A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



case at Beddington near Croydon, Surrey. 1 At the western end of a 

 passage in a villa at Woolstone, a hamlet close under White Horse Hill, 

 was found a perfect skeleton, presumably of a man, an iron knife being 

 the only object accompanying the burial ; while at the east end of the 

 same passage two other bodies were found, also within a foot or so of 

 the surface. Several interments, apparently of the Anglo-Saxon period, 

 are mentioned in another account,' but only iron knives were found 

 with the bodies ; and several tessellated floors, of which one is now pre- 

 served at Oxford, were disclosed by the plough. 



Berkshire has yielded many, and will yet yield more, relics of its 

 inhabitants from the time when Britain was left to its own resources by 

 the imperial authority of Rome till the days when the Anglo-Saxon 

 settler was himself contending for the mastery with kindred invaders 

 from Scandinavia ; and the exploration of cemeteries in this county has 

 shown more clearly than anywhere else, except perhaps in Kent, the 

 transition from Romanized Britain to Christian England. 



An interesting relic of another description may here be mentioned 

 in conclusion. During the rebuilding of St. Mary's Church, Stratfield 

 Mortimer, in 1866, it was found that the site had been occupied long 

 before the old parish church was built, and some idea of its early history 

 may be obtained from the discovery, under the floor of the tower, of the 

 stone cover of a Saxon tomb now fixed in the east end of the church. 

 It was broken in two, measured 6| feet in length, 20 inches in width at 

 the top, and lay face downwards. Round the edge could be deciphered 

 an inscription, in letters i| inches high, which began on the left hand 

 of the top of the stone, and was carried along the right margin, the 

 narrow foot and the left margin. It ran as follows : 



+ VIII KL' OCTB | FVIT POSITVS XEGELpARDVS FILIVS 

 KYPPINGVS IN ISTO LOG | O BEATV | S SIT OMO QVI 

 ORAT PRO ANIMA EIVS + TOKI ME SCRIPSIT | 



The characters are well formed Latin capitals, interspersed with a 

 few Anglo-Saxon letters. Without entering into epigraphic details, for 

 which Professor Westwood's paper ' may be referred to, it will suffice 

 to mention that the tomb was that of ^gelward son of Kypping, who 

 died on 24 September. A blessing is invoked on all who pray for his 

 soul ; and the name of the sculptor, or the person who ordered the 

 tombstone, was Toki. Supposing the ' G ' to be a mistake for the ' TH ' 

 character, the person commemorated may be the alderman of Hampshire 

 mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 994, who was a 

 most distinguished individual, being himself an historian and the person 

 to whom jElfric, Archbishop of Canterbury (994-1005), dedicated his 

 Homilies and his translation of Genesis. 4 He seems to have died soon 



1 V.C.H. Surr. i. 263. 



* Antiquary, i. 36, 1 8 1. 



s Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, xi. 224. 



4 Rev. C. L. Cameron in Beiki, Bucks and Oxoa Arch. Jour*, vii. 71. 



2 4 8 



