. of Brit. Arch. Asm. \. 155. These were discovered in 1893 and are now in the Reading 

 Museum. 



2 By the gift of Mr. G. W. Smith, to whom the discovery is due. 

 * Journ. of Brit. Arch. Assoc. 1. 150 (2 plates). 



240 



BRONZE BROOCH, LAMBOURN DOWNS. 



