A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



large cemetery of this period was discovered at King's Newton near 

 Melbourne, in making a branch of the Midland Railway from Derby 

 to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, accounts of which appeared 1 from the pens of 

 Mr. J. J. Briggs, Mr. Massey and Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A. A 

 similar discovery, but of even greater interest, was made in 1881 at 

 Stapenhill near Burton-upon-Trent. This village now forms part of 

 that borough, and belongs to Staffordshire ; but until recently it was 

 part of the county of Derby, and for this reason an account of this 

 cemetery will not be out of place here. The site was a brickfield, and 

 the first interments were discovered while digging for clay. The 

 matter was at once placed in the hands of the Burton-upon-Trent 

 Natural History and Archaeological Society, and a number of careful 

 excavations were made, bringing to light about thirty-one different 

 graves. An excellent report on the whole work was drawn up the 

 following year, which was printed in the first volume of the Society's 

 Transactions in 1889. In 1887 a note appeared in the Reliquary 2 

 in which the Rev. Charles Kerry described the finding of five skele- 

 tons at Overton Hall near Ashover, which from the mode of burial 

 appear to be of the same period as the Stapenhill burials. In 1886 the 

 skeleton of a young woman was found during the excavation of the site 

 of Duffield Castle, and with it were associated an amber bead and a part 

 of a cruciform brooch of Anglo-Saxon type. This burial had been 

 disturbed by the builders of the Norman keep. 3 Since this date nothing 

 has been discovered in the county to further our knowledge of the 

 period. 



The remains in Derbyshire which come within our present range 

 are almost exclusively sepulchral. These sepulchral remains differ 

 among themselves quite as much as do the pre-Roman, but the two 

 groups have sufficiently well-marked points of difference to render their 

 separation comparatively easy. It is only when there are no grave goods 

 that difficulty is experienced, and even then the construction of the 

 grave, and of the mound when present, often supplies a clue. It is pos- 

 sible that some of the interments we have classed as pre-historic may 

 really be of this later period, but we are more likely to confuse certain 

 Romano-British burials with them. 



The post-Roman people, like their predecessors, practised both in- 

 humation and cremation ; but it is clear that in Derbyshire at least these 

 were not as a rule practised side by side. In the former method the 

 body was usually laid at full length on its back in the grave, but occa- 

 sionally it was laid on its side, either at full length as before or with 

 the legs more or less bent, but rarely so much as to resemble the 

 doubled-up attitude commonly seen in the pre-Roman graves. When 

 cremation was practised the burnt remains were either collected into a 

 heap or were placed in urns. These cinerary urns resembled those 

 of the Bronze Age in being of coarse clay modelled by hand instead 



1 Relijuary, viii. 2 et seq. * New ser. i. ill. 



3 Journ. Derb. Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soc. ix. p. 151. 

 266 



